Comments on: Bush DOJ Official Daniel Levin “Not Opposed” to Torture Investigations

By: Jeff Kaye

Jeff Kaye — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 06:24:53 +0000

Thanks for the vignette. Rejali’s book is full of amazing details such as this.

@11 – While I agree with others that Levin isn’t holding his breath, I also agree with your point, which is why I went to the bother of highlighting Levin’s comment.

Well, Attorney General Holder, what answer you?

By: gaudiori

gaudiori — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:12:44 +0000

My sincere apologies; I’ll be sure that doesn’t happen again.

By: OccasionalObserver

OccasionalObserver — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:54:27 +0000

Yes, that’s Yoo next to Addington, or as close to him as he felt safe to sit.

I heard that hearing over the radio. It was confusing. I couldn’t tell which of the two the committee memebers were addressing because they kept saying “you.” It would have been clearer, and been more appropriate in other ways, if they’d decided to call the professor “you” and Addington “thou.”

Thanks, Jeff, for this update. I’m no Pollyanna on this issue, but I will never call it a day unless it’s a day of reckoning. These twitchings are not nothing.

By: rafflaw

rafflaw — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:13:58 +0000

I say give Levin what he asked for. Holder can rest easy about investigating the torturers now that one of the possible defendants is not opposed to it. If a possible defendant is not opposed, how can Holder be opposed to a full investigation?

By: Mauimom

Mauimom — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 04:13:05 +0000

Yes, isn’t that Our Favorite Law Professor [paid for with the dollars of CA taxpayers] sitting right there at the table?

By: ondelette

ondelette — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:57:20 +0000

First they take the cocktail wienies and isolate them for 6 months, with each end tied to the opposite ends of the room so only the bend in the middle touches the floor. Then they slam the wine bottles against a wall that has been specially outfitted with a board, after carefully putting a cervical collar and a towel around the neck of each one. Then they put the deviled eggs in a box with an insect…

On a more serious note, Darius Rejali wrote about a young French police officer in 1949 in the Gulf of Tonkin giving a tour of his digs:

“You are a journalist from France? Delighted. Come see my home. Here, this is the lookout post; over there, the PC [command post] of the company.”
We enter; everything is in impeccable order. I congratulate him.
“Here,” he continues, “is my office. Table, typewriter, washbasin, and in the corner, the machine to make one talk.”
As I seem not to understand, he adds, “Yeah, sure, the dynamo [magneto]! It is a good handy way to interrogate the prisoners. The contact, the positive pole, and the negative pole; turn the handle and the prisoner spits [it out].
He resumes in the same tone: “Over there, the telephone; here the rack for the maps of the general staff; over there, etc.”

(Torture and Democracy, p.148)

By: Jeff Kaye

Jeff Kaye — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 03:12:49 +0000

Agreed. If you listen to the video of Levin, his voice sounds quite strained, and it’s almost as if he said what he did under duress, i.e., pressure from the audience. But I very much doubt he will be the subject of any investigation, or that a serious investigation will really take place.

I’d love to know how the Washington insider crowd talks about this subject at their cocktail parties.

By: TheLurkingMod

TheLurkingMod — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:31:32 +0000

It is Firedoglake policy to NOT disclose contact information of private persons in these pages.
Links to this kind of information are permissible.
Thanks.

By: Jeff Kaye

Jeff Kaye — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:05:23 +0000

Yeah, been quite busy (and bout of cold or flu).

As for what Yoo thinks,Blub… hmmm… I think we can guess that one.

By: TheLurkingMod

TheLurkingMod — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 02:02:58 +0000

Eli is upstairs! Pat Robertson’s Self-Awareness Fail