Twelfth in a series
The Washington Post is reporting on the use of unnamed, unknown drugs involuntarily administered to detainees at Gitmo. Not Abu Ghraib, not some black site operated by another country, GITMO; on American soil.
My nausea has returned. You know when I first read the 2003 Yoo memo [pdf] a few weeks ago, I was physically sick, and sad, so very very sad. It just killed me that a lawyer, a lawyer with the benefit of the very best education this country could provide, could have taken all that skill and debased and perverted his professional expertise to produce a memo that would be used to justify torture. It’s no different than a doctor violating his oath to "do no harm" perverting his skills to perform forced sterilizations, or grotesque mutilations and amputations in the name of "medical experimentation" upon unwilling victims.
We have discussed in the comment threads how these memos could have created the sort of anything goes mindset that led to the depredations at Abu Ghraib.
But Gitmo is different. Gitmo is American soil! We recently learned that White House officials at the highest ranks toured Gitmo and personally observed detainees being questioned using the "enhanced interrogation techniques."
They WATCHED!
They watched, they had the power to stop it and they refused to use that power to stand up to the President and Vice President. No Comey-like threats of mass resignation. No Diaz-like attempts to notify the Red Cross.
Scott Horton thinks that the cart may have come before the horse.
It increasingly appears that the Bush interrogation program was already being used before Yoo was asked to write an opinion. He may therefore have provided after-the-fact legal cover. That would help explain why Yoo strained to take so many implausible positions in the memos.
It also appears that government lawyers had told Bush administration officials that some of the techniques already in use were illegal, even criminal. In fact, a senior Pentagon lawyer described to me exchanges he had with Yoo in which he stressed that those using the techniques could face prosecution. Yoo notes in his Pentagon memo that he communicated with the Criminal Division of the Justice Department and got assurances that prosecutions would not be brought. The question becomes, was Yoo giving his best effort at legal analysis, or was he attempting to protect the authors of the program from criminal investigation and prosecution?
In any case, Yoo kept the program running. Even the man who came in to run the Office of Legal Counsel after Yoo’s departure, Jack Goldsmith, has written that he understood Yoo’s project this way. Goldsmith also rescinded Yoo’s memos.
Did they decide to deal with the inevitable criminal prosecutions by getting John Yoo to write an after the fact cover up OLC memo? If so, it would explain the precision with which he describes the criminal acts–because he had been advised which crimes had to be covered up.
If the memo is indeed "after the fact" there are two important things that flow from that:
1) It means that Yoo protestations that this is merely his completely unfounded and outside the mainstream but honestly held legal opinion, are demonstrably bullshit; and
2) That the memos are UTTERLY, UTTERLY USELESS as a legal defense. You cannot claim that you relied on the opinion when you tortured that detainee, if the opinion did not even exist on the day you committed the torture.
[Editor's note: This photo by takomabibelot features a banner created and designed by Firedoglake reader BonnieT of Austin, Texas, where she operates OpposeTorture.org.]
Related posts:
- The Next Terrorist Attack on US Soil, Courtesy of Dick Cheney’s Dark Side
- Gitmo: Obama Considers Gutting UCMJ Protections — For What?
- By Yoo’s Own Analysis, Army Field Manual Allows Torture with Drugs
- The July 2002 Torture Training Session
- Rich Lowry Suddenly in Favor of Criticizing American Presidents on Foreign Soil
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So, LHP!
lhp!
This is so sickening.
This is overwhelming. Between Christy’s last post about our Non-health care system and this one I think I am going to be sick. Where do I store all of this information without loosing my mind?
Well, technically Gitmo is not US soil. It is rented from Cuba under an agreement that dates back to the end of the Spanish-American War. It is US controlled soil. It is this ambiguity that led to the Bush Administration choosing it as an appropriate legal blackhole in which to drop detainees. SCOTUS has said this isn’t so but being a reactionary entity it has sought to accomodate the illegality as much as possible.
So if we can find even one waterbaording BEFORE the Yoo memo, those involved would have no legal cover?
Boxturtle (Be still, my heart!)
In the Scalia interview, he said that “cruel and unusual punishment” has nothing to do with “torture”, because torture is not punishment. Ummm….so waterboarding you because you aren’t cooperating isn’t “punishment”…it isn’t punishing you for not cooperating in an interrogation? WTF is he talking about….
SCOTUS says it’s American soil, so legally, it’s American soil.
And in the Decision SCOTUS essentially said that because it is American soil, the constitution actually applies.
Hi LHP, and Thank You for this post.
Gonna repeat something EPU’d downstairs. Just as relevant here & still haven’t simmered down from my current hissy-fit at gummint… Wrote this [below] to our Sen. Voinovichy this morn. Useless. Sick. *sniffle*
Scalia is a third rate mind inhabiting a lawyer’s body. Basically, he has his ideology and tortures the reasoning and the law to fit it.
When was Qatami tortured…pre-Yoo memo or after?
I just started reading “Shock Doctrine.” The first thing Klein talks about is mind control experiments using sensory deprivation and mind altering drugs. Now this?
I’m gonna be sick.
Not very bloody likely, given this administration’s tendency towards destroying evidence.
Lame “definition-of-’IS’”ness parsing. What we have documentably done violated Geneva, period.
YEP, further, if we can prove that the people who “relied” upon the memos knews that the memos were after the fact for other indentical uses of a given method, they probably won’t have much cover either.
