Frank Rich puts it on the table:
Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to “protect” us but also to promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war. Instead of saving us from “another 9/11,” torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify and exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House’s illegality.
BTW, something I was wondering. Didn’t one of the detainees we tortured claim to have been injected with drugs. Was that Padilla? Has that ever been verified? Were there any memos mentioning using pharmaceuticals?
Laura W
Reminder: Mary Matalin and her Darling Husband will be John King’s guests this morning at 9amEST.
I am sure she will have many enlightening things to say on this, and many other, subjects.
I predict I will be able to stomach 2 minutes, tops, and then will turn it all off and get outside for a long walk in the gorgeous spring sun.
You’re welcome.
Maude
We don’t have the information on the drug aspect of this yet.
I did hear mention of it.
The point of torture is never about getting information, that’s the big lie.
You get down to they did it because they could.
There’s no sanity in those who are involved with torture.
We have our own set of barbarians.
Bush was the leader on this. He was the only one with the power to start it and Cheney was right in there for the thrill.
It’s about sexual sadism in the extreme.
All the excuses will dry up.
I’d prefer that the torture etc. be sent to the International War Crimes Tribunal.
What a cheery way to start a Sunday.
Salacious Crumb
i still wonder why we cant prosecute Bush and his ilk for falsely taking us to war with Iraq. has there ever been a commission to independently verify how we got to war with Iraq? I think thats what Frank Rich is suggesting as well. The torture prosecutions would be limited to pursuing the legal authors of torture. But I want to see Bush, Cheney, Wolfie, Rummy, Rice, Feith, Perle, Tenet, Cambone and Addington paraded before a court and be held accountable for their crimes. a million Iraqis and thousands Americans dead because these guys falsely took us to war.
Salacious Crumb
@LAURA W
I dont know who is more repelling Carville or Matalin, but I still cant fathom how Carville cant sleep with that wretched soul every night knowing the things the she supports and the water she carried for the Bush admin
Laura W
@Laura W: You are spared! CBS Sunday Morn has a show with every single story being of interest to you!
You’re welcome.
Salacious Crumb: I agree with everything you’ve said (believing you meant “can sleep”.) My only explanation is lots and lots of strong alcohol. I think they are bourbon drinkers?
r€nato
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in one month.
That’s six times per day.
If torture were an effective means of obtaining valuable intelligence, wouldn’t we have gotten what we needed after 5 torture sessions? 10? 20, tops?
If you have to waterboard someone 183 times, I’d say it’s a lot more about revenge and power than it is about intelligence.
Redhand
The sad part is, this isn’t an exaggeration IMO. These two scumbags operated to reinforce one another rather than serve as a sanity check. And neither of them has the slightest understanding of constitutional law, federal law, international law, . . . or common humanity and decency.
Salacious Crumb
renato:
you know I wouldn’t be surprised if someday we find out that Bush or Cheney or Rummy personally went to visit KSM and punched him in the face themselves just to quench their thirst for revenge. i know it seems shocking, but after all these revelations, would it be that surprising?
@LauraW,
oh ya, I meant to say ‘can sleep’..still waking up here…
WereBear
I don’t care if they ultimately go down for tax evasion, like Al Capone.
With such a plethora of crimes, we have to be able to get them on something.
os
There was a guy on Rachel Maddow i believe he was the chief of staff for Colin Powell and he was saying that Dick Cheney is a man that scares easily, a man that lives in the darkness of fear and operates from his fear. He had 6 deferments in Vietnam and never once served in a capacity to actually defend anything. In my opinion all of this is bigger than Barack. Im not sure what he can really do about any of this. Most of this information we all knew, but now there is proof to back up everyones thoughts and intuitions.
Mr. Stuck
This puts me in mind of a line years ago on the old Homicide series where Ned Beatty’s character complains that every one he sees looks like a suspect needing investigation.
When it comes to torture the sense of power becomes (or starts with) a self perpetuating tool for thoroughness, if you believe it works. The just in case factor. And after a while if it’s not done, seems like an incomplete job. Though for some, it may also provide some twisted pleasure.
