Torture and International Human Rights
A roundtable discussion with Francis Boyle, Michael Mandel, Liz Holtzman, H. Victor Conde, and Mark Levine
by Mark Levine

As the Abu-Ghraib prison scandal began to pierce through the public consciousness, Contributing Editor Mark LeVine brought together four leading experts on international and American constitutional law to explore the implications of the scandal and the larger issue of the violations of international and American law that have become part of the fabric of the US-led occupation of Iraq.

The extent of the daily violations of international law, including systematic war crimes by the US (and of course, other coalition forces and the insurgents as well), become impossible to ignore when you are on the ground in Iraq, which Levine visited in the early spring. What he saw first hand, and learned from speaking to people around the country - especially health professionals, NGO workers, lawyers, engineers, and academics - was how much the systematic commission of war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law were part of the routine of the occupation. As important, it was clearly the result of official US policies that would seem to extend directly to the White House and senior US political and military officials, including the President, Vice President and Secretary of Defense.

Full story here.