I’m not talking about the interrogators on the ground so much as those above them in the chain of command. I’m talking Bush, Cheney, Addington, Rummy, Condi, their various general counsels. That level. If the memo is after the fact, they could be in deep deep fertilizer
That’s a very apt comparison of Yoo to doctors like Mengele, and is a reminder that doctors, too, were torture personnel along with him.
This is fucking intolerable. When the hell does impeachment get back on the table?
Is there anyway to know whether Yoo’s first memo was backdated?
Wouldn’t that mean he admitted, in print, to obstruction of justice?
For continuing in-depth coverage of torture, ondelette provides much insight at humanityagainstcrimes.blogspot.com
heh.
has anyone ever pondered how that humungous ego fits in that brain pan?
often suspected the skull as solid bone, thru & thru.
Shock Doctrine was so upsetting I had to ration how many pages I read in a single sitting, otherwise I would just cry.
I’m not sure that is what SCOTUS said. It is just factually incorrect. I think what they said and feel free to correct me is that the Executive Branch could not create a legal space outside the purview of the federal courts.
testimony, computer forensics
That’s how the Gov’t caught Computer Associates backdating contracts
It will not be back on the table. Sadly.
LHP, thanks for another excellent post in your series on the human rights crimes that Bush, Cheney, and Yoo have brought upon our nation.
Along with the attorneys and govenment officials who brought this about, the collborating health care professionals – especially the physicians and psychiatrists – are equally culpable, and equally depraved.
As Nuremberg teaches, “following orders” is no excuse. May none who are complicit in these crimes ever be free of the threat of prosecution should they step off American soil.
And you are dead right about the use of involuntary drugs on American soil. Jose Padilla’s legal team submitted a motion (? not sure if that is the proper legal term) describing use of psychotropic meds when he was in the Naval Brig on the continental US.
Thanks for illuminating this sordid chapter of the Bush Reich – and of our nation’s history.
Dear Teacher,
Please excuse the entire Bush Administration. They were ethically sick.
If congress is the check to balance an insane executive, could there be a more demonstrative example of Nancy Pelosi’s irresponsible statement upon taking her position as Speaker of the House, “Impeachment is off the table?”
When, in recent history, has impeachment EVER been more called for. It makes me sad, too. So very sad that the first woman Speaker could be such a worthless bureaucrat when these circumstances really required so much more.
I guess, on the plus side, gender is obviously not an issue because the congress has been sorely lacking in leadership from any quarter.
Yes, it is just too sad.
Seems to me a legal opinion is just that an opinion. It can not be considered the law until it is made into one.
“We recently learned that White House officials at the highest ranks toured Gitmo and personally observed detainees being questioned using the ‘enhanced interrogation techniques.’ “
This is Evil. Disgusting, vile, beyond contempt. I most sincerely pray that the Wrath of God fall upon these evil, evil people.
I don’t even know what country I’m living in any more. It isn’t the one I was born in, that’s for damned sure.
“were”?
Remember the 60 Minutes episode with Castro? He had a drawer full of uncashed US Federal Government checks that were rental payments for Guantanamo.
You and I are on the same page. My Dad left a leg behind in WWII Europe in 1944 for THIS?
Scalia’s point was: one big middle finger for all of you that don’t like it. My paraphrasing of his interview: “Everything I say is Gospel and everyone that disagrees is wrong. Torture is fine because it was the ‘great’ President I selected that did it. Any judge ho disagrees with me on any subject is an ‘activist judge’ (euphemism for Democrat or liberal). I can give the Constitution any interpretation I like because I am always right.”
and so on with the same BS. Clearly a lot of cases where Scalia’s decision went against the intent of the framers of the Constitution we off-limits to CBS (e.g. Lawrence v. Texas where, responding to a falsely reported – actually fabricated – weapons disturbance in a private residence, Houston police entered petitioner Lawrence’s apartment and saw him and another adult man, petitioner Garner, engaging in a private, consensual sexual act. Of course Scalia railed on about the decision, but refured to talk about the 4th Ammendment where: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. No in that case the intent of the framers is not important, only the condemnation of homosexuals.)
The Hopi people believe strongly that if you do something wrong that you will pay for it, that it will effect those close to you. Having been on the Rez for 16 years I rather believe that.
you’re talking about a “person” who gets his jollies from participating in canned hunts. i marvel that they even bother to uncage the birds.
The own/rent analysis has not been really used in international law to determine sovereign soil issues. Some embassies are on rented land, yet universally recognized to be the sovereign soil of the country which sends the Ambassador.
Also, the “rent” thingy is often just a face saving fig leaf. The WH was arguing your position and saying that therefore the Consitution and laws of the US did not apply (I’m oversimplifying). SCOTUS did not agree though it did engage in dicta about differnt types of US held territory. For example the green zone is occupied and controlled by the US, but we make no claim to it and specifically say we want to give it back.
We don’t pay rent for it. Yet, at the moment we control it. SCOTUS was making those kinds of distinctions in the dicta to their holding.
“Anthony” (as Bu’ush once called him) Scalia, Jurisprudential Legend-In-His-Own-Mind.
Do we know exactly what date Yoo became “involved”? Do we know who might have been tortured earlier? Names? Anything in Afghanistan right after 9/11? What about all those people that were seized in Detroit right after 9/11…I seem to remember that thousands of Muslims were rounded up and disappeared…shop owners, etc. I don’t know what happened to that story. I’ll bet anything that someone got the “treatment”…I wonder if there are any suppressed stories from any that were released…if they were, in fact, released.
Vafunculo, Tony.
