Legal Loopholes Unplugged

Earlier today, I was reading John Ashcroft's 2004 Senate Judiciary Committee testimony (while writing my post The Geneva Convention - Lost and Found). In one part of his testimony, Ashcroft was trying to show that the Torture Act did not apply in Guantanamo Bay because it was a part of the United States: "I am saying that there are a variety of laws that govern the conduct of the United States as it relates to individuals we detain in [a] time of war. Some of those relationships are goverened by Geneva. But the Uniform Code of Military Justice [applies] everywhere and the torture statutes applies to a variety of circumstances. When the congress enacted the tortue statue, it enacted a law that said it applied everywhere outside the United States, but when the Congress defined the United States, it's not simple, because when the Congress defined the United States in the torture statute, it said The United States shall include special maritime and territorial jurisdictions, which means that the United States just doesn't include our 50 states. It sometimes includes military bases. It will sometimes include consular offices. It will sometimes include the residences or embassy offices and when the congress of the united states makes these definitions, that is what I have to live by." After reading this, I was reminded of the Circuit Court's conclusions that I wrote about in Undeserving of Protection. The District of Columbia Circuit Court decision on the right to habaes corpus of Guantanamo Bay detainees says: "The United States occupies the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base under an indefinite lease it entered into in 1903. See Al Odah, 321 F.3d at 1142. The text of the lease and decisions of circuit courts and the Supreme Court all make clear that Cuba – not the United States – has sovereignty over Guantanamo Bay. See Vermilya- Brown Co. v. Connell, 335 U.S. 377, 381 (1948); Cuban Am. Bar Ass’n v. Christopher, 43 F.3d 1412 (11th Cir. 1995). The “determination of sovereignty over an area,” the Supreme Court has held, “is for the legislative and executive departments.” Vermilya-Brown, 335 U.S. at 380. Here the political departments have firmly and clearly spoken: “‘United States,’ when used in a geographic sense . . . does not include the United States Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.” DTA § 1005(g)." I am not a lawyer, but doesn't this mean that, since the Circuit Court has said Guantanamo Bay is not a part of the United States, that the Torture Act applies there? I guess the question is irrelevant, since the legal manueverings I discussed in my post Men with No Eyes have created such a narrow definition of torture that it is almost impossible to commit the crime anyway.