El Cid
I really think a huge element of this torture pushing was not just the immediate goal of creating yet another justification for the Iraq war that Cheney and Bush had long wanted, but the longer-term goal of Bush / Cheney (as part of the modern ‘conservative’ movement’s main goals) to say
“F*@% all you damn hippies with your ‘fair trials’ and ‘rights’ and ‘Constitution’ — we are the god-damn Republican Executive, mother f*@%ers, and we will do whatever the f*@% we want to anybody we god-damn choose, startin’ with these SOB’s. If you don’t like it, maybe you’re next.”
These people despise the Constitution and the notion of the USA as a moral example, they hate it all, deep, deep in their bones.
WereBear
It’s always about power with these people. Well, for everyone, but well-adjusted folks keep it in check.
The more fearful someone is, inside, the more they will crave external power and control.
chrome agnomen
they were the political steroid users of the 90s and 00s; they couldn’t get the job done by natural (honest) means, so they resorted to enhanced techniques. more hall of shamers. the asterixes next to their names should read, ‘executed in ____ for crimes against humanity.’
Svensker
@Salacious Crumb:
Because he is a completely amoral asshole?
lovethebomb
@Salacious Crumb & Jabba:
The widely accepted media canard is that we invaded Iraq based on bad intelligence. Oops. We were just dang sure they had those WMD’s. Basically, the Bush regime made the CIA and other intelligence gathering agencies take the fall.
And now Obama is taking heat for “weakening” the CIA by releasing the torture memos and thereby lowering morale. How about the morale lowering of being blamed for a pointless unnecessary war? Why do repubs always get a pass for doing what is in the national interest, when it is clearly not, and dems are attacked for doing what is? How do repubs get everyone to play opposite day all the time.
O yeah, the corporate media serves the corporate oligarchy.
r€nato
I frickin’ hate that euphemism “enhanced interrogation techniques”. It’s torture.
Armed robbery = “enhanced income supplement”
Murdering your wife = “enhanced divorce proceeding”
Beating your kid = “enhanced discipline procedure”
bad hammock
I could have sworn one of the memos said drugging was ok as long as it did not interfere with their “state of mind” or some such bs
SGEW
Yes.
No.
Not yet.
somguy
Yep, and I get laughed at for pointing out that Afghanistan was an engineered and illegal war. What next? You people realize that capitalism is just an excuse for pillaging resources, exploiting workers and concentrating power in the hands of a few market actors?
wilfred
No offense, but I think only tim F. gets the point that the only victims of all these activities have been Muslims. It is the specificity that counts more than general laments about the injustice and cruelty of torture, which existed before Muslims were targeted. How many years since abu Ghraib?
SGEW
From 2006:
Government rebuts accusation:
Padilla was convicted without reaching this accusation on the merits. And we keep on walking, keep on walking.
Dave _Violence
When the Abu Gharib photos came out I understood those to have recorded an abberational incident. Which they did, but the leftards have made it systemic by ignoring that the perps were caught (turned in by a soldier with morals), prosecuted, convicted and sentenced. People lost jobs, etc.
I argued back then what I have been taught all my life regarding torture: it’s a waste of time. From the Spanish Inquistion onward, the only information you get is what the subject thinks will end the torture. It also strengthens the resolve of a prisoner – if he’s fighting for a cause or whatever.
I firmly believe that Abu Gharib was an abberation and there has been no proof that it wasn’t.
HOWEVER, so far all the memos indicate that torture (waterboarding isn’t torture?) was employed. Let’s see more of this information. Let’s call Chaney on it: show us everything. Let’s really see what information these “techniques” got us. And let’s find out the real “chain of custody” regarding responsibility. I’m tired of all the speculation by leftist idiots (and I’m tired of rightists telling me it’s not that bad, more like frat hazing – strange, hazing’s illegal and will cost a frat its charter, but I digress). Full, honest investigation.
Otherwise… we’ve got a Ministry of Information Retrieval on our hands.
aimai
Salacious Crumb,
I doubt very much that either bush or cheney had the courage to even be in a room with someone they had ordered torture for. I expect that one of the things that was destroyed on the CIA tapes, however, was a record that the tapes were to be watched by bush/cheney. I don’t know if either of them could really have sat through anything but I imagine that they both would have liked a video hookup like the one in Patriot Games which enables the top level to see the “kills” as they happen.