I’m wondering why Scalia is all over the place right now…the sixty minutes interview and today a little lecture and Q&A with high school students…Hmmmm. Something must be up. Maybe he wants to be McCain’s VP…
Errol Morris is on wnyc.org talking about his film about what really went on at Abu Ghraib, “Standard Operating Procedure.” He characterizes it as a gulag, a concentration camp.
You’re asking for a timeline there, Missy? It will take me weeks to do. But I could give it a try. Golly, i need a research asistant, I am so NOT a google goddess.
You should see EW or PW, ask the breeziest little rhetorical question to one of them in an email, and whommmft, 5 links come back to you in under a minute. I am so envious of that skill. I am a very slow reseacher.
Maybe they snuck off base and gathered some Cuban soil to spread around the rooms. I’m sure Bush would believe that’s not on ‘Mercan soil anymore.
Just attention-seeking behavior, perhaps. The one thing of which Fat Tony has a greater abundance than contempt for the rule of law is ego.
1,826 DAYZ AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…
Citizen looseheadprop and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:
“My nausea has returned.”
Oh bless yer heart looseheadprop, I feel yer pain but this can not be a surprise to you. What did you expect once we knew that torture had been sanctioned at the highest levels and that our country had forsaken our own troops with the abrogation of the Geneva conventions? We have been whistlin’ past the graveyard for 7 years, arguin’ about how we get rid of a lawless pimple when the fascist cancer has taken our heart.
KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, THERE IS NO MIDDLE GROUND!!
Our system is broken, our life as Americans as we knew it is comin’ to an end and the folks who brought us all a this are still pullin’ our strings and we are runnin’ around pullin’ our hair out and arguin’ about how we get back somethin that has been dead and gone for some time.
We have all the evidence that we need to impeach Cheney and Bush in that order and then fight out the election over the body of the fascist oligarchy. If we don’t…and if we nominate a fascist Democrat to run against the fascist Republican, our arguments over what happened will be continued in the gulags of our own cities.
Can’t be. They would have to replace him. I don’t think that the dems would confirm another neoconjob before the election.
oh wait……
I’m wondering why Scalia is all over the place right now
bookwhoring
Isn’t all torture used as punishment? Isn’t its purpose primarily to punish the recipient and intimidate his allies?
The sign in the picture doesn’t quite say it.
Torture isn’t wrong. Torture is evil.
:~)
Yep. Exactly.
If lovin’ you is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.
It’s both wrong and evil. And sick and depraved. Which is why every civilized country on Earth avoids it.
1,826 DAYZ AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…
Firepup Freedom Fighters:
America is a terrorist state…repeat after me: “My country has been stolen and my history has been contaminated and if WE don’t change it right now we are all guilty and deserve what we get from the rest of the world”
KEEP THE FAITH, THE CHOICE HAS BEEN MADE FOR US!!
Well it looks like the good old days of Ed Meese are back:
What a fucking disingenuous asshole Meese was. He’d fit right in with this crew.
Ahhhh…Mickey Meese! Yeah. That assclown.
And we complained about Clinton’s “It depends on what the meaning of “is” is!” This statement of Scalia depends on what the meaning of “punishment” is. Apparently, he thinks the cops or soldiers or interrogators can do anything to anyone as long as it’s before they get convicted of anything. How twisted is that! Didn’t I read somewhere that Yoo’s memo allowed interrogators to threaten to crush the gonads of a detainee’s young son if he doesn’t divulge something? Or was that just a bad nightmare?
Yep – on both counts. In Latin America, the widespread knowledge that oppressive regimes used torture served as a “force multiplier’ to suppress public dissent.
I can’t find the reference here: may have been Penny Lernoux’s great book Cry of the People or one of Robert Jay Lifton, M.D.’s works.
In any event, the torture techniques used throughout Latin America when the US fought for the megacorps against popular rule were systematically taught at the School of the Americas – our military’s finishing school for future dictators (and the torturers and assasins upon which they relied).
That’s yet another reason I so appreciate lhp’s series – torture affects not just the victim (and the torturers), but the whole society. Need to root out the whole thing wherever it springs up, lest fear become another weapon for the rulers.
Blowback from the School of the Assassins – on a US miltiary base near
youYoo?Here’s something…
http://www.metrotimes.com/edit…..sp?id=2734
“Attorney General Ashcroft refuses to provide the names of detainees rounded up as part of a nationwide dragnet. Incredibly, he refuses to do so because he claims to be concerned about their rights to privacy. As if there could be a greater violation of a person’s privacy than to be locked inside a jail cell.
Just how many people — mostly Arabs and Muslims, mostly men — have been nabbed in the crackdown since Sept. 11 remains unclear.
The Justice Department, according to the most recent reports, says that some 550 of the 1,100 or so apprehended remain in custody. Most have been charged with minor immigration violations. No more than 10 have been held as material witnesses suspected of having firsthand knowledge of the terrorists attacks.
But lawyers familiar with the dragnet tell Metro Times that the Justice Department’s 550 figure is deceptive because it represents only those in federal custody. An untold number are also being held by state and local authorities. Part of the reason the number remains untold is that the Justice Department refuses to address Freedom of Information Act requests filed by a broad coalition of groups trying to determine exactly who is being held and why.
“What’s being done is totally without logic,” says Detroit criminal attorney Bill Swor, a member of Michigan’s Arab-American Bar Association. “These people are not being held because they pose any real danger, or because the government is afraid they are going to run away. What we’re seeing is the raw exercise of power, not the administration of justice.”
As a board member of the Arab-American group ACCESS, Swor is involved in coordinating the defense of about two dozen detainees, and personally represents at least three of the people in custody.”
