Politics Plus is a progressive perspective. All points of view are welcome, but personal attacks against me or anyone who comments here are forbidden. Trading insults never changes anyone's mind. After over a year offline, it's great to be back! This is mostly a political blog, but on occation you will see posts about my personal life and the volunteer work I do in and out of prison as an ex-convict helping other former felons become productive, pro-social members of our communities. Enjoy!
The sicker he gets, the more the Republicans love him.
Fresh off a news cycle that saw him define executive power as bestowing the president the right to massacre whole villages, notorious torture lawyer John Yoo has published a new piece in the Wall Street Journal, boldly titled “My Gift to the Obama Presidency.” [Murdoch delinked]
“Barack Obama may not realize it,” he writes, “but I may have just helped save his presidency.”
How? By winning a drawn-out fight to protect his powers as commander in chief to wage war and keep Americans safe.
Stunning megalomania aside, it is an eerie thing for John Yoo to declare victory of any kind. Reading his op-ed is a little like listening to Emperor Palpatine crow that Luke Skywalker’s journey to the Dark Side is nearly complete. (”Welcome, young Skywalker. I have been expecting you … “)
Yoo begins by describing Obama’s sad devotion to the rule of law as a newly-inaugurated wet-behind-the-ears president.
“In office only one day,” he writes, “Mr. Obama ordered the shuttering of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, followed later by the announcement that he would bring terrorists to an Illinois prison.”
What follows is a brisk re-cap of what he sees as Obama’s most grievous moments as Commander-in-Chief:
He terminated the Central Intelligence Agency’s ability to use “enhanced interrogations techniques” to question al Qaeda operatives. He stayed the military trial, approved by Congress, of al Qaeda leaders. He ultimately decided to transfer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the planner of the 9/11 attacks, to a civilian court in New York City, and automatically treated Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day, as a criminal suspect (not an illegal enemy combatant). Nothing better could have symbolized the new president’s determination to take us back to a Sept. 10, 2001, approach to terrorism.
It’s a veritable runaway train of right-wing talking points and, frankly, it merits no rebuttal...
Only a true GOP sweetheart could be party to gathering bogus intelligence, violating the Geneva Convention, committing war crimes, and making the US an international pariah, while calling it a GIFT!!
Now I ask you this. Were it not for evil government run health care, Cheney would be dead. If a proven war criminal deserves such benefits, don’t the rest of us?
Most of us are thoroughly fed up with the ChickenHawk and the Lizard.
Today on Face the Nation, former Secretary of Sate Colin Powell dismissed former Vice President Cheney’s claim that President Obama has made the nation less safe. Saying, “I don’t know where the claim comes [from],” Powell ticked off Obama’s national security accomplishments, gave a full-throated defense of using civilian courts to process terrorists, and said Cheney’s attacks “are not borne out by the facts”:
SCHIEFFER: Let’s talk a little bit about national security. The former vice president, you just saw him there, he has almost on a weekly basis, it says something about the president is putting the nation’s security at risk. … Has Barack Obama made this country less safe?
POWELL: Well, let me lay out a few positions and facts. … I don’t know where the claim comes that we are less safe. … In eight years the military commissions have put three people on trial. Two of them served relatively short sentences and are free. One guy is in jail. Meanwhile the federal courts, our Article 3 regular legal court system has put dozens of terrorists in jail. They’re fully capable of doing it. So the suggestion that somehow a military commission is the way to go isn’t borne out by the history of the military commission. [...]
SCHIEFFER: Your bottom line answer is no?
POWELL: The bottom line answer is the nation is still at risk. Terrorists are out there. They’re trying to get through. But to suggest that somehow we have become much less safer because of the actions of the administration, I don’t think that’s borne out by the facts.
Watch it:
For weeks, Republicans have been hammering Obama over his handling of the Christmas Day terror attempt, especially the decision to try Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in civilian court rather than a military commission. Many whined that Abdulmutallab had not been properly interrogated because he was read his Miranda rights. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell even tried to score political points by insulting counterterrorism field agents. Of course, they ignored that President Bush treated shoe bomber Richard Reid in almost exactly the same way in 2001. And Obama’s rejection of torture has actually aided Abdulmutallab’s cooperation, not hurt it.
Later in the interview, Powell said that he has “no problem” with 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed being tried in federal court, though he would prefer the trial to be held some place other than New York City. Powell also reaffirmed his commitment to closing the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, saying it “has cost us a lot over the years in terms of our standing in the world and the way in which despots have hidden behind what we have done at Guantanamo to justify their own positions.”... [emphasis original]
Here’s the bottom line. Ever since the US withdrawal from Vietnam, National Security has been the GOP’s exclusive domain. They have used it ever since to portray Democrats as week, attack our patriotism, and strike fear into the hearts of uninformed voters. It boggles me that they have kept up this deception for so long, especially considering that the most significant contribution the GOP has made to national security in recent years is allowing 9/11 to happen on their watch through their incompetence. Suddenly that is changing. Under the Democrats, more terrorists are being killed. High lever terrorist leaders are being captured. Interrogations without torture are discovering better actionable intelligence than anything ChickenHawk and his sidekick, Texas Torquemada, ever got through their war crimes. The GOP is so desperate that they are telling even more absurd lies in a pathetic attempt ho hang onto national security preeminence. It isn’t working.
