Comments on: Torture: Looking Forward By Cleaning Up The Past

By: clamberite

clamberite — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 16:54:55 +0000

Perhaps there is a bigger picture that we are not seeing. Speculation it is but please consider-Obama has an opportunity to pretty much remake this country in a direction that we have all been hoping for; If his administration gets bogged down in this torture controversy it could stall all the other important things that he and we, want accomplished. So how can he have it both ways? What he has done is allowed the congress to take this and run with it; he has allowed the net roots to take up the cause, and the end result may be that he will be forced to take action by the congress and the American people and yet not have to take the heat from the right that he is going after patriots on his own. By not immunizing the higher ups he has left the door open. In the future the higher ups will know that they are in jeopardy from prosecution if they do stuff like this and the lower tier operatives will know that anything they do will be on their own and a crime. It is Machiavellian, my speculation, but it could work. Maybe we aren’t giving our President enough credit.

By: Adie

Adie — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 13:37:44 +0000

Now, some cleansing brain-bleach, and back I go to organizing our mess of a downsizing effort here at home. Right now, it’s not a pretty sight, but we see a glimmer of improvement each day. Hopefully we’ll make it to our little retirement cottage before we tip over from prepping present home for another loving family. We’ve delighted in living here. Everything from deer, exotic thrushes, warblers and magnificent hawks to hummingbird- and luna moths, free fresh homegrown veggies year round, goats, chickies, home-grown edamame (long before MarthaStew informed us what we were SUPPOSED to call the stuff to be absolutely snooty-precise)… It’s been a fun ride.

By: Adie

Adie — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 13:26:03 +0000

Just catching up a little, way late but what the hey.

Re: your 1st paragraph, Jane. Whoot!?!!! That same idea smacked me upside the head yesterday. Obama really was ONLY talking about hands-off the grunts at the bottom of the authority food chain of torture policy. Clearly so, I thought. If I were Yoo, Addington, Gonzales, dubya or deadeye, I’d be squirming right now and lawyering up fwiw. I’m not usually a vengeful person, but I hope they are absolutely nailed with this hideous policy and made to suffer its consequences for the rest of their days.

I’d even be in favor of taking up a collection to help the boyz take an exciting, lifetime-experience camping trip to Spain, or some such welcoming snakepit full of pent-up, unfettered revenge.

Yeah. That’s the ticket.

By: billindc

billindc — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 11:56:24 +0000

MadDog, I think the key phrase is

relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice…

. I read that as suggesting a big fat bullseye on the folks who gave that specious legal advice.

By: AitchD

AitchD — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 01:15:23 +0000

Motion denied. No harm, no contempt. Wanna appeal?

By: DWBartoo

DWBartoo — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 00:57:19 +0000

We “Holder” these powers (of the Political Cla$$) to be self-evident …

Let the Sunstein shine …

(However, the memos are out of the bag … and more ‘things’ will follow, probably many more things, a veritable parade of ‘things’ … ‘things’ that will not obediently go away … as if they never were.)

By: Kirk James Murphy, M.D.

Kirk James Murphy, M.D. — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 00:56:23 +0000

Love your question, SugarCookie. Sweet reasoning.

For the same reasons you describe, how can any member of the Bar willingly appear before Bybee? Now that he’s been revealed, how could any attorney obliged to appear before him not request the presiding 9th Cicuit judge that – in view of Bybee’s moral turptitude – their case be assinged to another judege?

By: SugarCookie

SugarCookie — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 00:49:49 +0000

I’m not a lawyer – I bake for a living – so I’m wondering if anyone knows whether a defendant, or even a lawyer coming before a judge to try a case, can protest having a person like Bybee preside over a trial? After the garbage Bybee spewed in the torture memos I certainly wouldn’t have any confidence in his ability to adjudicate even the simplest of cases. His torture memos suggest that he is guided not by the law, but by his ideology, which in this case has wrought truly twisted and disgusting “reasoning.” I don’t think I could tolerate sitting in his courtroom for 5 minutes.

By: Blub

Blub — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 00:45:20 +0000

question.. did US courts ever rule on Arar v Ashcroft (the Canadian national we disappeared from New York than renditioned to Syria for a year of torture)? I think the poor guy’s lawsuit against the US government was supposed to be re-heard in US District Court in December ‘08, but I don’t recall reading anything about it. I can’t think of a more dramatic case of shrubco torture lawlessness than that one, since they guy was officially cleared by two Canadian proceedings of any wrongdoing or, I believe, even of contact with or expressed interest in terr’ist groups… basically, we kidnapped, disappeared, renditioned and tortured the wrong guy, and never acknowledged we ever did anything wrong. I know the Canadian PM gave him an official apology, but I think I read somewhere that the US continues to bar him from entrance to the country.

I guess I’m sort of hoping that cases like that will result in the disclosure of such damning evidence that there will have to be a prosecution somewhere.

By: MadDog

MadDog — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 00:42:41 +0000

I’ll give you the “lawyers” Yoo, Bybee and Bradley, but I could well imagine Bush and Cheney playing dumb (not hard for Junya) and saying:

“We relied on the legal advice of the OLC in authorizing this stuff. Who knew that these OLC folks were all dumb as Pet Rock graduates of Regent U Law School?”

Mind you, I’m not saying any judge or jury would buy this BS, but I can almost guarantee you that Junya and Deadeye would give it a try.