“evil” describes actions that are sick and depraved and (implicitly) wrong. Just because an action is wrong, though, doesn’t mean it is evil.
Gotta get in the car for a little bit. am bringing laptop with me, will be back before the end of the thread.
I thought Scalia said that waterboarding wasn’t punishment because it occurred prior to conviction & punishment follows conviction. So by that logic, it’s OK to torture a suspect, but not OK to torture a convict.
Congratulations, Adie, for your excellent letter! Can I use it for Kyl? Or McCain?
“And we complained about Clinton’s “It depends on what the meaning of “is” is!” This statement of Scalia depends on what the meaning of “punishment” is. Apparently, he thinks the cops or soldiers or interrogators can do anything to anyone as long as it’s before they get convicted of anything. “
_____________
That is indeed the gist of his observation. Torturing convicts as “punishment” is illegal in his view, whereas abusing suspects in the very same manner to get allegedly critical information is not “torture.”
per -
http://emptywheel-torture-tape-timeline
August 1, 2002: “Bybee Memo” (written by John Yoo) describes torture as that which is equivalent to :the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.”
Yup! Brass knuckles in the cop shop.
Excuse ME? This man must have a very twisted sense of punishment. What does he consider what they are doing if it’s prior to a conviction – discipline?
Original intent or in other words the Constitution as interpreted by ouija board. It’s so much hocus pocus that like intelligent design is not used to prove a point but avoid having to do so.
“Administrative methods of investigation”
*splorf* That’s a new keyboard you owe me, Dr. Pepper NEVER cleans up.
Boxturtle (Especially when blown through your nose)
Is that really the kind of logic we want in a justice of SCOTUS? He’s a head in the sand asshat.
Yeah..but IOKIYAR, huh?
Prior to conviction=interrogation. I’m not defending Scalia, just repeating what I thought he said.
Yeah, but this government, or administration has been known to destroy hard drives and backups, or have them wiped seven times, which cleans the evidence away. This is as thoroughly corrupt as I’ve ever seen! No, I take that back…it’s more thoroughly corrupt than I’ve ever seen! In fact, this administration is the definition of corruption.
You don’t need to go as far as GITMO to find the issue of illegal and involuntary administration of drugs to captives who face no charges. Those allegations have surfaced in connection with the South Carolina brig (and all the records that went missing and were destroyed, presumably after Comey’s ‘investigation’ that preceded his press conference), which housed both al-Marri and Padilla. Padilla’s lawyers tried fairly hard to get access to that information and made the charges, all to yawns from what now passes for the American judicial system.
Think about what Padilla, and even cases like Fitzgerald’s Salah case and the many other “terrorism” cases, have all now created as the new paradigms. Govt torture of people for days, weeks, months, years – irrelevant to defenses against charges. Coerced statements, testified to only by men in hoods working for entities who are acknowledged to routinely engage in torture – fine for evidence.
And all the “lawyers” for the government who very likely have direct knowledge and who are actively and continuously involved in making sure that the things they know remain out of the reach of defense counsel and the courts – all helping, by active participation in advice to destroy or equally and more prevalently by sitting silent, in contempt of their duties to the court and to law, and allowing spoliation and obstruction to result from their knowing and elective silence – all the “lawyers” in so many agencies and departments but most especially in DOJ, all forever changing what law means in this country. All in the huddle, stacking hand upon hand, and guaranteeing as they break, with a collective grunt, that there is no surer path to being able to commit depravity without consequence than to put prosecutors in your pocket with politics.
Seriously evil acts and omissions, accompanied by ivy league degrees, starched collars, 50s hair cuts and the whitenoise platitudes of being the “good guys” and “doing the right thing.”
**********
**********
**********
Prior to conviction = bill of attainder. Just repeating what I think the Constitution said.
Yeah, but just to show how warped his thinking is, if I “interrogated” my teenager that way about where she was yesterday, I’d be in jail tomorrow. Why is it any different for CIA interrogations?
WOW. Some of the usual suspects on CSPAN’s live broadcast of a Hudon Institute panel: Dan Senor & Doug Feith.
Well, LOL, that’s what Scalia essentially means. Similar to the Supremes’ dominant riff on suspicionless drug testing. “Administrative exceptions” to the 4th Amendment probable cause & warrants thingy, i.e., given that a positive drug test doesn’t get you arrested — notwithstanding it being “evidence” of criminal behavior — it’s merely “administrative” (e.g., you just “administratively” get summarily fired or throw off the team, etc).
Neat-o.
Brown people from other countries.
Well said.
A general comment about the Voinovitch letter above: That won’t work with him.
See, GVV is as honest as the day is long and is what might be politely described as a “Bureaucratic wonk”. He pays attention to the details of how government runs, where it might break, and how it could be done better. He’s no leader, he’s no scientist, and he’s no Doctor.
You talk about global warming, that’s not on his radar. If you wrote about how global warming would effect the functioning of government, he’d listen.
You talk about health care, but he sees no impact on how government runs as long as Government employees are properly covered.
You need to frame your arguements like the above. If you do, he’ll pay attention because he actually LOVES that sort of stuff.
Boxturtle (George Carlin could get laughs reading a phone book. George Voinovitch could put an insominiac to sleep with the Gettysburg address)
Scalia is a disgusting little sadist. Whatever he may know about the law, and however brilliant he may be, he is still as sadistic, selfish and downright mean as Little Georgie. A pox on him and his house.
Thanks. Well…I just bet a whole bunch of people were tortured between 9/11 and August 2002…Just need to find out who, where, and how. Because the Administration could not have relied on the Yoo memo during that year, and it sure does look like it was written to cover up for torture. There is no way that the Admin, would have waited until they had an opinion “before” they would start it. No way.