I still cannot think of Colin Powell without visualizing him standing before the United Nations, parroting Bush/GOP lies to justify their war for oil and conquest that led to the waste of US lives and treasure and the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocents. Nevertheless, it pleases me to see him trying to rehabilitate himself and thank him for his honesty.
I did not cover the horrid OPR report, absolving GOP war criminals Yoo and Bybee, because I had already covered its contents when it was leaked last month.
Daphne Eviatar has prepared an excellent article on why the OCR report should not be the end of this matter.
The New York Times this morning writes that the Justice Department's ethics report on the work of the lawyers who approved Bush administration's torture of detainees "brings to a close a pivotal chapter in the debate over the legal limits of the Bush administration's fight against terrorism and whether its treatment of Qaeda prisoners amounted to torture."
The Washington Post says the report represents "the end of a 5-year internal battle" at the Justice Department.
In fact, the Office of Professional Responsibility report is just the beginning of a bigger and more important battle. Legal ethics investigators concluded that former Office of Legal Counsel lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee committed "professional misconduct" in advising the Bush administration that it was not against the law to torture, humiliate and abuse detainees despite longstanding domestic and international prohibitions against doing so. The battle now will be over whether the U.S. government will meet its obligations to thoroughly investigate what happened and hold the perpetrators accountable.
The final OPR report chastises the two OLC lawyers for reaching bizarre legal conclusions that were wholly unsupported by the law. For example, one of their memos claimed that torture was legal so long as an interrogator's goal was to obtain information rather than to inflict severe pain or suffering - even if he knew he would inflict severe pain or suffering in the process. As one OLC lawyer commented on the memo at the time: "The way it reads now makes you wonder whether this is just an anti-sadism statute."
Meanwhile, the memo's now-infamous definition of "severe pain" as necessarily "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death" not only relied on an irrelevant medical benefits statute for its definition, which the OPR report calls "illogical," but actually misquoted the language of that statute so as "to add further support to their 'aggressive' interpretation of the torture statute," the OPR report concludes. Ultimately, the definition could lead an interrogator to believe, the OPR found, "that pain could be inflicted as long as no injury resulted." It's the "leave no marks" theory of torture.
The list of twisted and inexplicable legal conclusions is long and impressive. In another instance, the lawyers relied on extremely narrow interpretations of the international Convention Against Torture proposed by the Reagan administration that the U.S. had never adopted. And they completely ignored far more relevant sources of law on torture, such as federal court cases interpreting the Torture Victims Protection Act, which found torture had occurred in situations far less severe than the brutal interrogation techniques being contemplated in these memos. In one case, for example, a federal court held that imprisonment for five days under bad conditions while being threatened with bodily harm, interrogated and held at gunpoint amounted to torture.
David Margolis, the Deputy Associate Attorney General ultimately overrode the recommendations of the ethics office to refer the lawyers to state bar associations for disciplinary proceedings, because he decided that the OLC's standards for referral were unclear. But the report of the investigators who actually read and analyzed the memos that authorized such brutal conduct as "waterboarding" (controlled drowning), slamming prisoners' heads repeatedly against a wall ("walling"), weeks of sleep deprivation, stress positions, and confinement in a cramped box with insects provides an astonishing look at how the lawyers tasked with providing objective legal advice to the White House on its most sensitive policies completely contorted ordinary logic and legal reasoning to reach the conclusions desired.
Justice Department lawyer Patrick Philbin at one point asked John Yoo why he included a wholly unsubstantiated section in one of the memos that concluded that the president of the United States, as commander in chief, can completely ignore any law he wanted - such as the prohibition against torture. Yoo said it was in the memo because "they want it in there" -- "they" presumably being whoever had requested the opinion. The memo never explained how the prohibition against torture could be construed in any reasonable way so as to conflict with the president's authority as commander in chief.
Whether John Yoo and Jay Bybee face professional sanctions (that's now up to their respective state bars) is far less important than whether we get to the bottom of what really happened at the Bush White House: who ordered these lawyers to come up with legal reasoning to justify torture? The OPR report suggests that David Addington, Chief of Staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, played a significant role. Who was he getting his orders from?
The OPR report is just another piece of the slowly-emerging puzzle of how the country plunged into what Dick Cheney has aptly called "the Dark Side," abandoning its most basic belief in human dignity and the rule of law to zealously combat terrorism in a way that's ultimately backfired; we're now less safe, and mired in a vicious and protracted war.
In concluding that Yoo and Bybee exercised "poor judgment" rather than "professional misconduct", Margolis emphasizes that "his decision should not be viewed as an endorsement of the legal work that underlies these memoranda," which he notes were "seriously flawed" and represent "an unfortunate chapter in the history of the Office of Legal Counsel." In Yoo's case, his conclusions represented a "loyalty to his own ideology and convictions" which "clouded his view of his obligations to his client" and led him to author opinions reflecting "extreme" views of executive power.
Yoo was among the very small group of lawyers entrusted to write these opinions for the White House because he was already known to hold these extreme opinions. That he ignored or contorted opposing views should not have come as a surprise to his employers; that's what he'd been doing all along as an academic.
