Gee, and when the Bushies close their eyes they’re invisible.

Great post.

(and zed!)

“It’s only torture if you admit it.”
“It’s only a recession if you admit it.”
“It’s only a Norm Coleman loss if you admit it.”

(sigh)

It’s only a quagmire if you admit it…
It’s only illegal if you admit it…

You funny boy. :)

Somehow I envision Rivkin writing that with a pen clenched between his teeth whilst being bound and whipped by a team of dominatrices.

…even if you don’t admit it.

Eli !

Kirk !

Barbara !

Kind of like Rummy’s “I stand at my desk for 8 hours a day. How is that torture?” argument.

It’s only Tedisco if it’s got a good beat and you dance to it.

Petro!

Hi, schveetie!

Rummy suffered from ‘rhoid rage? I’d have chipped in for an inflatable donut if it improved his disposition.

Let’s re-energize this weekend and, starting Monday, call Leahy, Whitehouse, etc. to push for a Special Prosecutor. And let’s not stop until we get one !

It’s only a tea party if no one is admitted (or shows up)

I would like to know the Bushco Tyrant Team’s definition of real torture. Cutting off limbs? I doubt if they can come up with a place to stop. And that is the problem. If you define a place to start hurting people where is the line drawn?

British Intelligence Fear Prosecution Over U.S. Torture Memos – from The Times

OT: Everybody see the pic of Obama shaking hands with Hugo Chavez? I’m certain wingnuts will accept the occurrence with their usual grace and dignity…

I seem to recall that it required organ failure.

Oh Gee! Look. Obama is acting like an adult! A brave one.

Problem is their morality is flexible.

“Well, it all depends on *which* organ, of course…”

I remember a few weeks ago that there was a leaked ICRC report that included the same techniques as viewed from the POV of the victim detainee. The “walling” technique per the Bybee memo describes the use of a rolled up towel around the neck to protect against whiplash. The “walling” technique according to the ICRC describes the use of a rolled-up towel around the neck to provide a sling to batter someone againt the wall.
I also remember that most or all of the CIA taps of the actual interrogations were destroyed.
I wonder if those tapes would show that even the scant veneer of procedure spelled out in the memos was ignored.
The CIA must be disbanded. They have proven themselves too many times to be unworthy of their privileges.

If it was one of them being tortured it would be their little toe ….. nail.

mutilation and/or organ failure and/or death I think. By that definition, they still would’ve tortured 108 people – the 108 alleged to have died in their custody. So even by their own definition, they tortured.

and how can stuffing somebody into a coffin with insects be argued to carry no risk of serious psychological damage? And wasn’t Padilla transformed into an incoherent vegetable by the time they actually saw fit to let him see a lawyer, after five years in a steel box, without even so much as a mattress (presumably in between the torture sessions)?

And just when you think it can’t get any weirder.

Rush Limbaugh Begins Slapping Himself On-Air To “Simulate Torture”

At a bare minimum, there should be some kind of “what if it were done to our troops?” standard.

If you read the full Fox News story, there’s one of those lovely “They chop off heads, so we can do anything we want” quotes, this time from Dana Perino.

Wake me when he waterboards himself and goes a week without sleep.

Oh, lord, yes I did see it and the same thing occurred to me.

Caption for photo:

Alleged president Barack Obama (we’ll never really know for sure) engages in satanic ritualistic fist bump with the-one-whose-name-cannot-be-spoken, likely in Africa where Obama was born yesterday.

Somehow I envision Rivkin writing that with a pen clenched between his teeth whilst being bound and whipped by a team of dominatrices.

Makes as much sense as anything else!

someone needs to remind Peroxide that she has even less credibility as a pundit than the less-than-zero she commanded as the Mouth of Sauron.

I guess he cannot get anyone else to do it.

Wish we had more like Jan.

Schakowsky On Torture: “Just Following Orders” A Historically Bogus Argument

What if… would require empathy. Wingnuts don’t do empathy. Wasserman- Schultz just pointed out the bare minimum rationale for caring and made the gratuitous remark that the victims are very bad people, and we don’t want to feel sorry for them. I’d like to see her proof.

Wasserman-Schultz made it sound like it would happen in the House Judiciary Committee. YAY!

Torture for Rush would be locked in a room with no medicine cabinet.

