US Senate backs detainee rights

*Hear hear!* and *My first triple post!*

Great stuff and a good reminder that President Bush does not wield absolute power. Although if this is the start of a growing ambivalence and distain for the Iraqi War, we're going to have a problem. Granting of course, that this does not link directly to the situation in Iraq, but it marks a growing discontent and assertiveness against the president.

But a very important question could be raised with regards to such treatment in order to extract information that couldbe used to save lives. I am of course talking about the use of torture/torture warrants in a ticking time bomb situation. I don't want to go into the technicalities of it now, but I'll reprint my partner's speech for such a motion which we did for a legal debate once I find it on the computer.

Very simply put, the arguments we put forward were as follows. There is a necessity/justification (ticking time bomb), it would allow for regulation (while torture is theoretically banned in almost all jurisdictions, physical privation and deprivation is allowed. Unofficially there also exists the 3rd degree. Some of the more realisitic cop shows acknowledge this), it is legally justified (we parsed this very 'nicely' by arguing that Human Rights and the Convention against Torture were not suicide documents and that they are all fundamentally premised on life itself. We actually got away with it) and finally the reason why there won't be backlash is because people would be more accepting of it if it were legally sanctioned, the rationale properly explained and the current backlash is due to the hypocrasy of denouncing torture and using it rather than some huge aversion to torture.

I think we won, but it wasn't enough to break. Always a big problem when it's a one round preliminary. Oh well, maybe the MDC will change the rules this year.

Peace!