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GW law Professor Jonathan Turley has been saying for a while now that President Obama would have only a short period of time to initiate investigations for war crimes before Obama himself became complicit, essentially as an accessory after the fact, for failure to uphold the rule of law.
President Obama, up until now, seems to have taken the position–or floated a trial balloon– along the lines of "going forward, we don’t torture". This position appears to posit the notion that as long as it didn’t happen on his watch, he cannot be held accountable for it–kind of like the nation got a baptism when he became president, and all of our past sins were somehow magically washed away.
Whether you agree with President Obama’s "not on my watch" approach or not, one thing was crystal clear; the Commander in Chief issued a clear direct order not to engage in torture.
Well, I have some bad news for the president. According to Reuters, some members of the army and navy have disobeyed that direct order.
Abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has worsened sharply since President Barack Obama took office as prison guards "get their kicks in" before the camp is closed, according to a lawyer who represents detainees.
Abuses began to pick up in December after Obama was elected, human rights lawyer Ahmed Ghappour told Reuters. He cited beatings, the dislocation of limbs, spraying of pepper spray into closed cells, applying pepper spray to toilet paper and over-forcefeeding detainees who are on hunger strike.
This puts Obama in a box. He has to act or else share Bush’s war crime fate. Further, he has to act because if he allows service members to blithely violate a direct order from the Commander in Chief, he loses civilian control of the Army. Gates should have his (metaphorical) head handed to him for allowing this happen in the face of the President’s clearly stated position.
Twenty-eighth in a series on torture and the law.
[Editor's note: The photo by takomabibelot features a banner created and designed by Firedoglake reader BonnieT of Austin, Texas, where she operates OpposeTorture.org.]
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this is very disturbing. I assume that holder’s visit is partly designed to assess and stop this.
this will be holder’s first (of many) acid test.
Um, I think the only thing that Obama cares about torture is keeping it secret and making nice sounding statements a la W. He seems to have his head up his ass in terms of how impossible that is.
I don’t see how we have a choice based on Article VI and the International Conventions Against Torture Treaty. We have laws, and they must be followed, Sen. Leahy’s commission is all very nice, but it does not satisfy our treaty obligations.
Seconded.
investigate ..indict ..convict .. there is no protected class ..
I don’t understand what Obama, Holder and others have against prosecuting war crimes. Protecting the integrity of various offices or officials? Those offices and officials didn’t have any integrity to begin with. Mr President and Mr Attorney General, the whole world is watching. Let’s see what you’re really made of.
Laws will be followed about as closely as they were during W. Obama has been completely consistent in saying that we must look forward, meaning Obama attachs the same standards to himself as he attached to W.
Well- I wouldn’t bet the farm on the say so of a defense attorney- I have noticed that sometimes they don’t tell the truth- and how would this guy know that “abuse is up”? Has he been there observing it, or is this based on the say so of his client? Also- there is a difference between “prisoner abuse” and “torture”- although neither is a good thing.
I don’t think it’s correct to take write as if this was a confirmed fact.
Leahy’s “Truth Commission” roll out is losing steam.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/g…..index.html
Deterence is a forward-looking action, pour encourger les autres.
Prosecuting crimes of past admins would limit the unitary Obama prez.
Here’s how I would evaluate lawyers’ statements in light of the little objective evidence about what is actually going on. 1. The reported abuses are specific and would be easy to check. 2. The defendents lawyers have been the only credible agent in this whole sorry mess to date. So I’d give them the benefit of the doubt until the govt issues proof to the contrary.
Anyone still thinkin’ that some secret info extraction practices could be reserved for the torturers or other Bush criminal cohorts.
No ethical president should object to operating within the law.
One has to wonder to what extent the President’s implied if unstated amnesty for torturers contributed to this. He should have made it clear from the beginning that every torturer would be punished as prescribed by the laws, military and civilian, without regard to rank, orders, or crooked legal opinions.
Your point about the implications of this apparent breakdown in military discipline is an excellent one. People forget that military regulations against murder, torture, rape, and pillage are, at most, only partially humanitarian in intent. Military history shows clearly enough that discipline is the hair-thin line between an army of soldiers that kills enemies when ordered and a howling mob that kills everyone–even each other–all the time.