The sky isn’t blue it’s sad
The trees aren’t green they’re envious
The sun’s not yellow it’s chicken
And I did not have sex with that woman

Wicked! I like it.

If U.S. relations with Cuba continue to improve, perhaps Obama can award Dana a diplomatic post to the Bay of Pigs.

Petro!

…or to skip a meal.

I still think that the memos effectively negate any possiblity for a successful “just following orders” defense anyway.. they clearly say that the torturers made up torture methods, proposed them to shrubco, which signed off on the torture and had their lawyers draft memos to justify it, who then ordered the torturers to go ahead and do whatever it was they proposed to do in the first place. Looks like guilty all around to me….

Communists Commune in Caracas … jointly proclaim “Death To America” !

Rush Limbaugh Begins Slapping Himself On-Air To “Simulate Torture”

Hopefully, Rush will begin to explain *everything* by way of slapping himself a lot.

…or a mute microphone. well, maybe not, he would just keep talking.

The HJC & SJC should both conduct investigations … Whitehouse is frothing at the mouth !

Dude … I finally catch ya for a shoutout. How’re you doing ?

I liked this bit from the article. Schakowsky quickly cuts through the crap.

Schakowsky also notes that the administration’s emphasis on looking to the future rather than the past defies logic. If criminal prosecutions only looked to the future, there could be no criminal prosecutions.

“All crimes are in the past, right? So, obviously if you’re prosecuting crimes, it’s not something that’s going to be done, it’s something that’s been done,” she says.

Whitehouse! I hadn’t thought of him in a long time.

And it’s so hard to be “careful and nuanced” while discussing putting people in coffin boxes with insects and how to insure that your interrogators are not getting sexually aroused by their naked slapfest victims.

40 – well, extensive use of Ensure was a part of the program.

Justifying not-torture is hard. It’s hard work.

He is seriously pissed ! Let’s see if that anger turns into action and indictments …

Somehow I envision Rivkin writing that with a pen clenched between his teeth whilst being bound and whipped by a team of dominatrices.

That’s funny, so does he.

It’ll limit them to future crimes. Tom Cruise’ll have to Minority Report ‘em /s

Too bad the Bushies don’t understand how to interpet research.

Rivkin in the NYT’s:

…

This data is analyzed in great detail to establish that the use of these techniques does not inflict either physical or psychological damage. The conclusions the memos reach — that the specific interrogation techniques used by the C.I.A. did not constitute torture — are eminently reasonable. To any fair-minded observer, these documents definitively establish that the Bush administration did not engage in torture. They go a long way toward rebutting shrill and unfair attacks on the integrity of Bush administration officials, and, more generally, on America’s honor.

Oh Ya?

In an interview with TPMmuckraker, James Horne:

…

Informed by TPMmuckraker that his work had been put to this use, Horne — who heads the Sleep Research Centre, at Loughborough University in Leicestershire, U.K. — was indignant. He explained the crucial difference between his controlled experiments, in which subjects were under no additional stress, and the CIA’s use of sleep deprivation on interrogation subjects.

“As soon as you add in any other stress, any other psychological stress, then the sleep deprivation feeds on that, and the two compound each other to make things far worse. I made that very, very clear,” he said. “And there’s been a lot of research by others since then to show that this is the case.”

As for whether such stress could be considered “harmful,” Horne was unequivocal. “I thought it was totally inappropriate to cite my book as being evidence that you can do this and there’s not much harm. With additional stress, these people are suffering. It’s obviously traumatic,” he said. “I just find it absurd.”

Further, Horne continued, sleep-deprived subjects become so confused that they’re highly unlikely to offer useful intelligence. “I don’t understand what you’re going to get out of it,” he said. “You can no longer think rationally, you just become more of an automaton … These people will just be spewing nonsense anyway. It’s pointless!”

…

Rivkin is sick and his reasoning is being torn apart.

Marcy agrees with you.

Senator Whitehouse on the memos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZB2iloOzqc

16 – thanks for that link Petrocelli

Gotta confess I haven’t seen a Tom Cruise movie since The Color of Money. Even Paul Newman couldn’t save that one.

nuther love fest up on the lake I see

Prego ! Fixed your Linky !

You didn’t see Born on the 4th of July? Actually, as much as I dislike him, he’s really funny in Tropic Thunder too.

It was like the role he was born to play.