It's clear from the report, too, that that's what Yoo was expected to do. As John Bellinger, the Bush administration's legal advisor to the State Department told OPR: "Yoo was 'under pretty significant pressure to come up with an answer that would justify [the program]' and that, over time, there was significant pressure on the Department to conclude that the program was legal and could be continued, even after changes in the law in 2005 and 2006."
Some of those memos were also being demanded under very tight time frames to justify particular interrogations.
So who asked Yoo and Bybee to write these memos, and what exactly were the instructions given? Were they pressured to reach a particular conclusion and provide a "golden shield" for illegal conduct that the White House had already chosen to undertake? The report points out that the OPR investigators were not able to access most of John Yoo's e-mail messages from the time period: "most of Yoo's e-mail records had been deleted and were not recoverable." Why did Yoo delete those messages, and what did they say?... [emphasis added]
Political analyst Lawrence O'Donnell is known for his strong opinions and occasional passionate outbursts. In 2004, he repeatedly shouted down [wing-nut delinked] Swift Boat Veterans spokesman John O'Neill with cries of "liar," leading conservative blogger Michelle Malkin to describe him as "unhinged."
Now O'Donnell has repeated the performance by confronting Marc Thiessen, a former speechwriter for Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush, staunch defender of "enhanced interrogation," and author of Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack.
During an appearance Friday on MSNBC's Morning Joe, Thiessen began by telling host Joe Scarborough, "Barack Obama has eliminated the CIA's interrogation program, which is the single most successful and important intelligence program in the war on terror and possibly in the history of the CIA. ... You've got to think back to the period after 9/11. We didn't even know who hit us. ... This program is why we did not have another 9/11."
O'Donnell wasn't buying it, however. He told Thiessen, "You actually published a book that says that the president of the United States ... 'is inviting the next attack.' Isn't it true that the president you worked for invited the first attack by having no idea what was going on with al Qaeda?"
By this point, Scarborough had already begun attempting to cut O'Donnell off, repeatedly saying, "Lawrence, that's ridiculous," but O'Donnell continued inexorably.
"You just admitted that when you were hit on 9/11, you just said, 'We didn't know who hit us,'" O'Donnell stated. "You were told who was going to hit you before we were hit on 9/11, and your administration invited the first attack -- for which you should live in shame!"
As Thiessen attempted to respond by counting up the number of terrorist incidents under the Clinton administration and O'Donnell continued to talk over him, Scarborough finally jumped in to say, "We're going to break, right now ... and I'm going to be interviewing Marc by myself."
When the show resumed, Scarborough could be heard saying to Mika Brzezinski, "...if you don't balance the meds just right, crazy Lawrence..."
This time Thiessen was allowed to make his argument that we were "caught blind" by the Christmas bomber because we no longer have the ability to torture terrorists. "The Obama administration has thrown that out and gone back to the pre-9/11 approach," he concluded.
Given just 30 seconds to respond, O'Donnell asked Thiessen, "I'm wondering about your own personal experience with torture. I know you grew up in the richest zip code in America, on the Upper East Side. You went to the only boarding school in Connecticut that I know of that has a golf course ... and, of course, like all the torture-mongers in the White House, the Cheney family included, you never served a day in the military. ... With that background, what is it that gives you an expertise in torture? What makes you love it so much?"
"I actually met with the actual interrogators," Thiessen replied. "That's my expertise."...
Thiessen lied when he said we didn’t know who hit us. When Thiessen tried to list Clinton’s shortcomings when confronted with the Bush/GOP failure responsible for the catastrophe, Thiessen was using deferment. This is a criminal thinking error I teach prisoners and former prisoners to avoid. Rather that face up to it, Thiessen deferred by changing the subject. Of course the ‘interrogators’, actually torturers, believe what they did was worthwhile. Without that belief, how could they sleep at night? Thiessen thus based his so-called expertise on the least reliable possible source.
Scarborough should be ashamed for trying to allow Thiessen to parrot his GOP lies unopposed, and his ‘balance the meds’ comment was despicable. I will be calling MSNBC later today to complain. If you care to join me, their number is (212) 664-4444.
Keith Olbermann also debunked Thiessen’s bogus claims, and discussed the incident with Lawrence O’Donnell.
Obama killing too many terrorists? Whatever he’s drinking, it must be mighty strong!
Why is the GOP so intense in their support for torture? Here’s why:
A New York Times / CBS poll confirms the findings from other polls that I reported here yesterday: The public approves of Barack Obama’s handling of “the threat of terrorism” far more than it approves his performance on any other issue.
But the new poll asked a couple of question that the earlier polls I linked to did not, and the results are kind of startling.
“How likely do you think it is that there will be another terrorist attack in the United States in the next few months?” — not next few years, next few months. 58% say very or somewhat likely.
“What do you think is the most important problem facing the country today?” 1% say “terrorism.” One percent!
If my math is right, 57% of the respondents — presumably a representative cross-section of the American people — expect a terrorist attack here in the next few months but do not think it’s the most important problem we have to deal with. I suppose they expect to happen somewhere else, not where they live.