What’s happening in response to Ghappour’s complaints?
Everyone needs to see Brendanx’ comment next door at Emptywheel’s. Comment #1.
My point, exactly.
Saying that prior bad acts are not worth challenging is like saying “Present” during a Congressional vote. It aids the process, takes a formal position by taking no position, and allows the underlying process to go forward unchallenged.
The consequence is to admit the “right” to torture into the legitimate pool of presidential powers. A negation of Gresham’s Law as applied to the president: the bad powers don’t drive out the good, they merely add to them, allowing them to come alive whenever the crucifix is removed from the box of Transylvanian earth.
I’d want to know a bit more about Ahmed and his clients before jumping on board this boat.
What did Holder find when he visited Gitmo? Is he still there?
Also, you must just marvel at the quality of the guards at Gitmo when they would worsen their behavior in defiance of new prez statement. Anyone who has graduated from kindergarten would think twice about defying the new boss. They don’t know whether he means it or not, or whether he’ll follow thru or not.
Linky … brendanx confronts Rumsfeld
OT Gates lifts ban on media filming returning caskets depending on family wishes.
Protecting the powers of the president at the price of not challenging officially sanctioned torture is not protecting the office of the president created and limited by the Constitution. It is violating the Constitution and that office by failing to perform its primary role: to enforce the law.
There are other sources. Recently Glenn Greenwald posted this from the Guardian:
Fine. Would you like to talk about the Uighurs? or Sabin Willett? Or that guy who was a guard who went on Rachel’s show talking about how the inmates were treated and why, not to mention what it did to his own self respect?
Would you think that the government should ignore what he’s saying?
acillary to this .. i don’t like the idea expressed .. some are willing to jump on the guards on the basis of this attorney’s unsubstantiated [?] claims ??
i’m going to stick with the troops until something more definitive is grounding these accusations ..
just sayin’…
So yesterday Nancy calls for prosecutions and the media says….nothing.
On Glenn Greenwald’s comment thread regarding Nancy’s change in stance from “impeachment is off the table” to “let’s prosecute now”, it seemed that opinion was split on her reason for the change. Some felt she sees the writing on the wall and that prosecutions can’t be stopped at this point (see Sheldon Whitehouse’s speech yesterday; he was very upset and I think he might have some very damning evidence) and others think she’s convinced they won’t happen and so now she loses nothing by endorsing them.
At any rate, if abuse is ratcheting up, Obama has an extremely narrow window to act, as you point out, before he is an accessory. We should learn much about those at the highest levels in our government over the next few weeks as this issue plays out.
And what have the Gitmo guards ever done that suggests your trust is well placed? Link please.
I acknowledge the grief and loss of these surviving family members. But these men and women are also returning service members who have died performing the duties demanded of them by their Commander-in-Chief. Respectfully viewing the return of their remains is a necessary public act. We as citizens have an obligation and duty to see the consequences of what our leaders do in our name. Blindly accepting the “benefits” of their sacrifice keeps us docile, but no less responsible.
That principal, applied in different circumstances, is why World War Two commanders in Europe made local villagers walk past the concentration camps we liberated, whose goings on they could have ignored only with great effort. It is why creative judges make lawbreakers make restitution directly to those they’ve wronged, rather than anonymously pay money or passively sit in a box as punishment.
In the end, it is the citizens’ obligation to determine whether the price paid is worth the objectives sought. We can’t do that without knowing the price. When government hides that price in order not to pay one of its own, it is up to citizens to disclose it to ourselves.
Do you honestly think they are stupid enough to do this when Holder is there to see it?
This is an expected result, as carefully documented in Darius Rejali’s book Torture And Democracy (spec. Chs.22-24). Torture, abuse, and lawlessness, once started, cannot be easily stopped by orders from above. Those implementing the regime become defensive about their tactics, tend to disregard authority, and believe they are the only ones willing to do what is necessary.