Our government, OUR government has now tortured people on American soil. If this is even remotely true, then it IS undeniable the the “terrorist have won.” For now terrorists hold the reins of power of the Executive and Judicial branches of our government.
If terror is the use of force (or even the threat thereof) to control and/or intimidate, then these monsters, Bush, Cheney, Scalia, and Yoo, are terrorists.
I am utterly horrified by what they’ve done, in my name, to our country.
No, eCAHN, I understand — he’s picking his words very carefully. Today, it’s interrogation…tomorrow, it just might be punishment. On the other hand…I think torture is just..torture. If you do it today, it’s torture; if you do it tomorrow, it’s torture.
Cheney said openly at the outset post- 9/11 they would “have to go to the Dark Side.”
Considering what Lincoln Chaffee said in his book about his first lunch after the 2000 election with the new VP, I suspect that the whole bunch of them were over at the dark side already…
Dear egregious,
Sorry, but the entire Bush administration is not excused. They will have to stay late for detention.
ITMFA
Since the Bush administration started dismantling everything the country once stood for the comparisons of administration officials and Nazi officials become almost a merger of personalities. Cheney would have made a great Goering, Condi a great von Ribbentrop, Yoo and Mengele, the list is endless. These people, as well as the leadership of the Likud party, seem to have spent a great deal of their lives studying the methods of the most evil people of the 20th century. Bush, however, can only be described as a simpleton hanger-on, used by the more ideological of the bunch.
If impeachmentment is off the table, then the least we can settle for is a clear and concise opinion of these actions from all the candidates. I don’t want any vague mumbo-jumbo. I don’t want to hear that they will evaluate situation such as Obama has stated. (Bush and company managed to find someone to say it wasn’t unconstitutional). I want them to stand before the American public and denounce all these KGB tactics that too many in this country are now glorifying.
Double WOW. Wolfie’s also on CSPAN.
We can only hope that detention is at The Hague.
Padilla was apprehended May 8, 2002. Bybee memo…August, 2002. Padilla was tortured. Mukasey was involved in Padilla trial and is now AG….
dot..dot..dot…
as a buddhist i aspire to the lessening of all human suffering.
i aspire to practice “lovingkindness” with all sentient beings.
to have our taxes pay for the machinations of human torture in the name of our country and practiced by our government’s employees/agents fills with rage that
sorely defies my commitment to non-violence.
at very least, my thoughts of just retribution defies it.
“crimes against humanity.”
may we please convene the cheneyBu$hco war cimes trials at the Shrub Pres. Libarry?
i’ll live blog it!
(venting here always relieves my rage level:
all of y’all are part of my rage management system.
i thank you every one,
for helping me be a better buddhist.)
om ah ra pa tsa na dhi
Agreed. Just that Cheney made that statement in an interview post- 9/11.
Me too.
There isn’t a country on the planet that would drag any of them to the Hague. American outrage would be so great that we would tear the world to shreds over it. I like the idea of it,(since it’s apparent that we’ll never bring any of them to account) but I can’t see it ever happening.
I totally agree with your analysis, but I would like to point out that even Scalia agrees that flag-burning is a legitimate form of protest protected by the Constitution. That’s more than I can say for Hillary Clinton, who supported legislation to make flag-burning illegal. I am so utterly sick of some people cherry-picking which of the Bill of Rights they will support. No matter how clear the language, many care deeply about the right to bear arms, but are terribly glib and apathetic in regard to the right to free speech or freedom of expression or the fourth amendment rights, etc. Furthermore, the law Hillary was so anxious to support is unconstitutional on its face. She’s a lawyer; how could she miss that! Then she wonders why I won’t support her candidacy or why I mistrust her true intentions about things.
doing the right thing is off the table.
standing up for the innocent is off the table.
cleaning up the government is off the table.
The table is a folded up card table stuck way back in a dark closet.
Another after-the-fact justification, right.
“Yoo notes in his Pentagon memo that he communicated with the Criminal Division of the Justice Department and got assurances that prosecutions would not be brought.”
Who in the “criminal division” could have had enough clout to assure that prosecutions would not be brought?
Sounds like Yoo went to someone because of something that had already happened…got the assurances from that “someone” and then wrote the memo..
More dots.
Good one!
22 and related – vis a vis GITMO, what the court held was that “statutory habeas” created by 28 USC 2241 allowed US courts to exercise jurisdiction over people in the custody of the US government, even aliens held offshore, if they are held under conditions where the United States exercises “plenary and exclusive jurisdiction, but not ‘ultimate sovereignty.’”
So it was an issue of the extent of US control and at GITMO, that control was more than at, oh, say, a Syrian detention facility torturing to order random Canadians and others.
Of course, the response by Congress was for Levin to trip and skip his way over to Lindsey Graham’s office and beg to be a cosponsor to changes to 28 USC 2241, to carve out GITMO as a place where 2241 did not confer any habeas rights – the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA). There was then the issue of whether or not Levin/Graham legislation (DTA) was meant to apply to the existing cases, already in the courts under 2241, or just any future cases. Levin looke around nervously, decided he could dance on the head of a pin and claim he only wanted to disappear strangers into long term abuse in the FUTURE and not really pull existing cases out of the courts, while Graham had the Senate record doctored to make it appear that there has been discussion and a decision to take statutory habeas away for existing cases
The Sup Ct then decided, in Hamdan, that the wording of the DTA was not intended to apply to existing cases and since Hamdan was an ‘existing case’ the Court did not have to reach the question of whether, even if statutory habeas was taken away, there was a separate Constitutional habeas that applied to currently unfiled cases.