Tropic Thunder, that is.

movie based on a Phillip K Dick novel, where Cruise was a cop who busted criminals before they committed crimes, on the basis of reports by a cadre of police psychics. By Obama’s argument, this would be the only way we could get criminals from now on. In any event, even in the novel and movie it wasn’t real… just a conspiracy.

How the hell is PBO going to handle the inevitable Nürnberg Defense question at his next presser?

Dubya would love it, of course.

“We *had* to arrest them and lock them up for life! Our psychics told us they were about to blow up Congress, and Dick hand-picked them himself!”

by not calling on you

LOL … Raven !

Is there a liberal Les Kinsolving or Jeff Gannon he can call on?

Nah, in addition to his performance in The Color of Money, he lost me when I heard him credit L. Ron Hubbard with curing his dyslexia, allowing him to become a handsome overpaid actor.

and the torture would, of course, confirm that they really did plan to do whatever it was the psychics “predicted” they would do…… brilliant!

He does a great job a Ron Kovic.

Chuck Todd

Naw. Torture for him would be to be locked in a room with no medications, but a small inch-thick plexiglass window with a bottle of Oxycontin on the other side in plain view. In a wall of steel plate reinforced concrete.

Bob in HI

It was a real question, and if prosecutions don’t start materializing it’s going to start causing him serious problems.

And it assumes it will be asked, I think that is funny.

The long awaited sequel to Kovic’s “Born on The Fourth of July” is due soon.

That was the movie that made me realize Paul Newman was human …

60 – thanks much.

Apparently “nuance” is what you draw upon when you write a memo based on Rizzo telling you A, then the Inspector General issues a report saying he lied about A, and you go ahead and reissue the opinion three years later saying, “but yeah, but what if he hadn’t lied though, then, like, ya know?”

Nuance.

It’s what’s for dimmer.

I had a nice talk with him in a bookstore in Hermosa Beach one day a few years back, good dude.

Limbaugh is way safe. No one is going to going to follow orders that involve stripping him, hooding him, and having to shove a suppository up him.

At least there are some orders that no one will follow.

Scorcese said he only agreed to direct it to help finance Last Temptation. Oh well, not fair to expect any artist to produce only masterpieces.

Thanks, Mary. Sheldon Whitehouse has a perfect name. Someday, maybe.

I’d be willing to hood him, but only if he were fully clothed.

BTW, technically it’s the Ne’erinlimbaugh defense if anyone at the CIA has to invoke it.

see ya’ll

Mary, did you see the diary (Oxdown ?) today that reports that the sons of KSM were tortured using ants on their legs? I’ll get the link and post it later, just wanted to catch you…maybe.

G’nite Raven !

Editorial from The Guardian

To read the four newly released Bush-era memos on America’s so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” for terror suspects is to enter a very dark moral world indeed. It is the Orwellian world of the concealed global detention network set up by the CIA on President Bush’s authority after 9/11 in which suspected terrorists – many of whom may have had a lot of blood on their hands – were secretly held in US bases from Afghanistan to Romania and systematically tortured. A world in which Britain is implicated too, do not forget.

…

America should hang its head at methods that Dick Cheney still defends (and which, importantly, may not have yielded much good intelligence). Barack Obama did the right thing by ending the abuses within hours of taking office. He did well to publish the legal memos too. In such ways Mr Obama makes clear that his administration is making a clean break with the discredited past, while at the same time graphically reminding the world why that past (and Britain’s role in it) was so disgraceful.

On balance Mr Obama may also be right to assure CIA personnel that they will not face prosecution if they carried out their work in good faith based on the old legal advice. But an essential part of the rule of law is that those who break it must be answerable for their actions. The Bush administration crossed a fateful threshold after 9/11. Its officials, including its lawyers, must be accountable for that. It is understandable that Mr Obama does not want his first term to be dominated by a reliving of the past. Yet America will only ensure it does not embrace torture again by getting to the bottom of why it did so this time. A full congressional inquiry is in order, as Speaker Pelosi has hinted. One way or another, those who ordered the abuses, from the president and vice-president down, must answer for them

Hey Firepups:

OT, but check out Moyers when you get a chance. Pretty good stuff.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/jour…..watch.html

An exemplary American. He could have stayed bitter over what happened to him or let it drive him nuts. Instead he used it as inspiration to do something positive and he’s still doing it.

were they adults or children?

there’s a good chance he’d be able to get through all that to get to the oc. he’s a pretty determined guy.