Yet, as I noted yesterday, Obama’s political standing depends rests heavily on public approval of the way he’s handling terrorism. If he didn’t have high marks in that department, he might very well be even lower than the 46% overall approval that this Times / CBS poll gives him… [emphasis added]
Since Karl Rove took over GOP strategy, attacking strength and falsely portraying it as weakness has been their standard ploy, and it’s been quite effective. For example, John Kerry was a war hero running against GW ChickenHawk, who used GHWB’s influence to get into the Air Guard, opted out of foreign deployment, and even ducked out of that commitment. Rove attacked Kerry’s strength with the Swift Boat lies, and they worked well enough for Diebold creativity in Ohio to enable Bush’s second theft of the White House. What the GOP is doing now in their quest for totalitarian power is no different. The good news is that Lawrence O’Donnell heroically refused to let Thiessen propagate their lies unchallenged.
A Canadian man who was deported by US officials to Syria, where he was imprisoned and allegedly tortured, has appealed a court ruling preventing him from suing the US.
Maher Arar filed a lawsuit before the US supreme court on Monday, appealing a lower court ruling that rejected his case because it involved national security information.
Arar was arrested by US authorities while transiting through New York's JFK International Airport in 2002, on his way home to Canada from a family vacation in Tunis.
He was detained on information shared by Canadian police that suggested he had ties to "terrorist" groups…
...US authorities held him in solitary confinement and interrogated him for nearly two weeks before deporting him to Syria.
He was imprisoned for a year in Damascus, the Syrian capital, during which time he says he was tortured before finally being released and returned to Canada.
A Canadian commission eventually cleared him of any connections to "terrorist" organisations [sic] and concluded that he had been tortured.
He was awarded $10.5m in compensation.
Arar's suit before the Supreme Court questions whether "federal officials who conspired with Syrian officials to subject an individual in US custody to torture in Syria may be sued for damages".
David Cole, a lawyer for Arar, said: "The courts below ruled that federal officials cannot be sued for sending an innocent man to Syria to be tortured because the case would be too sensitive."...
I wish Mr. Arar every success here. What Bush and the GOP did to this innocent man is unconscionable. I think we can translate too sensitive in the lower court’s ruling can be translated as too damning to the Bush/GOP regime. Sadly, given the current makeup of SCOTUS, my hopes are not high.
...NEWSWEEK has learned that a senior Justice official who did the final review of the report softened an earlier OPR finding. Previously, the report concluded that two key authors—Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor—violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed “poor judgment,” say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action—which, in Bybee’s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry.
The report, which is still going through declassification, will provide many new details about how waterboarding was adopted and the role that top White House officials played in the process, say two sources who have read the report but asked for anonymity to describe a sensitive document. Two of the most controversial sections of the 2002 memo—including one contending that the president, as commander in chief, can override a federal law banning torture—were not in the original draft of the memo, say the sources. But when Michael Chertoff, then-chief of Justice’s criminal division, refused the CIA’s request for a blanket pledge not to prosecute its officers for torture, Yoo met at the White House with David Addington, Dick Cheney’s chief counsel, and then–White House counsel Alberto Gonzales. After that, Yoo inserted a section about the commander in chief’s wartime powers and another saying that agency officers accused of torturing Qaeda suspects could claim they were acting in “self-defense” to prevent future terror attacks, the sources say… [emphasis added]
I consider this a terrible decision. The US is obligated by the terms of several treaties to investigate instances of torture and prosecute those responsible. The Obama administration has failed to meet that obligation. As angry as I feel over this, he did promise during his campaign to govern looking ahead rather than focusing on past misconduct. I knew this when I voted for him. So for me to complain too much would be rather hypocritical. Nevertheless, I had hoped that DOJ would act independently, investigate, and prosecute, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Addington, Bybee, Yoo, and the other top leaders of the Bush/GOP regime responsible for this stain on our reputation as a nation. I wish that Obama would abandon his completely unproductive fixation on bipartisanship and do the duty our treaty obligations require.
My first response was to assume that David Margolis might be a Bush/GOP regime operative, who had burrowed in at the close of the worst administration in history. I went digging for dirt on the man. I found that he has creds as a straight shooter and a reputation for non-partisan service. Therefore I have to consider that there may well be a sound legal reason for his decision. I look forward to the release of the full report and hope that some of the details about the roll top White House officials played in adopting torture will result in legal action. Otherwise, our best hope is that some foreign nation will arrest them during foreign travels and put them before the world court.
As disappointed as we are over this, we must remember that, despite his protestations to the contrary, McConJob voted for torture in the Senate. Had he been elected, we would still be practicing torture, a far worse alternative.
Scott Horton has written an article in Harpers that reveals the existence of a previously unknown facility in the GOP Gitmo Gulag. It appears that the deaths of three prisoners there, previously reported as suicides, were actually murders:
…Late in the evening on June 9 that year, three prisoners at Guantánamo died suddenly and violently. Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, from Yemen, was thirty-seven. Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, from Saudi Arabia, was thirty. Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, also from Saudi Arabia, was twenty-two, and had been imprisoned at Guantánamo since he was captured at the age of seventeen. None of the men had been charged with a crime, though all three had been engaged in hunger strikes to protest the conditions of their imprisonment. They were being held in a cell block, known as Alpha Block, reserved for particularly troublesome or high-value prisoners.