So then someone in the administration got serious and involved much better drafter and came up with the Military commissions Act (MCA) which a) says more clearly that existing cases lose habeas rights under 2241 and b) GITMO will not be a carve out because instead (and to cover all the blacksites) the whole WORLD is a 2241 carve out for habeas rights for those ‘unlawful’ enemy combatants, which include people like Chiquita executives who provide material support to terrorists. Except, of course, that with a thoroughly corrupt DOJ and a JAG getting chokedown by their civilian chain of command, only Chinese refugees and bipolar London chefs will get the “strip em and stack em and lock em in a living grave for years” treatment. Companies that dutifully make contributions to the Republican party and hire the Republican corrupt prosecutors and pay them well – they will be pretty much exempt from ever having to worry about anything.
I think Toby Keith is writing the theme song for it all right now.
Torture is reverting to caveman behavior! Turn back the hands of time; torture someone today!
I can’t believe that anyone one can write a memo and it’s a legal justification to over ride the Constitution! Can’t we get an actual court ruling on memo writing! I’m no lawyer but it seems that this is a decision for the courts, not the administration.
1,826 DAYZ AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…
Citizen mmc9431:
“American outrage would be so great that we would tear the world apart over it.”
Sorry Citizen mmc, but our “world tearin’” days are long over…we can create mass death, suffering, famine and economic collapse but we can’t rule the world anymore. That’s what our domestic problems from the collapse of our economy, healthcare, education and military are all about…we are a third rate terror state and if we don’t do somethin about it right now BEFORE November, then we’re ALL of us guilty and the world will jest quarantine us and let us rot.
KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, THE TRUTH WILL NOT LET US GO!!!
So disheartening. So disgraceful. So not the America that I knew.
heh.
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpoi…..her_fo.php
Exactly. I was thinking in terms of our government being the ones to turn these criminals over to the International Criminal Court. I think that is a necessary first step toward returning to civilization.
Join the Longshoremen on May Day.
http://firedoglake.com/2008/04…..-and-gaza/
I was not defending the action, just expressing an opinion. We do have the power to tear the world apart. Look at what we’re doing in the Middle East. I certainly agree with you that it’s anything but a positive! When a nation spends 42% of it’s money on bullets and 3% on books one shouldn’t look for logic.
So you’re saying that if you approach him from the standpoint of the fact that he’s not accomplishing protection of the citizens he’s charged with protecting by not accommodating climate change and rolling the problems of climate change into his thinking, that would work?
That’s what I thought he said, too.
The Yoo memo and the Bushies’ eagerness (”stiffies”) for torture it was written to serve is an execrable point on a long, depraved trajectory.
Looking back to 1997, the MSM were shocked and outraged when Humboldt County Sheriff Deputies tortured non-violent forest protectors (locked to one another in a Congressman’s Eureka, CA) office.
In the aftermath of that event, I spoke with the head of USFS Law Enforcement (he had come over to USFS from a high position in the Secret Service). He and I agreed the Humboldt Deputies’ actions were deplorable – and that even depriving tree sitters of water was a violation of human rights. Torture was unthinkable.
Now the culture of law enforcement in the US – and our popular culture – has become inured to the use of chemical weapons and electric shock torture devices simply for crowd control, as well as to silence voluble detainees.
And when I ran across a USFS LEO in Grants Pass, OR (shopping in the organic food market in uniform) in August 2005 and confronted him about cutting lines to tree-sitters’ horizontal platforms (turning the platforms vertical – certain death for any tree-sitter not securely tied in) – he told me (in the presence of a witness) that this potentially homicidal act was justified because “the protesters were breaking the law”.
{this was in reference to “Biscuit” timber sale tree-sitters, but it has now become a common practice for USFS law enforcement and the private security forces employed by timber megacorps}
I wonder how many decades America will have to work to undo the perversion of cultural values (in law, medicine, law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, and the society at large) our “leaders” in politics, media, academia, military, and law enforcement brought upon us after 9/11.
Oh – that electric shock torture device? We’ve become desensitized to what it truly is.
In the US, they even come accessorized for civilians.
The newspeak term is “Taser”.
From An Appraisal of Technologies For Political Control – prepared for the European Parliament’s Directorate General for Research, Directorate B: The STOA Programme
The date? – January 6 1998. If it were a person, it would be in fourth grade.
Born almost a decade before Tasers were packaged in designer colors for American housewives.
How did so many Americans so eagerly become the Good Germans my father’s generation defeated? How did so many Americans – especially in the professions – embrace the the depraved culture of collaboration in war crimes I was brought up to despise?
Gitmo, Abu Gharab, Bagram, Diego Garcia, and one (or more) Naval Brig(s) are part of the rest of that spectrum.
What is today concealed in the “ultra-violet” range?
What is happening – or being planned – that we don’t yet know of?
And what must we do to stop it?
Blue Texan has a fine new post about McCain’s desire to kick Russia out of the G* and Reboot the Cold War.
When was Padilla moved to the brig though? I don’t think anyone has alleged (correct me if I am wrong) that Padilla was tortured or given drugs when he was in a Bureau of Prisons pre-trial detetnion.
the Allegations of drug injections were when he was in the brig, IIRC.
It was Chertoff. At the time he was Chief of the Criminal Division
1,826 DAYZ AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…
Citizen JimWhite:
I agree with you that our new government must turn these bastards over next year but that is jest a poetic, symbolic gesture of contrition…our atonement will be much costlier and take a lot longer and require a lot more domestic criminal prosecutions than we can even imagine.