Nightmares made law – Philippe Sands in The Guardian:

The four secret US department of justice opinions released this week are jaw-dropping in their detail. They reveal how far the Bush administration was prepared to go in sanctioning interrogation techniques that plainly amount to torture.

The long-awaited publication of the August 2002 memo, signed by Jay Bybee but largely written by John Yoo, authorises 10 previously unlawful interrogation techniques. These include slapping, stress position and sleep deprivation, right up to waterboarding. It is doubtful a more shocking legal opinion has ever been written. It even purports to analyse if incarcerating a detainee in a small box with an insect for company would amount to mental torture (it depends what you tell him about its sting).

This is the stuff of dark nightmares, the rubber-stamping of policy rather than legal advice in the sense usually understood. It indicates how far the Bush administration fell, the kind of reasoning that infected a raft of policies and to which the British government often turned a blind eye. It has caused untold damage to US national security, and to its reputation.

When the memo was written, the administration had already fixed a policy of abuse, and the torture had already started. Lawyers were needed to provide the “golden shield” against prosecution. The memo did not benefit from the usual consultations; the many lawyers who would have objected were simply cut out of the process. A small group of lawyer-ideologues became participants in international crime, acts for which any state may, under the 1984 torture convention, exercise criminal jurisdiction. The evidence suggests complicity with the consequences that flowed from these flawed opinions – which went on to underpin CIA and military interrogations in Guantánamo, Iraq and beyond in the rendition programme.

…

AZMAT,
Great quote from the Guardian. The higher ups are the ones I want investigated. If Obama allows Bush and his cabal to be investigated,I will be satisfied that the rule of law is still alive in the US.

Evaluate the source
slime is slime

66 – thanks. I hadn’t seen the diary. I did see the Raw Story and History Commons accounts and linked to them and to a 2007 story on 39 disappeared that the US won’t account for (including the 2 children).

I’ve seen Majid Khan’s father’s testimony before too. As the blogger at History commons says, what are the odds they just invented that and a few years later it turns out that OLC was, right about the same time, issuing memos authorizing using insects for interrogation.

Thanks Eli. Good evening firepups.

Here is the link to the Oxdown diary, see bluebutterfly at #10 which tells the story and gives the link. They were children 7 and 9.

(crickets)

Hi Bets. Did you bake today?

91 – 6 and 8, or 7 and 9, depending on who you believe.

Here’s a link to my comment which had several other links

http://emptywheel.firedoglake……ent-148167

The children and their mother were taken in the US/Pak raid on a safehouse in Karachi and haven’t been heard from since. Suskind recounts in his book that KSM was told when he was later captured that the children were going to be harmed unless he talked. Follow through? Who knows.

A GITMO detainee (Majid Khan) was held originally in Pakistan in a raid that seized his brother, SIL and their infant daughter as well. At one point, the brother (who was released) was allowed to talk with MK and some of what MK said in that interview was given as testimony in MK’s GITMO tribunal and it included MK saying way back then that his Pakistani guards told him about KSM’s children being held at the same place and that they were being abused to try to get info out of them as to their father’s hiding place. It was after that they CIA used them in a threat to KSM. SInce then, they’ve dropped off all radar.

BTW, IIRC, Khan is the GITMO detainee who they tried to prevent being able to talk to his own lawyer about what happened to him during his non-GITMO detention. At the time they were saying it would reveal all the super secret interrogation stuff, but you have to wonder if they mostly didn’t want him talking about the children.

good evening all

hi bets!!!

OMG.

Prove that, and we’ve got our prosecutions.

Hi sadly.

Mary, it was a comment by bluebutterfly at # 10 here on Oxdown.

Nah. Still recovering from yesterday’s spinal procedure. But you’re welcome to these leftovers from the beach house pantry.

hey ratty,wow the truth,like” confessions of an economic hitman” are hard to take

okay, i’ve had enough. down here in the south, it’s called nut-cuttin’ time.

The next Bush apologist, or Intel official, or radio host that declares ” waterboarding / confinement / insects / head banging is not torture” will have to put his skin in the game.

