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The greening of terror law

By Mark Obbie

Vanity Fair's definition of a "green issue" is remarkably expansive. I refer not only to the Madonna S&M pictorial or the Doris Day tell-all. The legal-reporting goods are in this article by British human rights lawyer Philippe Sands, wittily called "Green [get it? green issue??] Light." It's taken from Sands' new book The Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values, a title that kind of makes plain its focus and point of view. Sands' interviews and document-sleuthing yield new insights into which lawyers played which rhetorical gymnastics to authorize an anything-goes policy on interrogating terror detainees. His nut graf: that the legal architects of torture are war criminals and could -- arguably should -- be captured overseas and prosecuted for this. He writes up to it in a most methodical, cautious way. But there's no mistaking his thesis. And, unlike the typical polemical essay, it's based on original reporting.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on April 26, 2008 (boomark / email).