John Glaser

Obama is trying to circumvent U.S. laws prohibiting military support for foreign security forces that commit human rights violations.

As it continues to proclaim its commitment to human rights and democracy abroad, the Obama administration is openly trying to circumvent U.S. laws prohibiting military support for foreign security forces that routinely commit human rights violations.

Earlier this month, the Obama administration announced its decision to directly send weapons to the rebel fighters in Syria; a departure from standing policies that authorized direct military training of select rebels and the delivery of arms from countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar via the CIA.

The president claims the arms will only be delivered to “vetted” rebel groups, avoiding the hundreds of other rebel factions said by United Nations investigators to have committed war crimes. But it’s virtually impossible to funnel weapons into a chaotic civil war without them getting into the wrong hands.

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John Glaser

The Obama administration has superseded both domestic and international law in its targeted killing program in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. A legal memo from the Congressional Research Service has concluded that “none of the established legal frameworks is a perfect fit for the Administration’s lethal targeting operations because the current US practice of lethal targeting involves features that are improvised, inconsistent or otherwise questionable,” according to Secrecy News.

While the laws of war have traditionally been relegated to certain geographic areas of declared conflict, the Obama administration has expanded Congress’s authorization of the use of force, initially granted for Afghanistan, to apply to a borderless conflict that is defined however the President wants. The administration has also extended the authorization for the use of force against those who carried out the attacks of September 11th to apply to anyone the President says is a member of al-Qaeda, anywhere in the world, without any checks or balances or legal process to prove such membership. The administration has also extended this reasoning to US citizens, who have undeniable rights to due process under the Constitution, and while they seem to have written a legal memo from the Office of Legal Counsel, they have refused to release it.

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John Glaser

Iraqi detainees were severely tortured, beaten, and raped in an Iraqi National Police detention complex in 2006, according to a confidential State Department cable released by WikiLeaks. Discovery by US officials of the abuse did not lead to criminal investigations of the perpetrators and much of the mistreatment was permitted to continue.

On May 30, 2006, “a joint US-Iraqi inspection” of an Iraqi detention facility “discovered more than 1,400 detainees in squalid, cramped conditions,” many of whom were illegally detained. Prisoners “displayed bruising, broken bones, and lash-marks, many claimed to have been hung by handcuffs from a hook in the ceiling and beaten on the soles of their feet and their buttocks.”

The inspectors found a torture contraption where ”a hook…on the ceiling of an empty room at the facility” was “attached [to] a chain-and-pulley system ordinarily used for lifting vehicles” and that “apparent bloodspots stained the floor underneath.” All 41 prisoners interviewed by US inspectors had reported being tortured and 37 juveniles were held illegally.

Rape and sexual abuse, primarily of young teenagers, was also widespread. “A number of juvenile detainees,” reads the cable, “alleged…that interrogators had used threats and acts of anal rape to induce confessions and had forced juveniles to fellate them during interrogations.”

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John Glaser
Antiwar

Not only may laws limiting war become obsolete or disregarded, but America’s legal, geographical jurisdiction will extend to the entire globe.

[The CIA’s use of mercenaries to fight covert wars is an essential component of US foreign policy as old as the CIA itself. It effectively evades the Constitutional requirement that only allows Congress to declare war, as well as effectively concealing the vast majority of these “interventions” from public view. In fact the American pubic was largely unaware of these secret CIA wars prior to the Irangate scandal in1987. In this case, Reagan and the CIA defied Congress by continuing an illegal war against Nicaragua, which they funded by the secret illegal sale of weapons to Iran, an enemy nation. And, as was later learned, cocaine trafficking by the CIA-backed Contras. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan (1979-89), the CIA funding and training of Mujahideen freedom fighters led by Saudi businessman Tim Osman (his CIA name – most Americans know him as Osama bin Laden) was also well-publicized. - The Faultlines]

The Obama administration responded to pressure this week regarding the legality of American military involvement in Libya by claiming that the War Powers Resolution does not apply. Citing a limited support role in the NATO intervention, the President decreed the Vietnam-era legislation which requires Congressional approval for any military engagement surpassing 60 days irrelevant in the current context.

The House of Representatives passed an amendment last Monday onto a military appropriations bill that would prohibit any funding of the war in Libya, which will have cost $1.1 billion by September. Additionally, a group of ten representatives have filed a formal lawsuit[.pdf] against President Obama and outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates on the grounds that the intervention in Libya is illegal and unconstitutional. Still, the administration refuses to ask permission from Congress and continues to maintain, as State Department legal advisor Harold Koh said, “We are acting lawfully.”

The administration’s defiance in this regard notes an expanded authority ascribed to the Executive Branch, unrestricted by traditional checks and balances in war-making powers. And the legal position they are taking – that supporting, planning, and conducting attacks from the air does not amount to the “hostilities” specified by the War Powers Resolution – is not very strong. Indeed, the law requires the President to seek Congressional approval “in any case in which United States Armed Forces are introduced: (1) into hostilities or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances …”

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