{"id":2876,"date":"2008-09-06T17:50:07","date_gmt":"2008-09-06T21:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=2876"},"modified":"2008-09-07T08:31:45","modified_gmt":"2008-09-07T12:31:45","slug":"deserter-opposes-torture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=2876","title":{"rendered":"Deserter opposes torture"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Found at Dust My Broom<\/a>: 42-year-old US Army linguist Peter Jemley has deserted and gone to Canada. He’s seeking refugee status from the US on the grounds that his job MIGHT include him being involved in a technique he MIGHT consider torture. From the Toronto Star<\/a>;<\/p>\n

The Tacoma, Wash., father of two young children also bucks the soldier stereotype. Jemley is a college history major, both quiet and fervently independent. If describing a bad situation he’s likely to say it “sucked,” then apologize for his profanity.<\/p>\n

Now Jemley’s reasons for deserting set him apart too, and make his case a historic first.<\/p>\n

He wants Canada to accept him as a refugee because he’s opposed to torture.<\/p>\n

Jemley argues that as one of only a small number of Arabic linguists with top security clearance, he could be forced to violate international law by participating in the interrogations of terrorism suspects. It was something he hadn’t considered when he enlisted in 2005 and was handpicked to undergo two years of intense training due to his adeptness with languages.<\/p>\n

Only last February did he discover that his government had sanctioned new rules on how terrorism suspects could be interrogated. He believes it’s torture and when he realized he might be asked to be a part of it, he fled.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, see here’s the thing; Jemley claims that it’s his duty as a soldier to refuse unlawful orders, and he’s absolutely correct. I would be angry at him if he didn’t refuse to execute orders that involved illegal acts. But, he’s saying he has a right to asylum in Canada just on the chance that he MIGHT be given an illegal order. That’s just goofy talk.<\/p>\n

I have no intention of discussing what is or isn’t torture…that’s not what this about. It’s about a pre-emptive refusal of an order that hasn’t even been issued. It hasn’t even been determined that our interrogators have used torture – beyond the two times waterboarding has been used (if waterboarding is indeed torture, which I don’t believe).<\/p>\n

Every member of the armed forces could use the same defense for their asylum applications. But Jemley has hit on a real gem for the Left in Canada…it capitalizes on their perception of Americans as cruel and inhuman cowboy-types and sets Jemley up to be some kind of principled humanitarian. It seems to me that the Canadian Courts could see the falacy of this from space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Found at Dust My Broom: 42-year-old US Army linguist Peter Jemley has deserted and gone to … Deserter opposes torture<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2876","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2876\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}