Besides, all the cultural imperatives that spawned this are still largely in place. Look at the NYTimes this morning, William Glaberson has an article about those “freed” to stay in Guantanamo. While detailing the inherent wrongs of keeping people behind barbed wire that have done nothing wrong, he still repeats the junk lines at the end, talking about how efforts to ‘re-settle’ the Uighurs have failed, 100 countries have refused to take them. Duh. We are refusing to take them, and lines within the article about keeping Americans safe just reinforce the idea that the prisoner population at the military prisons under U.S. control, be they at Guantanamo or in Afghanistan, are some species of non-human that even if innocent, are biologically predisposed to do us harm.
President Obama needs to tackle this problem before it brings down his regime. It isn’t a less important problem than the economy, something to consider unmentionable until everyone is buying at McDonald’s again. It’s rotting our national soul and poisoning our culture.
When Calley was charged and court-martialed for My Lai, there was a feeling in the military that he was a scapegoat. Not for Medina and the soldiers who did the killing but as a sop to the anti-war folks. The Vietnamese were still being dehumanized by the government in general and the military thought it was bad policy to try somebody for killing “gooks.” An extension of the “if they’re dead they’re Viet Cong” mentality.
Only traitors torture.
Seems we can’t control the violence we intended to put to good use.
Thank you for adding some thoughtfullness to this discussion; my bold. I’d have thought, as I expressed in 21, that the perps would pull back until they found out whether the new regime was serious or not. You give another perspective on their behavior.
Thanks for this post LHP. The one truly sour note of Obama’s speech the other night was when he emphatically declared that we do not torture. As you note here, that is false. Even if it were true, if Obama is so vehemently opposed to the practice, then why doesn’t he stand up for what is right and prosecute those who did? Obama is trying to walk a very very fine line here and I don’t think he will succeed no matter how much bluster and bravado he puts into it.
I am getting really pissed now at BO.
A person with an ounce of psychological understanding would anticipate the behavior of guards about to lose supreme control over their prisoners.
A normal person after taking the oath of office twice would immediately send military and civilian observers to Guano to prevent farewell abuse.
Damn, what’s wrong with people?
Hadn’t thought about it that way, but it makes more sense than Calley was a scapegoat for the military. Thanks.
Hello? December is technically before Obama issued any orders qua commander in chief. Let me know whether the torture continued *after January 20th*. It was inevitable that Bush’s people were going to continue bush’s policies right up unti lthe end. IT happened in every other part of the administration. I hold no brief for Obama and I personally thought he should have closed guantanamo on day one as his first act in power. But what happened in December wasn’t on his watch *by definition.*
aimai
I don’t believe that! No. Wrong. I don’t want to believe that. Head up ass or down rabbit hole? Hard to tell lately, isn’t it?
And btw, you’re likely to be seeing a lot of me today here. Getting a foot of snow dumped, already in progress. If you don’t see me here, send a gallon of butter pecan ice cream, a liter of kahlua and, ummm, a snow shovel(er).
See wigwam @ 25. Some of Binyam’s injuries occurred in the weeks before he was released. Under Obama.
I like the commssion idea b/s some of these crimes have expired under the statue of limitations.
So long as the commission can refer viable cases for prosecution, I think it could serve a good purose.
What I don;’t want is another 9/11 type commsision ,nor amnesty fore those who tesify
me too.
From Darius Rejali, Torture and Democracy review, thanks to ondalette @ 33.
It all makes sense if you simply read “bipartisan” as “Faustian” every time you see it.
When one starts cutting deals with the forces of darkness, the outcome is never good.
Thanks. IANAL, but you are and your a priori assessment of credibility is important.
As long as there is no criminal investigation, proof –yeah or nay–will never be compiled.
Rejali’s book was published 11/07. There are only 3 reader reviews, all give it the highest rating. I often find the negative reviews to be the most revealing, but there aren’t any in this case.
Maybe just quid pro quo? I dwell in (choose one):
___ hope
___ possibility
___ denial
___ ostrich position
It isn’t just Gates. It’s whoever is commanding Guantanamo. These are chain of command issues and if those who are up in the chain of command aren’t handling it, they should be canned.
I would also point out that Obama has succeeded in trivializing the meaning of closing Guantanamo by simply moving many of its activities to places like Bagram.
Not that we didn’t expect that.
You fault Obama for not foreseeing this? Really? B/C I found it very surpising. I would expect Obama to feel blindsided by this.
