Topic: Geneva Convention

‘Taxi to the Dark Side’ details U.S. torture

By Bill Larson | December 19, 2007 |

From the director of “Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room,” Alex Gibney’s Taxi to the Dark Side is a gripping investigation into the reckless abuse of power by the Bush Administration.

By probing the homicide of an innocent taxi driver at the Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, the film exposes a worldwide policy of detention and interrogation that condones torture and the abrogation of human rights. This disturbing and often brutal film is the most incisive examination to date of the Bush Administration’s willingness, in its prosecution of the “war on terror,” to undermine the essence of the rule of law. The film asks and answers a key question: what happens when a few men expand the wartime powers of the executive to undermine the very principles on which the United States was founded.

Incorporating rare and never-before-seen images from inside the Bagram, Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prisons, and interviews with former government officials such as John Yoo, Alberto Mora and Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, interrogators, prison guards, New York Times reporters Tim Golden and Carlotta Gall (who wrote the first stories about the homicides in Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan) and the families of tortured prisoners, the film dissects the progression of the Administration’s policy on torture from the secret role of key administration figures, such as Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales and others to the soldiers in the field.

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APSU mock trial: United States vs Bush

By Debbie Boen | November 28, 2007 |

In 2004, as U.S. Citizens prepared to elect a president, professors at Austin Peay State University were told that they would not be allowed to discuss the current election with students. On Tuesday, just over three years after that pivotal election year, a mock trial was held on campus, a trial that pitted the United States against its president, George W. Bush, for violations of the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Geneva Convention.

The trial was staged as part of a Constitutional Law I class taught by Professor Greg Rabidoux, Ph.D., J.D., and included a panel of Judges, Defense Counsel and Prosecutors, and witnesses; it filled room 308 of the Morgan Center and was a “dream come true” for many of us in the audience. Class member Michael Price said he “jumped” at the opportunity to be a prosecutor in this case.

Dr. Rabidoux and Defense Attorney DeJesus

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