I see them both as essentially cowardly men who have long envied others for the ability to commit violence (its possible to be a peacable person and not have that envy.) Both bush and cheney have long imitated what they thought of as western heroes/strong silent types but of course they have lived lives of extreme privilige, security, and utterly devoid of risk.
My personal fantasy–and its a fantasy because I know it can never happen–is that the house and the senate allow a straight up resolution to be offered “Resolved: America is a nation of laws, not of parties or of party advantage. The wilful commission of crimes by any and all officials, including members of this body, must be investigated and prosecuted to the full extent possible.” And then each and every congressperson and senator would be forced to vote Yea or Nay with no time out for bloviating or obfuscation.
aimai
SGEW
@aimai:
I think that resolution has already been voted on, and was adopted unanimously, in 1787. But you’re right: a re-vote may be in order.
kid bitzer
on ‘flu vaccine’–
i believe that i have read (no cite though, so useless) that the snatch & grab people would inject their victims with flu viruses in order to give the victim the range of flu symptoms–fever, vomiting, fatigue, over-all aches and pains–as part of the general regime of destabilizing, disorienting, and undermining.
since some vaccines involve the injection of live viruses, i suppose an especially weasely govt official could also claim that the injection with live virus was just a ‘flu vaccine’.
sure, the intention is the opposite, i.e. to give the person flu instead of protecting them from it. but then again, they were also trying to make these people give false confessions about al qaeda-iraq links, and they called that “information gathering”, so it’s not like they aren’t used to calling things by their opposites.
El Cid
@wilfred: Why do you think it’s most significant that those tortured were Muslims? I had been assuming that it was because of the geographic origins of the detainees and the ease of justifying beastliness to the public. But it sounds like your point may be different.
A generation ago it was mainly about torturing and disappearing and murdering Central Americans and Southern Africans, and it was supposedly done much more indirectly (i.e., through hired torturers rather than setting it up in-house).
Do you think it’s a religious target? Or a geostrategical one? A proxy for race or culture?
BC
r€[email protected]: Talk about your cognitive dissonance. This is why all the defenders of torture just talk all around it:
By releasing the memos, we have given away how we are going to interrogate and they will be able to “train” to withstand our interrogation!
But, we waterboarded one 183 times and another 80+ times – were we “training” them?
Oh, but that was necessary because he wouldn’t talk the first 182 times!
How many times would one have to undergo waterboarding in training to learn how to withstand it?
Crickets . . .
wilfred
Yes to all, but mainly the last. Muslims were being demonized before 9/11, but that event gave the green light to the return of the atavistic behavior that repulses much of the civilized world.
Such behavior is latent in the powerful – it only is controlled when the specific target can speak out agaisnt. But the Muslim cannot speak out, not in the United States at least.
Hence the displaced anger against the action and removal of sympathy for the victim
El Cid
@wilfred: Okay, but, am I wrong in assuming that it’s widely understood among anyone discussing this torture routine that the background and culture of the tortured detainees contributed to the ease of implementing the program? I think everyone discussing torture is pretty aware that it didn’t seem to be focused on white Christian Germans.
Comrade Darkness
@SGEW:
Given the shit we were doing to people, the notion of slipping something dreamy into a prisoner’s veins so they go all silly and loose-lipped seems like a more humane plan. The issue of addictive vs. non addictive would matter a lot. I haven’t given this much thought, mind you, and my notion of acceptable has been hopelessly skewed by all this.
I’d not get too worked up if we let them smoke Jamaican red for half a day and then dangled a bag of Doritos just out of reach until they said something useful.
Bill H
It must be admitted that I robbed that bank, but I want it made very clear that I did it with the most sincere and helpful sense that I had a very sincere plan for the money. The money was intended to buy me a nice Pontiac, which would have helped the economy, and you see what has now happened to Pontiac. I really wanted to help Pontiac, so that clears up why I robbed the bank very sincerely.
Now as to that policeman that I shot, I really didn’t want to shoot him but I was really, really afraid of him. He had a gun and it looked like a really big gun and I know that it was still in the holster and his hands were in the air, but I was really really afraid that he might come after me. So I’m glad we cleared that up, that I shot him very sincerely and all.
And that is sincerely why you should sincerely should not put my sincere ass in prison.