As news of the deaths emerged the following day, the camp quickly went into lockdown. The authorities ordered nearly all the reporters at Guantánamo to leave and those en route to turn back. The commander at Guantánamo, Rear Admiral Harry Harris, then declared the deaths “suicides.” In an unusual move, he also used the announcement to attack the dead men. “I believe this was not an act of desperation,” he said, “but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.” Reporters accepted the official account, and even lawyers for the prisoners appeared to believe that they had killed themselves. Only the prisoners’ families in Saudi Arabia and Yemen rejected the notion.
Two years later, the U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service, which has primary investigative jurisdiction within the naval base, issued a report supporting the account originally advanced by Harris, now a vice-admiral in command of the Sixth Fleet. The Pentagon declined to make the NCIS report public, and only when pressed with Freedom of Information Act demands did it disclose parts of the report, some 1,700 pages of documents so heavily redacted as to be nearly incomprehensible. The NCIS report was carefully cross-referenced and deciphered by students and faculty at the law school of Seton Hall University in New Jersey, and their findings, released in November 2009, made clear why the Pentagon had been unwilling to make its conclusions public. The official story of the prisoners’ deaths was full of unacknowledged contradictions, and the centerpiece of the report—a reconstruction of the events—was simply unbelievable...
...Now four members of the Military Intelligence unit assigned to guard Camp Delta, including a decorated non-commissioned Army officer who was on duty as sergeant of the guard the night of June 9–10, have furnished an account dramatically at odds with the NCIS report—a report for which they were neither interviewed nor approached.
All four soldiers say they were ordered by their commanding officer not to speak out, and all four soldiers provide evidence that authorities initiated a cover-up within hours of the prisoners’ deaths. Army Staff Sergeant Joseph Hickman and men under his supervision have disclosed evidence in interviews with Harper’s Magazine that strongly suggests that the three prisoners who died on June 9 had been transported to another location prior to their deaths. The guards’ accounts also reveal the existence of a previously unreported black site at Guantánamo where the deaths, or at least the events that led directly to the deaths, most likely occurred... [emphasis added]
The story is sufficiently complex that for me to post as mush as I would like, I’d have to post the whole thing. Instead, I posted just enough to introduce it and strongly encourage you to click the above link and read the whole thing. Keith Olbermann and Scott Horton discussed the article on Countdown.
I’m quite concerned that the Obama administration is actively taking part in the cover-up. I see two possible reasons for this.
The first, and most likely, is that Obama is reluctant, per his campaign promise, to stir partisan rancor. If so, Obama is mistaken. The GOP stances on every issue could not be more partisan. They have used Obama’s repeated attempts at bipartisanship against both him and the best interests of America. Obama needs to put that behind him.
The second is that, if certain Democratic leaders were in the loop and signed off on Bush/GOP war crimes, Obama is trying to protect them. If so, Obama is mistaken. If there are Democrats who are complicit in war crimes, then they must also take accountability for their actions.
I’m sure we’ll be visiting this story again, as more information comes out.
poll should have included racist Democrat politicians like Harry Reid and Bill "bring me my coffee" Clinton
From Jo on January 9, 2010 at 8:51 pm.
Torture is not acceptable at any time, to anyone, or by anyone. Unless of course the form of torture is locking someone in a room with CDs of Susan Boyle playing over ... and over ... and over ...
From Anon Paranoid on January 7, 2010 at 5:12 pm.
I'm against torture, however having said that I say waterboard all republicans, teabaggers, American Christian Taliban Terrorists and the whole previous administration with extra waterboarding for them.
After all according to Republicans as voiced by Dick Heinrich Himmler Cheney's terrorist daughter Liz, waterboarding is not torture so waterboard her at least 6 times during a twenty four hour period.
Oh, I almost forgot Sean Hannity the coward who said he would be waterboarded for our troops and turned to show us the yellow streak down his back, waterboard him 6 times a day for a week then ask him if he was tortured.
God Bless.
From Linda on January 6 on January 6, 2010 at 3:35 pm.
I am not for torture of anyone, anywhere anytime. Today's governmetal decisions are at best disturbing. On January 1, 2009, any adult receiving over $248.00 per month in medicaid benefits is reportedly ineligible for medicaid insurance coverage according to the a worker that approves medicaid coverage for adults. Now, follow that decision up with "Everyone will purchase insurance or risk being fined", and I have a COMMON SENSE QUESTION. Is is a prerequisite that the people who serve themselves, excuse me, us in Washington must sign an affidavit that they do not possess one shred of COMMON SENSE prior to running for the Senate or Congress. Additionally, IS ANYONE BUT ME TIRED OF THE DEMOCRAT/REPUBLICAN GULF!! After all, I am an AMERICAN, not a republican or a democrat. HANG THE PARTIES- WHERE IS JUSTICE, HONESTY, AND EQUALITY FOR ALL IN OUR NATION.
From Otis on January 4, 2010 at 7:46 pm.
I voted 'Other' since I couldn't have multiple choices.
I think that GOP Leg., teabaggers, FOX news commentators, the annoying evangelicals, and anyone else that condoned, approved, and/or encouraged torture are first on the list.