Nonetheless, it puts him in a bind.
He has sent people down. Holder went down. DOD General Counsel went down. Hell, Frickin’ CongressmanPeter King went down
Everybody seems to be going down.
Read the article. It says that it continued afet January.
Again as a sign of serious the military is about Guantanamo, remember this:
http://www.defenselink.mil/new…..x?id=53204
See nothing to see here move along.
This, I believe is a case of mis-placed respect for the office which George W Bush shredded to rags. also, mis-placed “bi-partisanism, as tho Obama thinks that the Republicans will be more willing to work with him ( when hell freezes over!) if he doesn’t diss their dictator too much. UGH! either way UGH!
Excellent point. The crimes may be heinous, but be past the applicable statute of limitations. Manipulating those statutes was offered as a reason Republicans delayed the vote on Holder at DOJ: hold back the new broom until the dust was too old to sweep into the bin of criminal prosecutions. Some of the crimes that most need to be exposed may fall into this category, making a Commission’s investigations as vital as prosecutorial ones.
It’s just that both prosecution and defense lawyers have said this. ANd the defense lawyers who say it usually are very specific about the injuries and how they occured.
It would make it too easy to disprove if they were lying
That presupposes experience in that field. I doubt that sort of conduct would be anticipated by any others.
To add a little history to the discussion, according to Legacy of Ashes, the CIA has always tortured. And that book was written before the Crown Jewels were declassified, although LofA does rely on a lot of documents that were declassified in the 00s. (How did W let them get away with that?)
Another revealing book about “invisible” torture (see quote @ 45) is Wilderness of Mirrors that details how they drove Nosenko crazy with sensory depravation-in the 1970s.
The long history makes me doubt very much whether anything will be done to change it. It might be driven underground again, but the U.S. does torture, has done so for a long time, and will most likely continue to do so.
This is one of the things that concerns me the most, especially after the generals walked out of Obama’s speech the other night because he didn’t go running over to them as soon as he left the podium…..we’ve just has what has amounted to 8 years of a military dictatorship. I am concerned that the troops and the higher command may decide that they know best for the country and well………I don’t even want to say it out loud. AVERT!
Strange times, my friends.
Once again Hugh hits it right on the head.
That report is probabaly 100% true, so far as it goes. I bet that the food really is as good as they say and as shariah compliant as they say, and that the color of the paint on the walls is every bit as cheerful as they say, etc. etc. etc
Not the point. If after a lovely meal the prisoner is waterboarded before being rerturned to his cheerfully paitned cell–still fucking torture.
The facility–the building–I’m sure complies with all sorts of standards, proabably OSHA too–who cares?
The building is committing atrocities, people are committing atrocities
And the prosecution NEVER bothers to disprove, right?
i haven’t read it (almost 900 pages and kinda pricey) but i’ve been tempted ever since listening to george kenney’s interview with rejali. if you want to give it a listen, here’s the link:
http://www.electricpolitics.co…..me_bo.html
p.s. kenney is my favorite interviewer. he can interview people he doesn’t agree with and not argue with them – he asks questions in order to understand and gives people enough time to thing and to answer in more than sound bites.
Abuse of prisoners, by anybody, is punishment for being on the wrong side.
Also in the spirit of naming names, I was trying to find who the current commanding officer was at Guantanamo and found this from 2/13/08:
Navy Rear Adm. Mark H. Buzby has been nominated for appointment to the rank of rear admiral (upper half). Buzby is currently serving as commander, Joint Task Force Guantanamo, U.S. Southern Command, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba
http://www.defenselink.mil/rel…..seid=11690
So Buzby either was recently or still i the commandant of Guantanamo. And so if there have been abuses, they are his responsibility.
Thanks. Listening to an antiwar piece right now, but it’s next on the list.
Ding ding ding! We have a winner here.
The generals left w/o waiting to be dismissed? I didn’t know that.
linky?
“He has sent people down. Holder went down. DOD General Counsel went down. Hell, Frickin’ CongressmanPeter King went down
Everybody seems to be going down.”
Yeah, and it’s all sqeaky clean for the inspectors. Wait till the big shots leave!