Roger Moore
But don’t worry, we know that torture is effective. Or do we? It turns out that the CIA refused to study whether torture was effective despite the Inspector General requesting a study. Who needs a rigorous study when you have political overlords to please?
SGEW
@Comrade Darkness: More humane? Maybe, but we’re kind of splitting hairs at this point.
Besides, it’s still completely illegal. From the CRS’s report on the implementation of the Convention Against Torture (pdf):
(emphasis added)
Torture is as torture does.
Lupin
Time to rewatch Terry Gilliam’s BRAZIL.
SGEW
@Lupin: “What have you done with his body?”
As concise an argument for habeas corpus as I’ve ever heard.
HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker
Exactly, and the torture story is just one of many, and not that compelling an example.
The country elected bellicose war machine governments for 60 years and demanded security at any cost. Got rid of the constitutional requirement for formal declarations of war and wrote a unitary executive blank checks to carry out the missions.
What did people think was going to happen?
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
It always astonishes me the way folks ignore Occam’s Razor. After all, the United States executed brown-assed Japanese soldiers for waterboarding white Christian Americans; but when it comes to white Christian Americans torturing brown-assed Muslims… well, we should just “keep walking.”
Whatever the Republicans do can be examined through the lens of white supremacy and white privilege, but we flail about finding other psychological reasons for their hypocritical actions.
Look. The elephant in the room wears a goddamn hood, mm’kay?
JoyceH
Here’s what I’ve never been sure of about Padilla. Was there any evidence against him that wasn’t based on testimony, either his own or someone else’s?
As I understand it, we got onto him in the first place because one of these torturees talked about an American and mentioned a Muslim name that was somewhat like Padilla’s. And then Padilla himself “confessed” to this dirty bomb business – after we’d had him in custody for a few months – and the dirty bomb stuff was never charged.
When he was tried after years of detention and interrogation, he was found guilty of some conspiracy stuff – but was there any real solid proof of that which wasn’t based on someone’s coerced confession? I’ve always wondered if he was even who we thought he was, or if he’d been mistaken for someone else and everything we charged him with was stuff that got wrung out of him.
HyperIon
Michael Scheuer is happy to make the (flawed) arguement AGAIN.
This is the stupidest WaPo column so far. But given the recent efforts of Broder and Goss, it’s a hard call. Read the comments. It’s about 100 to 1 against Scheuer. It’s rich that the guy who failed to catch OBL is now telling us that torture is the solution.
El Cid
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko: Maybe I’m missing something — I’m just not convinced that people are ignoring white / Christian supremacy as being involved in these torture cases.
Is race / religious supremacism more involved in the torture program that it was in blowing up the whole god-damned country of Iraq twice in the last 20 years?
SGEW
@Ivan Ivanovich Renko:
I dunno. Me and my brown ass think your razor might be cutting it a bit fine, to tell the truth.
Rather, I think that race (or ethnicity, or “color,” or whatever) is only one factor in the demonization of the “other” that is necessary for the torture regime. We can’t ignore religion in this matter (“crusade” fer cryin’ out loud), nor language, nor foreign culture et. al. (“clash of civilizations,” etc.).
I agree that race is an important part of the “perfect storm” that engendered the torture program; a very important one. But one wonders: would we have tortured caucasian muslims? Answer: ask Australian white guy David Hicks.
HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker
@SGEW:
We successfully demonized the Soviets, who are not dark, for half a century. And we really demonized something called “communists” who have no ethnicity at all.
AhabTRuler
Then you haven’t really been paying attention.
SGEW
The prosecution had a) seven recorded conversations in Arabic that they alleged used “terrorist code,” and b) Padilla’s fingerprints on an “Al-Qaeda application form.” And, uh, that’s about it.
17 years. The appeal is pending.
SGEW
@HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker:
N.B.: We didn’t torture Soviet spies. And we didn’t create an extensive torture program for “communist” detainees: the closest was the School of Americas which (allegedly) trained foreign agents to torture, wait for it, brown people.
However, again, I believe that race is only one factor in the demonization necessary for such widespread torture (pace my comment, above); an important one, but not the only one. Viz. David Hicks.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@El Cid: Yes. Would they have waterboarded a white German 183 times in a month?
