Draft bill unanimously approved by the WA 41st LD Democrats on 11/14/07, unanimously adopted as a

resolution by the King County Democratic Legislative Action Committee (LAC) on 11/19/07 with a friendly
amendment that when sponsors are found in Olympia, LAC will add this to their lobbying agenda.

Washington National Guard: Human Rights Education Bill

Whereas torture and the abuse of human rights are anathema to our identity, soul, and
core values as Washingtonians;
Whereas violating human rights would debase the morale of our own National Guard and
cause psychological damage to those who are ordered or allowed to practice it;
Whereas the more educated our Washington Military Department members become about
human rights laws, the better they will be able to defend themselves, our State and our
Country, and the less likely it is they will be misled into violating these laws;
Whereas hard-nosed US military interrogation training has emphasized for decades that
clever techniques are more effective than techniques which violate human rights, and that
the latter are counter-productive;1
Whereas most military justice experts agree that the fictionalized "ticking bomb" myth
(e.g., that 'if we torture someone we can save New York City') is pernicious, false, and
misused;2
Whereas torture techniques such as "stress positions" and "waterboarding" (artificial
drowning interrogation) are used by despotic regimes to elicit signed 'confessions' for
propaganda purposes and not to elicit the truth;3
Whereas US military tribunals and domestic courts have held that waterboarding is
torture, which violates US statutory prohibitions, and the US has prosecuted as war
criminals those who practiced it;4
Whereas experts conclude that prisoners being tortured will say whatever they think their
captors want to hear in order to make it stop, and that this leads to faulty information
which wrongly implicates others and perpetuates a cycle of violence;5
Whereas if our Guard tolerated the abuse of prisoners then it would undermine our ability
to protect other Washingtonians serving overseas;
1

"Suggestions for Japanese Interpreters Based on Work in the Field," Maj. Sherwood F. Moran, US Marine
Corps, July 1943. Ref. at www.theatlantic.com/doc/200506/budiansky
2
"Waterboarding Is Torture, Says Ex-Navy Instructor", Washington Post, November 9, 2007.
3
"Waterboarding: a tortured history," Eric Weiner, www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15917081
4
"Drop by Drop: Forgetting the History of Water Torture in U.S. Courts," Evan Wallach (former National
Guard JAG), Columbia Journal of Transnational Law, Vol. 45, 2007, No.2.
5
See testimony by Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh, former Asst. Secretary of State, January 7, 2005 and
July 11, 2006, US Senate Judiciary Committee.

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Therefore be it resolved that:

1) The Washington Military Department (hereafter "WA-MD") shall ensure that all
officers and enlisted persons in the national guard, the state guard and any militia of the
state of Washington shall be trained in those laws of the United States and the laws of
nations that pertain to the protections and guarantees of human rights and obligations
placed on the United States and members of its armed forces by treaty and by the law of
nations, including in particular the legal obligations for the capture and treatment of
prisoners. Such training shall include, but not be limited to the rights, obligations, and
principals flowing from the Geneva Conventions (US ratified 1955), the UN Convention
Against Torture (US signed 1988, ratified 1990), the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights (ratified 1992), the US War Crimes Act of 1996, etc. Washington State
shall allocate sufficient funding to provide such training as part of its regular and
mandatory training of officers and enlisted persons. The training shall consist of a
biweekly session amounting to no less than 10 hours of classroom instruction and clinical
teaching over the course of a year (via role play, applied exercises, case studies, and
discussion of governing treaties and documents); or similar regimen as determined by the
Adjutant General. The instructor(s) shall be widely regarded by legal scholars and
military practitioners as having a reputation for strengthening the legal prohibitions
against torture.
2) WA-MD members shall report to the Governor and State Adjutant General, in a timely
manner, violations of human rights law by US citizens that they are privy to, consistent
with the rights and obligations laid out in their training, the Uniform Code of Military
Justice, and RCW 38.38.
3) Any WA-MD member who is penalized for upholding the human rights law of nations
or a human rights treaty of the United States shall, at the discretion of the Governor, be
given legal assistance by the Washington State Government as permitted under Federal
and State law and shall be considered for State honors consistent with his/her service
record.
The recitals and provisions of this Bill are severable.

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