[Sheriff Gonna Getcha]

Crazyhorse,

I am, by no means, an expert in international law. I took one class in law school on the subject - so you are as competent to speak to these kinds of issues as I am.

As to your question about torture, it is undoubtedly barred under numerous treaties that the U.S. has ratified. I am personally disgusted by the torture that has taken place at Gitmo and elsewhere. I also think that Rumsfeld set us back a long, long way in the war on terrorism. Finally, I don't think the Gonzalez torture memo can be read with a straight face.

But, international law is a mess. The ICJ is almost completely ineffective and is a court of very limited jurisdiction. Moreover, the international community rarely agrees to anything of substance because norms vary so much from one place to another (see Sudanese Court rulings condoning the stoning of women). Because it is often difficult to get 2 people from two different cultures to agree as to what treaty X should say, it is almost impossible to get the entire international community to draft a treaty that is specific and substantive. Consequently, treaties often amount to very generalized statements and platitudes and are extremely difficult to interpret. I'm optimistic about the future, but the state of the world today is such that international law almost amounts to an oxymoron.