The invasion of Iraq could be viewed as a straight-up smash’n’grab robbery– and we can at least understand the motivations of the thieving bastards. Waterboarding KSM 183 times in a month? Man, that shit sounds personal, to me.
Let us not forget that today’s Republicans are the ideological descendants of the Dixiecrats– you know, those folks who packed picnic lunches to watch the torture and murder of black men?
HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker
@SGEW:
I don’t subscribe to either the “evil by degrees” metrics, or the idea that waterboarding is the worst thing that this war machine ever did. Cheney is awful, but compared to Kissinger, he looks like Father Mulcahy.
JoyceH
@SGEW:
An Al-Qaeda APPLICATION FORM? You have got to be kidding me.
Man, I hope the new professional Justice Department is taking another look at this case, because I’ve always thought that guy was railroaded. If Padilla had been a foreigner, they could have dumped him along the side of the road in the middle of a forest in the middle of the night without a dime in his pocket and then claimed to know nothing about it, but since he was an American and they’d already made such extravagant claims about his guilt, they had to convict him of something.
SGEW
Hrm. I personally disagree, but I certainly understand (and respect) where you’re coming from. Let’s just say that Cheney (and Yoo and Bybee and Rumsfeld and etc. etc.) broke actual domestic statutes and left a paper trail, while prosecuting Kissinger in the U.S. would be very, very difficult: therefore, we have a chance to actually hold these people accountable, while we seem to have to be satisfied with ol’ Henry never being able to vacation in Europe. A little bit of a utilitarian argument, but does it work for you (re: prosecuting Cheney et. al. but not Kissinger)?
Also, my old joke about Kissinger:
Q: Why did Henry Kissinger win the Nobel Peace Prize?
A: For not killing the rest of us.
Beej
I am so goddamned sick and tired of all the debate about whether or not torture “works”! I don’t give a [email protected]#$ if it works or not. I don’t give a [email protected]#$ if you could get someone to give up the bombing coordinates for the entire leadership of Al Qaeda if only you tortured them enough. Torture is immoral, illegal, and puts us on the wrong side of the civilized/non-civilized divide. Damn Bush and Cheney for even considering the crossing of that divide. Damn anyone who thinks that there is any way to justify their actions. We are the United States of America, for God’s sake. WE DO NOT TORTURE.
HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker
LOL.
Not that he didn’t give it a try ………….
kay
@Beej:
Slavery works, for the slaveholder. Assassination works, too.
Coercive interrogation within the US works, if you’re looking for a statement that can be construed as a confession, but we put measures in place in the 20’s and 30’s to disallow it, because we kept hanging innocent people.
If imminent threat is the new test for when we torture, there’s simply nothing stopping us from applying that new standard to any “imminent threat”. Can I torture your family members if I can’t locate you, and I heard “chatter” that you’re riding around with a shot-gun planning on heading for the grammar school? What if they have information that could prevent that attack? What’s the number limit on deaths we’re permitted to prevent with torture? 1,000? 1?
It’s not just a slippery slope. It’s a toboggan ride, and we’re already on the sled. Wheee!
D. Mason
That’s inhuman.
OT: Make a Brute.
kay
I love our new standard for lawbreaking. If it works, we’re for it.
Oh, and it has to poll well, or over 50%.
This is a two-pronged standard: 1. works, 2. polls over 50%.
Bybee should write a memo. I need clarity.
gopher2b
Very doubtful. There would have to be legal cover (e.g. memos) and there do not appear to be any. The person could have been vacinated or it could have been antibiotics and he wouldn’t know (not that I’m saying the government has the right to inject anything….I’m just saying it probably wasn’t “truth serum”).
gopher2b
Very doubtful. There would have to be legal cover (e.g. memos) and there do not appear to be any. The person could have been vacinated or it could have been antibiotics and he wouldn’t know (not that I’m saying the government has the right to inject anything….I’m just saying it probably wasn’t “truth serum”).
gopher2b
Sorry about the double post. I twitchy this morning.
I honestly fear the day when an email or memo leaks that show they were torturing these guys to drum up false connections between Al Queda and Iraq. All hell will break loose then.
kay
I have one more complaint. Neither Joe Leiberman or Diane Feinstein have even a passing familiarity with how Our System works, and are an embarrassment.