I will include Wall Street CEOs on principle.
From Grung_e_Gene on January 4, 2010 at 1:17 pm.
Torture is not acceptable.
From Annette on January 3, 2010 at 9:33 am.
I voted nobody, because I believe we have to take the high road and stand on our convictions and our patriotism. If we lower ourselves to the standard of the idiot republican's then we are no better than they are.
From TWM on January 3, 2010 at 6:08 am.
Torture Wall Street CEO's with a 75% tax on any earnings above $400,000 no matter where in the world they say they earned it :-D
.
From Kevin Kelley on January 3, 2010 at 12:55 am.
I had selected other before I had realized that there was an option for nobody, but regardless, I would have to say that although there are numerous groups that I believe could benefit from a good torture, such as the tea party protesters, or those who rile them up, like Glenn Beck, I would have to take the high road and not torture any of them.
While they may feel it is okay to violate basic human rights for the benefit of their comfort level, I have principles and despite not being religious, I feel I have a spirituality that the religious right claim they have...
Even Pope John Paul II forgave his attempted assassin. While I am not saying any person should be absolved of their sins, I do believe it is important to not be distracted by the temporary.
From Lisa G. on January 2, 2010 at 7:01 pm.
I voted for GOP Legislators - because they think it's ok to do to everyone else. Why should we reserve all that fun for Gitmo or other prisoners? Let's spread a little of that around. Besides, they're not doing anything in the Congress anyway but obstructing decent legislation so they have plenty of time on their hands. I'll throw the DINOs in there as well, because they are essentially useless as well. They can even invite their benefactors (Big Oil, Big Pharma, Ins. Cos., Military Contractors/MIC, and anyone else. We'll hold it at that Supermax prison where they're gonna put the Gitmo prisoners. It'll be like a big, fun party. Water-boarding for everyone. Bush and Cheney get to go first though.;-)
Nobody was the clear winner here. A few had fun with this, voting and commenting tongue-in-cheek, but all kidding aside, there is only one right answer. It is never acceptable to torture.
If nothing else, this attack should teach us that we have been wrong, if we thought of Afghanistan and Pakistan as the center of terror for Islam’s religious right extremists.
Regardless of whether or not the Nigerian who tried to blow up a US-bound jet on Christmas Day was instructed in Yemen by Al-Qaeda, the White House insists it is not slacking in its anti-terror battle.
"Airline passengers walk into a security checkpoint inside Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, VA, near Washington, DC. Regardless of whether or not the Nigerian who tried to blow up a US-bound jet on Christmas Day was instructed in Yemen by Al-Qaeda, the White House insists it is not slacking in its anti-terror battle."
In early December as he ordered 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, US President Barack Obama warned of the "violent extremism practiced by Al-Qaeda," and stressed that "this is no idle danger, no hypothetical threat.
"Where Al-Qaeda and its allies attempt to establish a foothold -- whether in Somalia or Yemen or elsewhere -- they must be confronted by growing pressure and strong partnerships," Obama said.
His spokesman Robert Gibbs hit the talkshows Sunday to assure Americans after the latest botched attack that there was no let up against Al-Qaeda, and to counter vehement criticism Obama was a soft touch.
"The president certainly has taken steps in his time in office to reorient our priorities as it comes to fighting that war on terror," Gibbs told NBC.
"We're drawing down in Iraq and focusing... on Pakistan and Afghanistan, the place where the attacks of 9/11 originated and where people sit in caves and in houses today planning more attacks in this country, using all elements of American power in places not just like Pakistan, but throughout the world in places like Yemen and Somalia.
"File photo of Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos. US authorities have charged Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, with trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet, using explosives and chemicals he sneaked past security checkpoints in Lagos and then Amsterdam."
"And you've seen already leaders from Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia that have been targeted and eliminated."
Experts and US lawmakers warned that even if no conclusive Al-Qaeda thumbprint is found on Friday's attempt to bring down a plane as it landed in Detroit, the group's radicalized ideology has "metastasized" well beyond traditional safe havens.
US authorities have charged Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, 23, with trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines jet, using explosives and chemicals he sneaked past security checkpoints in Lagos and then Amsterdam.
According to US media citing unnamed US officials, Abdulmutallab confessed once in custody that he had received specific training for the attack from an Al-Qaeda bombmaker in Yemen... [emphasis added]
As expected, the US right is trying to blame this incident on Obama. One ChickenHawk came out of hiding long enough to confirm such an assertion on Faux Noise.
Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) told Fox News' Chris Wallace Sunday that it is "fair" to hold the Obama administration responsible for the a failure to detect an attempted terror attack. Friday, Hoekstra told the Detroit Free Press that the Obama administration needed to "connect the dots."
"You were quoted in the Detroit Free Press [de-linked] this morning as saying that, you know, the key is to connect the dots and maybe the Obama administration will now realize that. Is it really fair to hold the Obama administration responsible here?" asked Wallace.
