{"id":136686,"date":"2014-08-13T22:34:26","date_gmt":"2014-08-13T22:34:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=136686"},"modified":"2014-08-13T22:34:26","modified_gmt":"2014-08-13T22:34:26","slug":"war-crimes-obama-looking-bailout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/human-rights\/war-crimes-obama-looking-bailout\/","title":{"rendered":"War Crimes: Is Obama Looking for a Bailout?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"color: #000000;\"><em>Jeff Bachman<\/em><\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">On Aug. 1, President Barack Obama stated in an oddly casual manner that \u201cwe tortured some folks.\u201d As Obama is well aware, torture is a violation of international law. It is prohibited by the\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: bold; color: #aa4444;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.icrc.org\/eng\/resources\/documents\/faq\/torture-law-2011-06-24.htm\" target=\"_blank\">Geneva Conventions of 1949<\/a>\u00a0and their Additional Protocols of 8 June 1977, the United Nations\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: bold; color: #aa4444;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.hrweb.org\/legal\/cat.html\" target=\"_blank\">Convention Against Torture<\/a>\u00a0and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (Torture Convention), and the\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: bold; color: #aa4444;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ohchr.org\/en\/professionalinterest\/pages\/ccpr.aspx\" target=\"_blank\">International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights<\/a>\u00a0(ICCPR), all of which have been signed and ratified by the United States.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">Further, although the ICCPR allows for some derogation from some of its requirements under extraordinary circumstances, torture is an act that is never permitted.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">The Torture Convention not only prohibits torture, it also requires that those who plan, authorize and perpetrate the crime be fairly and competently prosecuted. Failure to turn suspects over to be prosecuted before an appropriate body, such as the International Criminal Court, is itself a violation of the Torture Convention. As we know, Obama chose to \u201clook forward, not backwards\u201d rather than meet the United States\u2019 legal obligations.<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\">Despite Obama\u2019s decision to block any form of accountability for Bush administration officials for their role in torturing individuals, his administration has been a staunch supporter of international justice for other countries. When she was secretary of state, Hillary Clinton\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: bold; color: #aa4444;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.internationaljusticeproject.com\/the-evolving-us-policy-towards-the-icc\/\" target=\"_blank\">stated<\/a>\u00a0that the U.S. would end its \u201chostility toward the ICC, and look for opportunities to encourage effective ICC action in ways that promote U.S. interests by bringing war criminals to justice.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #000000;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.truthdig.com\/report\/item\/war_crimes_is_obama_looking_for_a_bailout_20140813\" target=\"_blank\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jeff Bachman On Aug. 1, President Barack Obama stated in an oddly casual manner that \u201cwe tortured some folks.\u201d As Obama is well aware, torture is a violation of international law. It is prohibited by the\u00a0Geneva Conventions of 1949\u00a0and their Additional Protocols of 8 June 1977, the United Nations\u00a0Convention Against Torture\u00a0and Other Cruel, Inhuman or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":136687,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487,21],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-136686","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"category-human-rights"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}