The two of them insisting this morning that they have some kind of invented Senate “jurisdiction” that trumps Holder was wrong, and they seem determined to deliberately mislead people, and lead them to believe Eric Holder is encroaching on their turf.
They can hold whatever ineffective and secret whitewash they care to, within the Senate. That has no bearing whatsoever on a determination of whether to bring criminal charges. We have an independent AG, and he doesn’t take orders from Dianne Feinstein.
I was pleased the Lindsey Graham didn’t chime in, because he knows better, and I was ashamed and embarrassed that two leading Senators who are, or used to be, on “my side” are either completely clueless or lying.
HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker
Well, that pretty much describes the Cold War standard since 1948, yes. Not exactly a new thing.
The people abdicated their power after WWII. They are starting to take it back, and that’s a good sign. But it doesn’t happen overnight.
People think that “When the president does it, it’s not illegal” was a punch line. It wasn’t. Nixon meant it, and every president in the postwar Unitary Executive model has lived by it.
Comrade Darkness
@SGEW, I was thinking aloud because for me it was a novel notion. Having been under general anesthesia about 11 times in my life, and one of those people for whom the happy drugs do not block short term memory, I thought, yeah, not a really fun getting all doped up like that, but I’d take it over getting slammed into a wall. (It’s one of my hobbies recounting the entire pre-surgical convo to the surgeon at a later date, because they have a lot of faith in that drug)
Better, yes, to have nothing of this sort going on at all, but that doesn’t, in my mind, preclude comparision/contrast of the menu of what Cheney and Co. were up to. If nothing else, these guys lacked imagination, I can come up with all sorts of things off the top of my head that don’t involve any direct harm, like porno and hookers, for example. I mean, come on. Something that has a chance of working.
HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker
@kay:
Shorter DiFi: I will NOT be ignored.
kay
@HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker:
I was so pleased that she assured us that none of the information she reviews will be released to the peons, with Leiberman shaking his head in agreement.
Like I trust her as far as I can throw her.
Poor Obama. He has to deal with a Congress who stood around like potted plants for 8 years, and now are protecting their real or imagined “turf”.
kay
@HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker:
I am ever hopeful, so I was thinking that big events sometimes lead people to go back to the rules.
Then the President and his Chief of Staff announced there would be no criminal prosecutions, and my head exploded again.
They backed off it, when Holder reminded them that, um, it doesn’t work like that, but WTF was Obama thinking?
Everyone read the rules, and then we can talk. Take a week, read the rules, get back to us.
SGEW
@Comrade Darkness: Like I said, I definitely hear where you’re coming from, re: degrees of abuse. And I am not (necessarily) absolutely decrying the use of any and/or all pharmaceuticals during the interrogations of detainees (although most usages would probably be illegal under current law (see CAT, above)).
However, there is (I posit) a clear line between the more “harmless” use of pharmaceuticals (e.g., tranquilizing detainees during travel: criminal? Probably not.) and the use of “mind altering substances [for the purposes of] disrupt[ing] the victim’s senses.” To wit: getting a detainee high, or drunk, or doping them up during an interrogation session vs. giving them LSD while they’re in solitary confinement undergoing sensory deprivation. On one hand: tweaking their perceptions. On the other hand: literally driving them insane.
Have you ever taken acid, or other major hallucinogens? Now imagine having a bad trip while locked in a man-sized box, with opaque goggles over your eyes and earphones hissing white noise into your ears. For days.
Unspeakable.
HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker
There won’t be, for a variety of very good reasons. One of which is, nobody can describe the prosecutions. Nobody can describe the paths to conviction. And history teaches that past convictions have not resulted in prevention of recurrence. * To prevent the real problem, you need to roll back the Unitary Executive trend, and you can’t do that with prosecutions.
Meanwhile, the basics are all out of whack here.
Take Bybee for example. Would you “prosecute” a lawyer for writing an opinion you don’t agree with? A judge cannot be impeached for a decision he makes. That would make a mockery of an independent judiciary. Will we then impeach a judge for a legal opinion he wrote before he became a judge? And please, let’s not go down the quid-pro-quo theory of how he got his job. That story doesn’t have any legs until there is some evidence of the crime.