What has struck me, however, this mornin’ in all the conversations secondary to the postings is the denial of the fundamental truth of all of these problems that we are steadfastly avoiding: we have lost our democracy, our economic power, the war in Iraq and our sovereignty.
We need to change some fundamental mechanisms of economics and politics or we will never even be able to imagine the “American Dream” let alone strive for it. We are at this moment a failed state but we don’t know it…and if we run a fascist Democrat against the fascist Republican for president, then we can truly kiss it all goodbye.
KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, THE TRUTH WON’T GO AWAY IF WE HIDE FROM IT!!
“Yoo notes in his Pentagon memo that he communicated with the Criminal Division of the Justice Department and got assurances that prosecutions would not be brought.”
From 2001 to 2003, he headed the criminal division of the Department of Justice, leading the prosecution’s case against terrorist suspect Zacarias Moussaoui….
Bada bing, bada boom…
Michael Chertoff
Please! Be my guest. Just be aware it’s a rant, not expected to “work”. I doubt any of these -um- people, or the people they hire to read for them, ever bother to read all the way thru, much less think about issues in the way we wish they would.
I used to be more reasonable in my approach to Voinovichy, but it’s hopeless. He needs to retire and make room for a real congresscritter who will do something more than whine occasionally.
Also, please don’t repeat the last sentence – the one referring to a typo. Obviously that wouldn’t apply to your guys and besides, it was a knowing and game-killing snide swat upside that hollow thang on his shoulders.
Oh sigh. SO. ANGRY!!!!!!!
Yes Yes Yes. Pester the daylights out of these useless pawns!
And Thank You.
general info
in the face of current CIA spin that it doesn’t have a codified
tortureinterrogation guide/protocols -Democracy Now interviewed author of
this book
My sentiments exactly. When impoverished all you may have to give your kids is priniciples to live by. When Bushco stole that…well it is like the difference between soil and dirt. Soil is what we live on, principals are what we live by. We are as a nation morally bankrupt.
Hmmmm…and when did they allege that Moussaoui was tortured? Could that have been prior to the Bybee memo? Could that be why Yoo might have conferred with Chertoff…he’d be the only one in that division then who could have authorized that there would be no prosecution of anyone who might have tortured, because after all he was running the Moussaoui trial…does that make sense?
They misunderstood. They thought they were supposed to fill the division up with criminals.
lol
So then…it sure sounds like maybe Chertoff helped obstruct justice by assuring there wouldn’t be any…
Arrest these people…
LHP – just to get the nomenclature correct, this “involuntary” administration of drugs has another, more precise, reference term.
Human experimentation.
After CIA ventures into the unwitting use of human guinea pigs (and the death of Frank Olsen) some Presidents reined in the intelligence community’s ability to engage in Mengelesque experimentation.
Ford, Carter and Reagan all had prohibitions on human experimentation (Regan’s order 1233: http://www.tscm.com/EO12333.html )
These prohibitions stemmed pretty expressly from the involuntary drug administrations of the past, but with the “detainee programs” you can see experimentation going on in many ways, but with a frat boy pretense at science. The “hey, let’s see what happens when we stuff firecrackers in a frog and set them off” men, handed over humans to abuse in the name of “discovery” instead. And all the lawyers at DOJ, the AGs, the DAGS, the OLC, the detainee anti-habeas cadres, etc. – all sitting there with slack jawed grins, watching the viscera of this nation’s justice system exploding in colo for their entertainment.
Who needs armband when they have the prosecutorial wing of the nation recruited and salivating to get a seat in the torture sponsors sky box. To be “important” enough to have impunity for assisting in the disappearance, torture and deaths of people who were purchased in human trafficking transactions. The real human experiment was in how easily the ‘prosecutors’ became self righteous criminals, rolling in their power to prop up torture the way a city dog will proudly roll in cow pies.
EW has gone through the “pixie dust” approach of the Bush whitehouse to existing EOs, but even those who clamored right after 911 for Bush to repeal the assassination provisions of 12333 never went so far as to ask for a Mengele carve out.
Except, of course, those at DOJ. The point at which anyone with any decency could work for the department in charge of “legally” disappearing, torturing and ultimately having some die from their torture passed a few years back. I never expected to ever see so many lawyers so horribly and casually collecting paychecks for making torture mainstream.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/2/10/144951/723
Reluctantly, I agree. But not as individuals. Our 2 [grown] ‘kids’, and many others out there who will inherit this wretched mess, are fine, tough, upstanding folk who refuse to go along with the ‘evildoing’ for want of a better term. They inform themselves. They show remarkable compassion for others accompanied by high standards for themselves. They talk up activism. They vote. They are facing the future with considerable courage. They give us hope.
Principles, compassion, and a healthy dose of STUBBORN. It’s a good thing.
;->
As Isaac Asimov said:
Totally OT, but a little ray of sunshine here.
“Our” pair of Rose-breasted Grosbeaks just arrived safely this afternoon after their long trek from Central America. They’re chowing down on oil sunflower seed just now, and then will start scouting homesites in the yard.
118 – the drug allegations while he was at the So Car brig – but that is much more US soil than GITMO and with a US citizen to boot. And while at the So Car brig, Padilla was repeatedly being questioned by FBI. Then DOJ, per Comey, spearheaded a “joint” investigation of military and CIA and other intel and FBI, Justice, etc. to generate the lovely Press conference on Why Padilla Is A Dirty Bomber (pssst, Sup Ct, are you listening?) Nifong would have blushed, but not so much Comey.