No, I’m sorry I wasn’t clearer. Severl prosecutors have resigned b/c of torture. Won’t use tainted confessions.
The status of limitations on torture that does not result in death is I think 8 years. For death, there is no statute of limitation. Since some of this stuff happened back in 2002 or thereabouts we are getting close to the cut off on some of these things.
Right. Sorry, I forgot about them
well, it will certainly continue if no one takes responsibility for trying to stop it. are you familiar with the history of the school of the americas and soa watch (don’t want to repeat if that’s old news)?
Seen and heard it myself. VC prisoners, while being beaten by RVN troops, were constantly berated for being Communist and a host of other sins. It’s not hard to figure out.
Leahy’s commssion wasn’t just for torture. I twas for all bushco crimes. SOme, like telecom snooping have expried or are about to expire in march.
Some crimes relarting to early memos may have already expired depneding onhow you would charge the crime.
Once, again, I apologize for not being more clear
Don’t know a lot about SOA, just that it’s a pretty scurrilous org and changed its name several years ago.
For starters, via SOA Watch, SOA was renamed Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) in 2001. The name change was a result of a Department of Defense proposal included in the Defense Authorization Bill for Fiscal 2001, at a time when SOA opponents were poised to win a congressional vote on legislation that would have dismantled the school.
Thanks for the details. I didn’t bother googling it. It’s one of countless ways that these kinds of things find another outlet when one is closed.
ROK (Republic of Korea) had two battalions of troops in VN. White Horse and Tiger Battalions. You ain’t seen nuthin’ til you’ve seen these guys in action. String an NVA officer up by his heels and flay him a square centimetre at a time. Didn’t witness it myself but heard it from a Green Beret who did.
But democracies have to do it so it is invisible. Fog of war, sensory depravation, etc. ROK was a dictatorship, so they didn’t need to bother with plausible deniability.
all the recent talk of “confidence” has reminded me of some essays i read a few years ago (although it was published in 1975 – huntington, crozier and watanuki in the crisis of democracy, a trilateral commission report). one of the threads of the essays was a concern about the public’s loss of trust in people & institutions that were supposed to represent authority. what struck me was that most of writing didn’t address the fundamental question of whether these people/institutions were actually trustworthy.
i think our elite are making the same mistake now. they are trying to get us to have confidence (read trust) without behaving in ways that deserve our confidence/trust.
the form without the substance.
So now one might rename Guantanamo the Center for Behavior Modification. See how nicely that works? Think Blue Skies Initiative and No Child Left Behind. No. NO! This is a transparent administration. (says a little prayer)
thanks. the soa is a big deal here because of my rep’s (jim mcgovern) trip to investigative trip central america while he was still a aide. he’s the congressperson who has been trying to get it shut down – and there is a pretty active catholic worker community here also that have participated in the annual protests (one of them even spent four month in ga prison after mulitiple convictions for crossing the line).
Hugh, where is that 8 year statute of limitation? I thought war crimes under the CAT did not have any SoLs. Am I wrong about that?
Better idea. The George W. Bush Center for Behavior Modification.
Sorry but I too think it was predictable. Bullies which torturers are in the extreme, do not stop because someone tells them to do so. This goes for those who order torture as well as those who conduct it.
I’m late to this thread but Jim White mentioned what sounds like an important speech by Senator Whitehouse yesterday. Wondering if this was the speech he was the speech to which he was referring.
LHP – watch that speech oif you have time!
Torture is official policy at Guantanamo; DOD signs the SOPs. Rumsfeld made it clear that Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions does not apply and warned that some countries might think it did. I’ve said it before, Obama would have to take down the whole DOD because the rot starts from the top. The military and the contractors are operating under the SOPs and torture is the official policy. It has been since day one. Obama did not order the SOPs changed, so nothing has changed. Yes, the US does torture.
Placing removal of said statute of limitations on my wish list. Justice moves to slow for such a statute to stand.
Maybe I need a bit more hand holding on the commissions idea, but it just seems like an avenue for many to get off scott free… commissions seems like a cart before the investigations and trial horse.
On the statute of limitations for general information:
http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/3286.html
Watching Whitehouse speech. It’s a good one. Thanks.
