Reply #27: Two points YOU seem to overlook

[MADem]

You can't attach assets he DOES NOT POSSESS. Let me put that another way--if he doesn't have any "stuff" in France, they can't TAKE it.

I've only said this twice already. If anyone seems to have comprehension difficulties, it sure isn't me.

And I do understand ultra vires--you keep tossing all sorts of arguments around, trying to make them stick, while your goalposts dance all over the field. Weren't you the one who tried to use Clinton's extra-office dalliances as an example upthread, and I had to point out how your example didn't apply? Rumsfeld isn't shooting someone's wife, here, he's issuing an order in his capacity as SECDEF. A legal order, too--the UN Convention says so, and so do all those European nations where these cases are being dismissed.

See, there's another little difficulty you seem to be ignoring in your zeal to wave international law about. We didn't ratify that Convention quite the way you keep insisting that we did. In fact, none of the signing nations did.

We built in a trap door, so we can get out of it any time we say so:

The European Convention on Human Rights (signed by the participating member states of the Council of Europe) recognized that the use of the five techniques of sensory deprivation and even the beatings of prisoners are not torture. Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights it was ruled makes such actions the lesser offense of "inhuman or degrading treatment"<2>. The European Court of Human Rights ruling that sensory deprivations and beatings do not rise to the level of torture is the present relevant law in Europe.<3>

Since 2004, the Convention has received new attention in the world press because of the stress and duress interrogation techniques used on detainees by United States military personnel, most notably at the Abu Ghraib prison and Bagram prison. The United States ratified the Convention, but lodged a declaration that "... nothing in this Convention requires or authorizes legislation, or other action, by the United States of America prohibited by the Constitution of the United States as interpreted by the United States."<4> The reason for this is that the United States Government lacks constitutional authority to enter into any treaty that violates any civil rights or other provisions within the Constitution of the United States.<5> Torture is illegal within the United States and is illegal if practised by American military personnel anywhere at any time.<6><7>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Convention_Against_Torture

I suggest you wrap your head around these facts before you erroneously continue to suggest that I don't "get it." See, I DO get it. The US government has made damned sure that their officials won't be touched, and the rest of the crowd, to include those Europeans you hang your hopes on, WENT ALONG WITH IT.