And Comey was specifically asked about the conditions at So Car while the FBI was doing all its questioning – and he smilingly gave it all the big thumbs up. Very likely, IMO, with the Pentagon review sitting on his desk (esp since he got very cagey and dodgy and suddenly referentil to Rumsfeld when the question of the Geneva Conventions and the So Car brig came up)
129 – that floating link at the bottom of 129 was to one of the many excellent pieces by Valtin at dkos on the participation and support of doctors and pyschologists in the torture/human experimentation programs.
That particular one a comparison and contrast of two positions of psychologists about “the program”
You decided that? The US Constitution says differently so you are wrong. Read US vs Bush. It took two months to do President Clinton’s Impeachment.
Impeachment is the only method of holding Bushco accouintable for a long list of broken laws and fraud like the spinup to the Iraq war.
Bobby G if you give up on Impeachment Bushco skates and opens the door to future Presidential criminal activity as “Executive priveledge” is a firewall to prosecution.
The next Government will have an agenda with a lot of lobby money, more than ever before seen, to block any prosecution. It is now or never. Take a cold shower brew up some strong coffee and sit down with pen and paper and draw the flow chart for post facto Bushco prosecution. That is what will not happen. Saying differently is obfuscating.
121 – I think Chertoff is very cagey and for “follow the trail” purposes it is probably worth noting that the trip to GITMO to revel in watching “their” vanquished be tortured involved a DOJ crim lawyer, but not Chertoff.
Not that I think there is any question of his knowledge, but just that unlike Yoo and Addington, he had a proxy fill his seat at the torture table in GITMO. IIRC at least – and I may not be remembering correctly.
Thank you for your illuminating comments, Mary. They certainly help us non-lawyers, non-pros to understand better.
Your comment about “cagey”, and sending a surrogate, I suspect, hit the nail on the head. These people seem to glory in twisting and tweaking the language just so, lying through their teeth in spirit, while smugly fudging the truth with little qualifier words and the like. Like a hyena rolling in $@&%.
125 -
I don’t think they did. They alleged IIRC that Zubaydah and KSM were tortured and tht both of those could be exculpatory witnesses for Moussaoui vis a vis his knowledge of the 911 plan – if non-tortured testimony could be obtained. The Circuit court repeatedly overrode the trial judge’s efforts to give defense counsel access to Z and KSM and to evidence related to their questioning by the US in detention. Still, the judge did have some orders out requiring DOJ (which doesn’t believe in judges anymore – just actors sitting up in a chair whose “orders” can be laughed at and treated with disdain and contempt bc there are not non-corrupt prosecutors to prosecute the violation of those orders) to provide info and protect evidence, which is why the lies in the DOJ affidavits to the court, the failures to produce and the DOJ failure to prevent the destruction of the waterboarding tapes has all become an issue in the Moussaoui case.
There has never been, to my knowledge, such massive DOJ participation in and cover up for destruction of evidence, false statements to the courts and obstruction of justice. It truly and forever has and will change the landscape of “law” in this nation.
And there aren’t any heroes among the lawyers at DOJ. There are some among the military lawyers, and the non-lawyer ranks of DOJ such as Dan Coleman. But the lawyers at DOJ? The only thing I’ve seen that really smacks of any baseline integrity is David Kris’ post-DOJ participation in the illegal surveillance discussions. There my be other and better and more examples – but I can’t think of any.
The crew who went to visit their torture chamber:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15361462/page/2/
I think I conflated Wray, who became head of Criminal division, with being in Crim at the time of the visit. So if Chertoff gave the “ok” he managed to keep completely away from the footprints.
non-sequitor – why Larry Thompson gets such a bye on so many fronts is beyond me.
The 2000 Presidential election was a “coup de grace”. The Neocans usurped our governnment. You people just don’t get IT. “We” don’t have a government. They have our government. They do not agree to abide by “our” laws or Consititution. They do not believe in it.
“We The People: under the Constitutiion do not exist. We are serfs for corporate Amerca. Paraguay let that happen, the corporation now owns them.
I just don’t understand why you do not get it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! All of you except maybe the NorskeFlamethrower and a few need to know YOU don’t have a government…THEY have your government…They own the podium…They could give a rats ass what we think, post or opine or whine. WE THE PEOPLE are marginalized.
Impeachment is the only solution. This is what happened to the Jews in Germamny. It is the same just be nicey nicey and the bad dream will go away.
The Bad Dream is reality and it is growing worse every day!!!
Bombing Iran is next…the runup spin is in PROGRESS. And YOUR representatives have been bought by K street.
EFery one of us should be calling all day every day for the Impeachment hearings or let the clock run out which is what Bushco is relying on.
There is nothing that prevents impeachment of Bush, Cheyney, et al. after they’ve left office. This would prevent them from ever again holding public offices of the US and would also allow the prosecution of Bush for any crimes he may have committed while he was in office.
You misunderstand LS. Chertoff was chief of the criminal Division at DOJ at the time that Yoo got assurances from DOJ that turtoring interrogators would not be prosecuted.
She is not suggesting htat Chertoff went to Gitmo to watch. She is pointing out that Chertoff seems to have colluded with Yoo.
I think there was more than one torture tour.
Goldsmith, in his book ‘The Terror Presidency” says that Addington, Philbin, Rizzo, Haynes, Alice Fisher, Goldsmith, along with several Pentagon lawyers went to Guantanemo, to the military brig in Charleston (Padilla), and Norfolk (Hamdi), on September 26, 2002. pages 99-101