Whitehouse:
Looking back, people saying, “Please tell us that Americans did not do that! Please!” And having to explain it to them.
Standing strongly with Leahy.
Says we must know the truth in order to deal with this issue. No one wants to know the truth, says barbara. It’s too ugly, too painful, and entirely un-American (at least, in theory).
Totally OT: Snow update. Cannot see across the street. Metaphor for something, I’m sure.
>
(That presupposes experience in that field. I doubt that sort of conduct would be anticipated by any others.)
I haven’t had any experience in the field other than growing up in a society that condones beating children, tolerates spousal abuse, accepts a certain amount of rape (including in prison), does little or nothing about genital mutilation, mass rape and genocide in other countries.
Maybe we all should be awarded a degree in the field.
I should note that § 3286. in my #90 above is called the “Extension of statute of limitation for certain terrorism offenses”.
Thanks Hugh! You are a font of information as always. So now I have another question for you. Part a addresses “noncapital offenses’, but part b specifically includes actions for which there is a forseeable risk of bodily injury. Would a forseeable risk of serious (potentially permanent) mental harm be considered bodily injury? If so, I think ample evidence could be found that KUBARK techniques would be expected to induce permanent mental damage. Would that be an avenue that could be pursued to get around non-fatal torture SoLs?
Further, the section you cite appears to come from US criminal code. Doesn’t the Convention Against Torture give us another route to prosecution without SoLs?
IANAL but I would think that if paragraph b had wished to include mental injury it would have.
As for the CAT, to be honest I don’t know how this fits into the picture. Some treaties require enabling legislation, and if the CAT is one of these, then I think § 3286 must already have been harmonized with its provisions, or vice versa.
He[Obama] has been bending over backwards to just pretend away the problem.
He sends Holder, but makes sure Mohamed is already gone when Holder gets there and Holder doesn’t sit through observations of forced feedings or talk to ICRC or to the inmates with their lawyers there etc. – just goes on a brief tour and: lo, the Angel of GITMO appeared and escorted him and all that he saw, it was good.
Then they have a Pentagon report they order up that pretty much also does no investigtaion and then puts up a whitewash.
Is there some reason Obama didn’t try to recruit credible persons like Mora or Taguba to be overseers of that kind of a review and actually do it right? Well sure, he doesn’t want the answers.
And now per Jane Mayer they are going to pull a Padilla with the al-Marri case – pull him out of the brig and charge him just in time for Roberts to once again say it’s all moot. I’m sure that, just as with Padilla, they will also cover up maltreatment and pretend that all the treatement in over the last several years has no bearing on his charges.
We keep hearing people over and over say that the problem with civlian courts is that torture will preclude the prosecutions, but with the Padilla case in Fla and the Saleh case in Chitown, that hasn’t been the case – courts are accomodating torture just as fast as the USAtty’s office shovel it their way.
jkat -
http://blogs.abcnews.com/thebl…..full_.html
(who was then accused of making a false report)
and
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/f…..A9629C8B63
Assorted bits –
One of the things Ghappour told Reuters is pretty insidious if true. He said that in particular the beatings were being tied to detainees meetings with their lawyers, where they were beaten badly in advance of the meetings, making them not want to meet with their lawyers bc they knew a beating would be in the works if they did.
Another item is that on Mohamed, his lawyer isn’t just throwing words in the wind. Mohamed is one of the only ones who has had a non-Pentagon generated medical check up and apparently that check is the basis for his lawyer’s claims that the “humane” treatment has resulted in organ damage, ligament damage, brusies, etc. etc. etc. including very recent damage.
abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has worsened sharply since President Barack Obama took office as prison guards “get their kicks in” before the camp is closed,
pretty much confirms that people involved in administering torture to the detainees are prone to sadism. Otherwise, why would there be there be an uptick upon the notion that they wouldn’t soon have the opportunity to indulge themselves?
.
A recent comment made by Valenzuela Hugo Chavez, that Obama..”Has the same
stench as Bush” tell you that Obama`s “the US does not torture” come directly
from the Bush play book.
Just to note – Turley is a professor at George Washington, not Georgetown.
FIxed and ty