Pitchfork waving is simple. Real life is much more complicated.
And pitchfork waving is what got us into this trainwreck in the first place.
The people asked for a simple, knee-jerk war machine government and they got it. Bitching about it now isn’t just ineffective, it’s hypocritical. Elect better governments. That’s the path to prevention.
Nixon/Watergate :: Reagan/Iran Contra :: Clinton/Monicagate :: Bush/Iraqgate
All the king’s hearings, all the kings men, couldn’t stop Humpty Dumpty from doing exactly what he wanted again. Rather quickly, as it turns out.
Stop electing idiots.
Gregory
@r€nato: @r€nato:
As Sullivan pointed out, “enhanced interrogation techniques” sounded better in the original German.
JoyceH
If they have the smoking e-mails that can prove that the White House told him in advance which techniques they intended to use and wanted him to bless as legal, especially if there was preliminary staff work that told him otherwise, they sure as all hell can impeach him. A paper trail that shows that what he signed was not an honest good-faith opinion about the law but a bad-faith acquiescence in what his superiors told him they WANTED the law to say would certainly be grounds for impeachment.
burnspbesq
@HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker:
Bybee went to Gonzalez and asked for a seat on the Ninth Circuit. Gonzalez said, will you go to OLC first? Gonzalez got his torture memos. Bybee got his seat on the Ninth Circuit. Instrumentalities of interstate commerce (phones and email) were used.
There’s your entire prima facie case for “honest services” wire fraud. What more would you like?
Xenos
Take Bybee for example. Would you “prosecute” a lawyer for writing an opinion you don’t agree with?
If it is an obviously, facially flawed opinion in furtherance of a war crime, why the hell not?
In any case, nobody is suggesting prosecuting Bybee (yet). Impeachment is a proper remedy, and it it more political than criminal. It is a way of making politics accountable, and it should certainly be used in this case.
Kenneth Almquist
That depends on the circumstances. If torture is illegal, and if Bybee attempted to mislead people about this in order to get them to break the law, I don’t see any philosophical problem with prosecuting him. We prosecute people for fraud on a fairly regular basis, and this seems similar.
Impeaching a judge for decision is likely to create the impression that Congress will try to punish judges for making politically unpopular decisions. That’s not a concern here because the Bybee memos were wriiten before Bybee became a judge.
Comrade Darkness
@SGEW, My simple mind was thinking entirely in terms of *instead of* the other methods, like solitary, which is heinous, and used way too much on ordinary prisoners, not just combatant detainees. Frankly, you don’t need the mind altering substance to accentuate most of these other techniques, they would only get in the way. Sleep deprivation, for example, is one of the worst. It damages every cell in your body by utterly f*cking up your blood sugar, on top of the mental torture of it which is not unlike drug abuse. If I were dick cheney, I would not see isolating someone via psychedelics from that pain as an improvement on the technique.
Related to this, there is renewed interest in treating ptsd using psychedelics. Also here. I have a friend who regularly undergoes shock therapy, I think I’d feel less bad for him if he got ecstasy instead. Speaking of unspeakable horrors from beyond…
lizzy
I was reading the Newsweek article – ‘We Could Have Done Things the Right Way’
and this jumped out at me –
I guess this is the kind of science the Bush Administration can believe in!
HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker
@Kenneth Almquist:
Rolls eyes.
Right. You can impeach a judge for a legal opinion he wrote before he became a judge.
Maybe you can cite an example, or precedent?
Jesus, the stupid around here, it burns.
Bill
Hey, all you Bush war monger enablers, notice this: words have consequences.
have a nice day, mfers.
TenguPhule
I believe this falls under “demonstrates he is unfit to serve on the bench due to being a complete monster”.
PaulB
Um, yes, actually he can; quite easily, in fact, and usually appropriately.
PaulB
Um, yes, actually you can, depending on the nature of the legal advice he gave and whether it rose to the level of an impeachable offense, something that the House of Representatives gets to decide. Now you can definitely argue that Bybee did not commit any crime with the opinion he signed his name to but your pretense that that opinion is somehow off limits solely because he wrote it before he became a judge is pretty foolish.
Now what was that you were saying about “stupid?”
DBake
Umm… so tax lawyers do sometimes go to jail for advising their clients to do illegal things.