Here’s my offer: take 20 minutes of waterboarding, then walk out the door, tell me it’s not torture, and go back inside for 20 more minutes. At the end of that 20 minutes, I’ll pay $100 cash American to you or your favorite political party.

Then we’ll do a couple of hours banging your head against the wall, same conditions. Or the coffin with scorpions. Then a day or two of sensory deprivation. Maybe a little night music from Nine Inch Nails at about 150 decibels. While sqatting in manacles.

And if you can walk back in and take it again, I’ll pay up AND kiss Cheney’s a** at high noon.

And if I win, you go to jail for a very long time. Do we have a deal, Mr. Yoo, Judge Bybee, Mr. Addington, Mr. Cheney?

sorry your not feeling well dear

Thanks for the leftovers. Hope the procedure provides some welcome relief.

Here’s my offer: take 20 minutes of waterboarding, then walk out the door, tell me it’s not torture, and go back inside for 20 more minutes. At the end of that 20 minutes, I’ll pay $100 cash American to you or your favorite political party.
==================
they couldnt take 1 minute,I LL WAGER

Mary, there’s not a prayer that those children are alive. Sorry beasts that tortured them could never let them live to tell of their abuse.

I’m thinking now of my sons at the age of those boys and if the same thing had happened to them – (I’m not allowed to say more).

MONSTERS

our government may have authorized the starvation, torture and murder of 7 year olds… I really don’t know what to say. Maybe one of the Pakistani ISI thugs present will eventually come forward…

Michael Gerson was on the News Hour lamenting the fact that by releasing the memos we’ve revealed our tactics to the terrorists who will NOW train themselves to withstand our interrogation methods.

Typical wingnuttery, ignore all established evidence proving (among other things) torture does not extract useful intelligence and continue to spout the same old bullshit.

ah, the zionist jews. who will do anything to obfuscate what they have long been doing to palestinians.

when will the red cross be admitted to survey the israeli prisons?

ah, the zionist jews. when do you think that they will allow the red cross to survey their prisons, the torturing that they have been deploying upon those that they consider the untermenschen[palestinians].

I haven’t heard any novel methods yet, in all of this. All of ‘em have been used before, by generalissimos, tinpot dictators, and fascist and stalinist thugs around the world all through the last century. The terr’ists could’ve just studied Amnesty Int’l reports for all the pointers they could want.

…well, with the possible exception of the alleged torture of 7 year olds. That’s fairly novel I must say, at least for the last 500 years or so. I shudder to think that that’s the tactic we’re afraid of revealing to the terr’ists.

is it wrong of me to wish this POS Lee Atwaters demise?…actually shit is more useful than Gerson

sickest of the sickest minds,and Powell,Rumsfeld and Rice sat there and never winced

I don’t know if any ‘proof’ exists other than Khan’s testimony. If such exists, I betcha Phillipe Sands and lawyers like Mary will dam sure find it and I hope they do!

As for Rivkin, he belongs in the slammer with the evildoers for aiding and abetting crimes. No doubt, Hitler, Goebbels, Eichmann and Co. had their lawyers too.

That’s the only thing they can do; there is no defense for these unspeakable crimes so they whine and try to distract for the guilt of those they support. The whole idea behind our signing on to Geneva was to protect our soldiers from inhumane treatment if captured. You’ll note that none of the privileged, frat-boy bunch of draft dodgers in Bush’s cartel had military service and were in no danger of ever having to serve.

The next person I run into who says anything good about BushCo is going to get an earful. (think I better go for a walk or something)

…well, with the possible exception of the alleged torture of 7 year olds. That’s fairly novel I must say, at least for the last 500 years or so. I shudder to think that that’s the tactic we’re afraid of revealing to the terr’ists.

Powell was evasive when Rachel Maddow asked about torture discussions. How will Powell answer questions like “Were you aware of discussions involving the children of detainees?” or “How did you reply when Mr. Addington told you about the techniques used on children?”

Are we actually debating whether American leaders discussed torturing children?

Is this what Ashcroft referred to (”History will not look kindly upon us discussing this in the White House”)? Sy Hersh said there were much worse things waiting to be revealed.

Sy Hersh said there were much worse things waiting to be revealed.

I get e-mails from ACLU regularly. One report was that even with this release there are lots more memos they had requested under FOIA. (the number is either in the 40s or 90s – can’t remember). They must have been having a real perverts’ orgy in the entire exec offices.