Torture: A Matter of Opinion or a Question of Legality?
An interesting sidelight to this argument is the case of the Japanese in WW2. What follows is from my memory with no attempt at research currently. The Japanese didn’t sign the Geneva Convention. During the war, when their soldiers had to deal with Americans they’d captured, the Japanese were pretty brutal. Any complaints about their behavior would be met with the observation that they hadn’t signed the Geneva Convention, so they could do what they chose. Torture (for recreational purposes, for the most part) was not uncommon, to say the least. At the end of the war, Japanese soldiers were charged with war crimes, and some were convicted and even executed. The standard which was applied to them was the Geneva Convention, I believe, regardless of whether they’d signed it or not.
There is one other question, though. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others of his ilk have committed war crimes that far outweigh anything committed by Rumsfeld or anyone else. KSM after all is thought to be the mastermind behind 9/11, which killed thousands. My understanding is that he’s agreed this is the case. So what’s the ruling here? Do his *rights* outweigh the necessity of preventing another attack?