And lawyers in the Third Reich were convicted at Nuremburg for telling the government that obvious violations of the Geneva Convention actually weren’t violations of the Geneva Convention.
I don’t know the general principle. I’m not a lawyer. But I imagine advising your client to do something illegal, when it is really obvious that that thing is illegal, can make you liable for criminal charges yourself.
wilfred
The question ought to be: “Who knew what and when did they know it?”
If, say, certain members of the Senate and House knew of these procedures, knew that a man was waterboarded 83 fucking time, for instance, and did not speak out then or now I’d like to know who they are. Isn’t that the point?
If this is as wrong as we all say it is then such people are not fit to remain in government. Period. I suspect nothing will come out of this precisely because many people did know and said nothing.
Comrade Kevin
@HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker:
How’s that burning feeling, you fucking idiot?
Caravelle
In Jonathan Alter’s Newsweek piece that’s been posted on Hullabaloo, “Time to think about torture” (that, to my shame, I actually remember reading and not being that shocked by it. And I didn’t even think 9/11 was such an immense deal, Un-American surrender-monkey that I am. I have no moral fiber), he talks about using Sodium Pentothal. Maybe that was it ?
Chuck Butcher
This issue will continue to be a political football until a court renders a verdict. Either this is a political debate or it is about the existance of a crime.
If it remains a political debate it will happen again.
Hunter Gathers
From the 1984 UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
Emphasis mine.
Who signed this act in 1988?
Known Communist Ronald Reagan.
Hunter Gathers
I screwed up the above post. All of the language from the Convention should be in blockquotes. I suck.
kay
This is amazing to watch. It’s appalling. Listening to the press has the surreal feeling that I felt during so much of the Bush Years.
Robert Gibbs has now faced tougher questioning on why Barack Obama didn’t mount further opposition to release of the torture memos than President Bush or Dick Cheney ever faced on the torture program itself.
The controversy is now over whether the memos should have been released, rather than the content of the memos.
And that frame is completely driven by the press. They will not allow the substance of the allegations to be debated. Instead, the whole focus is on the release of the information.
I’m just baffled at how the press are protecting the architects of this program, and going after the people that revealed the program.
Is it shame? Are they embarrassed that a non-profit civil liberties group has contributed more to the true story of the Bush years than any newspaper or television news entity, with a simple release of documents?
kay
I guess the lesson the press want us to draw here is that while torture is illegal and wrong, the big crime is revealing it.
What other conclusion can we draw, listening to this insane “debate” they’ve structured?
Revealing torture is political suicide. Practicing torture is good politics.
This, from an entity devoted to “fact-finding”.
They’re really, really upset that the ACLU revealed some facts, and the problem here is not torture, but, incredibly, Robert Gibbs and his inconsistent statements on Barack Obama’s musing on prosecution?
They’re going to “nail” Gibbs? I mean, this is ludicrous.
hat's the
@HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker:
All due respect, you completely missed my point.
It isn’t up to you whether the bring charges. It isn’t up the President, or Rahm Emanuel, and thank God for that, or they’d absolve themselves from inquiry.
President Obama can do one thing if Eric Holder determines he has a valid charge to bring. Obama can fire Holder. That’s it. That’s the extent of his power.
The nitwits in the media set up a frame and you fell for it. They’ve backed off their initial “analysis”, incidentally, and they now concede that criminal prosecutions are up to, um, the prosecutor.
Why it took them three days to get there is beyond me.
Go back to 7th grade civics, and look at the roles of the various entities and branches of Our Government.
You don’t even need law school.
lysias
Was it all a case of mistaken identity? The first reports about Padilla said his Arabic name was “Al Mujahir”, which I think means nothing in Arabic. This was eventually corrected to “Al Muhajir” (meaning “The Migrant”, I believe).
By the way, I think the torturers were at least as interested in getting false testimony backing up their account of 9/11 as they were in false testimony linking Iraq with 9/11. The 9/11 Commission Report’s endnotes show how testimony from the detainees, including ones we know were waterboarded, was used as the source for dozens of operational details of 9/11.
The Sphynx
Yes. Actually, several detainees reported being given pharmaceuticals via suppository.
Beej
@kay: You’re damned right, and it’s scary as hell.