"Yeah, I think it really is," replied Hoekstra. "Connecting the dots here is not really on this particular case. It's connecting the dots that we've seen over the last 11 months, over the last eight years."…
This is pure bull. It took several years to set up the Department of Homeland Security, under complete Bush/GOP control. It will take several more years to reorganize it in a manner that will actually provide security, not just GOP propaganda. If Obama has been a little slow in embarking on that task, we must remember that there is no aspect of American life that Bush and the GOP did not leave in chaotic shambles. Obama is not at fault because the system left in place by his predecessor failed.
As if this is not bad enough, one Republican Senator (even if he calls himself an independent Democrat) has called for war.
Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Senator Joeseph Lieberman (R-CT) [party affiliation corrected], who leads the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, has a vision of "tomorrow's war."
"Somebody in our government said to me in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, Iraq was yesterday’s war," Lieberman explained. "Afghanistan is today’s war. If we don’t act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow’s war. That’s the danger we face."
Senator Arlen Specter (D-PA), also appearing on the program, seemed to agree, calling an attack against Yemen "something we should consider."
"Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan -- the Army officer who killed 13 people in a shooting rampage at Fort Hood in November -- was linked to Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric now based in Yemen," The Hill noted.
Unnamed administration officials told US media in the aftermath of the thwarted attack that their suspect had confessed to traveling to Yemen and receiving training by Al-Qaeda…
Let us not forget that LIEberman campaigned for McConJob and Mooseolini. He supported their war policy. That was nothing more than an extension of Bush’s war polity. Some do not remember it. Most never knew it, because the regime tried to keep it secret. Those of you who were with me during the previous incarnation of this blog, may remember this video by General Wesley Clark that explains the GOP’s imperialist intent to conquer several nations. The subsequent attacks did not occur only because the GOP is so incompetent that they botched the first two wars.
Now if you are unhappy with how Obama is handling US security and foreign policy, consider the alternative. Need I say more?
I’ve always enjoyed listening to Andrew Sullivan. While I often disagree with him, I respect his integrity. For this article, I owe a Hat-Tip, a big thank you, and a {{hug}} to Lisa G. She left the URL to this article in a comment yesterday.
...The relationship of a writer to a party or movement is, of course, open to discussion. I understand the point that Jonah Goldberg makes that politics is not about pure intellectual individualism; it requires understanding power, its organization and the actual choices that real politics demands. You can hold certain principles inviolate and yet also be prepared to back politicians or administrations that violate them because it's better than the actual alternatives at hand. I also understand the emotional need to have a default party position, other things being equal. But there has to come a point at which a movement or party so abandons core principles or degenerates into such a rhetorical septic system that you have to take a stand. It seems to me that now is a critical time for more people whose principles lie broadly on the center-right to do so - against the conservative degeneracy in front of us. Those who have taken such a stand - to one degree or other - demand respect. And this blog, while maintaining its resistance to cliquishness, has been glad to link to writers as varied as Bruce Bartlett or David Frum or David Brooks or Steve Chapman or Kathleen Parker or Conor Friedersdorf or Jim Manzi or Jeffrey Hart or Daniel Larison who have broken ranks in some way or other.
I can't claim the same courage as these folks because I've always been fickle in partisan terms. To have supported Reagan and Bush and Clinton and Dole and Bush and Kerry and Obama suggests I never had a party to quit. I think that may be because I wasn't born here. I have no deep loyalty to either American party in my bones or family or background, and admire presidents from both parties. My partisanship remains solely British - I'm a loyal Tory. But my attachment to the Anglo-American conservative political tradition, as I understand it, is real and deep and the result of sincere reflection on the world as I see it. And I want that tradition to survive because I believe it is a vital complement to liberalism in sustaining the genius and wonder of the modern West.
For these reasons, I found it intolerable after 2003 to support the movement that goes by the name "conservative" in America. I still do, even though I am much more of a limited government type than almost any Democrat and cannot bring myself to call myself a liberal (because I'm not). My reasons were not dissimilar to Charles Johnson, who, like me, was horrified by 9/11, loathes Jihadism, and wants to defeat it as effectively as possible. And his little manifesto prompts me to write my own (the full version is in "The Conservative Soul"). Here goes:
I cannot support a movement that claims to believe in limited government but backed an unlimited domestic and foreign policy presidency that assumed illegal, extra-constitutional dictatorial powers until forced by the system to return to the rule of law.
I cannot support a movement that exploded spending and borrowing and blames its successor for the debt.
I cannot support a movement that so abandoned government's minimal and vital role to police markets and address natural disasters that it gave us Katrina and the financial meltdown of 2008.
I cannot support a movement that holds torture as a core value.
I cannot support a movement that holds that purely religious doctrine should govern civil political decisions and that uses the sacredness of religious faith for the pursuit of worldly power.
I cannot support a movement that is deeply homophobic, cynically deploys fear of homosexuals to win votes, and gives off such a racist vibe that its share of the minority vote remains pitiful.
I cannot support a movement which has no real respect for the institutions of government and is prepared to use any tactic and any means to fight political warfare rather than conduct a political conversation.
I cannot support a movement that sees permanent war as compatible with liberal democratic norms and limited government.
I cannot support a movement that criminalizes private behavior in the war on drugs.
I cannot support a movement that would back a vice-presidential candidate manifestly unqualified and duplicitous because of identity politics and electoral cynicism.
