That’s the effect anyway, the actual bill would prohibit contractors from participating in CIA interrogations.
The bill would also require the CIA to follow Pentagon rules and to disclose all detainees to the Red Cross.
Needless to say, Bush will veto.
We now see some letters from Bush and His Evil Minions™ to Congress saying that they could torture who they wanted whenever they wanted, because they were motivated by a noble cause, because their intent was to prevent terrorism, “rather than for the purpose of humiliation or abuse.”
I don’t think that a single nation among the torturers has ever adopted it as a technique because it gave them the jollies*, they have done for precisely the reasons that you give. They wanted information, and to prevent acts that they deemed lawless.
We need to send these folks to the Hague for a fair trial in 2009.
*Dick Cheney excepted, of course. It gives him a stiffie.†
†Apologies for that mental image.
GMU Professor Jeremy Mayer suggests that it will be an overseas arrest for war crimes of some prominent Bush administration official.
While I think that they are war criminals and should be tried, the reaction of the American public will be bellicose and jingoistic, playing to the base lizard brain of hatred, bigotry, and fear of the other that is at the core of Republican electoral success.
Remember Lt. William Calley. A poor officer and a murderer who shot a little boy in the back, but to the American public, he was a hero.
According to Attytood, in response to a question from Will Bunch, Obama replied that he, “would ask his AG to “immediately review” potential of crimes in Bush White House.”
That’s good, though I admit that there is a part of me that wants to see them all water-boarded, I know that this is wrong.
The question is how aggressively he will pursue people after the inevitable flurry of pardons in December and January, which will make this like peeling an onion.
He knew that his advisers were discussing this, and he approved their activities:
“Well, we started to connect the dots in order to protect the American people.” Bush told ABC News White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. “And yes, I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.”
He needs to spend the rest of his life in jail
Abu Gonzales cannot find anyone willing to hire him. He’s too toxic.
The National Lawyers Guild is calling for Yoo’s firing by UC Berkeley and his disbarment.
Additionally, they call for him to be tried as a war criminal.
Christopher Edley, Jr., the Dean of the UC Law School, is saying that while he disagrees with Yoo’s positions, it would be an infringement on academic freedom to take action against him.
Christopher Edley, Jr. is an embarrassment to the profession of law, and to the entire academic world for taking this position, though I don’t think that Edley should be fired for this.
The difference between espousing torture and engaging in a criminal conspiracy to promulgate actual torture.
There is a difference between a lawyer who defends a mobster, and a Consigliere, who actively aids and abets law breaking. Mr. Yoo was clearly the latter.
I would also note that in some of the lesser known Nuremberg trials, judges and lawyers were tried and convicted for their roles which consisted of supplying legal advice and justifications, just like Yoo:
Indictment
- Participating in a common plan or conspiracy to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity;
- War crimes through the abuse of the judicial and penal process, resulting in mass murder, torture, plunder of private property.
- Crimes against humanity on the same grounds, including slave labor charges.
I would suggest that anyone on the UC fund raising or alumni list seriously consider their responses in the future.
Check out my earlier post on this matter merely referred to one of the General’s magnificent snarks, so you might want to look elsewhere for greater analysis.
We now have a report out of ABC news that high ranking Bush administration officials discussed specific torture methods.
According the reports, this was discussed at a “Principals Committee” meeting, and that, “At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.”
It’s clear however that they knew that they were breaking the law:
Then-Attorney General Ashcroft was troubled by the discussions. He agreed with the general policy decision to allow aggressive tactics and had repeatedly advised that they were legal. But he argued that senior White House advisers should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources said.
According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: “Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.”
Neither will the folks in The Hague.
The good general wrote to the Dean of the UC Berkely law school, regarding their hiring of war criminal John Yoo.
I wish I could write so well. The phrase, “Mengele Professor of Sado-Political Studies” is prize.
A shining interrogation center upon a hill
Christopher Edley, Jr
Professor of Law and Dean
School of Law
University of California, BerkeleyDear Dr. Edley,
I’m very impressed by your decision to hire former Justice Department official John Yoo to serve on your faculty. It was a very shrewd marketing move on your part. It allows Berkeley to finally get past its sordid history as the battleground for the expansion of our civil liberties and become the foremost advocate for that “shining interrogation center upon a hill” so many of us wish our nation to become.
Go read the rest.
When he wrote the memo OKing torture, he became a war criminal, and he needs to stand trial, be convicted, and spend the rest of his life in jail.
Fortunately for him, the ICC in the Hauge doesn’t do waterboarding.
FWIW, if that man were janitor at a school, it would be an embarrassment. The fact that he is tenured faculty in the UC Berkley Law Department is repugnant.
As a tactic the boycott sounds lame, until one considers the alternatives.
Still, the Chinese wanted have the opportunity to be the center of world attention by hosting the Olympics, and it seems that they will get that.
My heart bleeds borscht for them.
While this is quite magnanimous of Navy Capt. Keith Allred to all lawyers for Salim Ahmed Hamdan, bin Laden’s driver, this still gives no credibility to military commissions.
It appears that the prosecutors have no concept as to the rule of law, arguing that, “the driver could have conspired in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks without knowing about the suicide plot”.
Under the rules that they have would like to see adopted, this would place the truck drivers supplying food to the guards at Abu Ghraib under jeopardy for torture.
I agree with Captain Allred’s assessment, that “The issue of whether the accused was ‘merely a driver,’ or knew the unlawful purpose and was actively engaged in the unlawful work of al Qaeda seems to be very much at issue”, though I think that excluding subsequent treatment at CIA run and Military run Gulags from the purview of questions, when their answers may have been coerced is a bad decision.
While not an actual authorization of weapons sales, it does give official approval to more detailed negotiations on this matter.
I support the recognition of Kosovo. The nation of Serbia forfeited any right to the territory when it engage in Genocide, and the ability to support Kosavar security forces is a good thing.
That being said, the fact that I am agreeing with a foreign policy initiative of Bush and His Evil Minions™ does make me feel unsettled.
Once again, I am compelled to make the repeat the wisest thing that I’ve read this century:
But it does inspire in me the desire for a competition; can anyone, particularly the rather more Bush-friendly recent arrivals to the board, give me one single example of something with the following three characteristics:
1. It is a policy initiative of the current Bush administration
2. It was significant enough in scale that I’d have heard of it (at a pinch, that I should have heard of it)
3. It wasn’t in some important way completely f#$@ed up during the execution.
Seriously. I’ve yet to see anything wiser yet, and I’m using the loose definition of the 21st century which includes the year 2000.
So the obvious question is, how will they f#$@ it up?
I’m not surprised, but I am disappointed.
Anyone who voted to uphold the veto, which includes 3 Dems, and does not include 5 Republicans are criminally complicit.
Admiral William J. Fallon, the head of Centcom, has been forced out by the Bush and His Evil Minions&trade.
This means we will be seeing air strikes on Iran. My guess would be in September, so as to influence the elections. Wag the dog, baby.
My suggestion for the Democratic candidates, they should make it clear that the AUMF against Iraq does not cover Iran, and as such any order to attack Iran is illegal, even if the order comes from the President.
Furthermore, it should be made clear that there would be courts martial if those illegal orders were executed.
The times is saying that he’s cementing his legacy, and I would agree.
George W. Bush is to good government what Jeffrey Dahmer was to fine dining.
We really need to send all of his senior people to the Hague for trial in 2009.
He is the defense department general council who said that we “had to” get convictions, and he authorized torture.
He is “returning to private life”, which is nicer than Bush’s desire to make him an appellate court federal judge.
This is very interesting:
Last week, a team of faculty and students from Seton Hall Law School—the folks who’ve worked tirelessly for years to document the government’s best evidence (PDF) against the Guantanamo prisoners—released a new report suggesting that the government has recorded all of the interrogations at Guantanamo. Using documents prepared by the government and obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, the team established that all of the 24,000 interrogations conducted at the camp since 2002 were taped. This jibes with reports from the detainees themselves, who came forward to dispute CIA Director Michael Hayden’s claim last winter that the videotaping had been halted in 2002.
So said Pentagon general counsel William Haynes, when it was explained that fair trials always have the possibility of acquittals.
I guess he just hates America and fair trials.
Read the article, largely based on interviews with Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for the Guantánamo’s military commissions.
What we find is, as is stated in the article, “For people like Haynes, justice is meant to serve the party.”
Stalinism at its finest, ant it is unnecessary when the defendants are as guilty as hell.
It will be the Saddam show trials all over again, and the officers officiating and prosecuting, along with the civilians directing them, are violating international law, and US treaty obligations.