I cannot support a movement that regards gay people as threats to their own families.
I cannot support a movement that does not accept evolution as a fact.
I cannot support a movement that sees climate change as a hoax and offers domestic oil exploration as the core plank of an energy policy.
I cannot support a movement that refuses ever to raise taxes, while proposing no meaningful reductions in government spending.
I cannot support a movement that refuses to distance itself from a demagogue like Rush Limbaugh or a nutjob like Glenn Beck.
I cannot support a movement that believes that the United States should be the sole global power, should sustain a permanent war machine to police the entire planet, and sees violence as the core tool for international relations... [emphasis added]
Seldom have I seen anything that even approaches the clarity and quality of this analysis of today’s GOP. It’s almost shameful to our side that it came from a conservative, but I welcome it. Thanks again, Lisa!
The Bush administration permitted the world's most notorious terrorist mastermind to escape because it needed additional justification to invade Iraq, according to a Democratic lawmaker from New York.
Rep. Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) leveled the allegation during an interview with MSNBC host David Shuster on Monday afternoon.
"Look what happened with regard to our invasion into Afghanistan, how we apparently intentionally let bin Laden get away," he said. "How we intentionally did not follow the Taliban and al-Qaeda as they were escaping. That was done by the previous administration because they knew very well that if they would capture al-Qaeda, there would be no justification for an invasion in Iraq."
"They deliberately let Osama bin Laden get away?" asked an incredulous Shuster. "They deliberately let the head of al-Qaeda get away right after he, right after the 9/11 attacks? You really believe that?"
"Yes, I do," Hinchey replied. "There's no question about that. The leader of the military operation in the United States called back our military, called them back from going after the head of al-Qaeda because there was a sense that they didn't want to capture him."
"...To suggest that they deliberately let Osama bin Laden get away so they could invade Iraq, that will strike a lot of people as crazy," Shuster countered.
"I don't think it will strike a lot of people as crazy," Hinchey said. "I think it will strike a lot of people as very accurate and all you have to do is look at the facts of that set of circumstances and you can see that's exactly what happened. When we went in there, when our military went in there, we could have captured them. We could have captured most of the Taliban and we could have captured the al-Qaeda. But we didn't, and we didn't because of the need felt by the previous administration and the previous head of the military -- that need to attack Iraq, which is completely unjustified."
Hinchy apparently based his allegations on a recently released Senate report that found then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld rejected calls for reinforcements in December 2001, when the military allegedly had bin Laden trapped in Afghanistan.
"The vast array of American military power, from sniper teams to the most mobile divisions of the marine corps and the army, was kept on the sidelines," the report says.
"Instead, the US command chose to rely on airstrikes and untrained Afghan militias to attack Bin Laden and on Pakistan's loosely organized Frontier Corps to seal his escape routes."
Entitled "Tora Bora revisited: how we failed to get Bin Laden and why it matters today," the report -- commissioned by Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee -- says Bin Laden expected to die and had even written a will.
"But the Al-Qaeda leader would live to fight another day. Fewer than 100 American commandos were on the scene with their Afghan allies and calls for reinforcements to launch an assault were rejected.
"Requests were also turned down for US troops to block the mountain paths leading to sanctuary a few miles away in Pakistan.
"The decision not to deploy American forces to go after Bin Laden or block his escape was made by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his top commander, General Tommy Franks," the report says... [emphasis added]
Considering that Rumsfeld’s ethical standards are so low that he was not only the person who brokered the deal whereby Saddam first acquired chemical weapons, but also the point man for torture at US military installations, I would not put it past him. And since the Bush/GOP regime started planning the Iraq invasion before the 9/11 /2001 attack, Hinchey has a point that killing or capturing Osama would have stifled those plans. What’s your take on this?
Following up my article yesterday about the response from right to the trial of KSM and other te4rriorists, here’s a some info about flotsam in the the National Review.
The main reason that supporters of Bush's anti-terror policies are wetting their pajamas is pretty clear from a look at National Review Online:
We are now going to have a trial that never had to happen for defendants who have no defense. And when defendants have no defense for their own actions, there is only one thing for their lawyers to do: put the government on trial in hopes of getting the jury (and the media) spun up over government errors, abuses and incompetence. That is what is going to happen in the trial of KSM et al. It will be a soapbox for al-Qaeda's case against America. Since that will be their "defense," the defendants will demand every bit of information they can get about interrogations, renditions, secret prisons, undercover operations targeting Muslims and mosques, etc., and — depending on what judge catches the case — they are likely to be given a lot of it. The administration will be able to claim that the judge, not the administration, is responsible for the exposure of our defense secrets. And the circus will be played out for all to see — in the middle of the war. It will provide endless fodder for the transnational Left to press its case that actions taken in America's defense are violations of international law that must be addressed by foreign courts. And the intelligence bounty will make our enemies more efficient at killing us.
No doubt the defense attorneys will try to exclude evidence obtained while these defendants were being tortured in black prison sites. But, the DOJ isn't going to rely on any of that evidence. No judge is going to allow a self-defense argument, so our policies are not going to be on trial. The indictments will be based on information obtained legally. The right is afraid that these folks will be convicted and sentenced to death for a crime that can proven without resorting to torture. And, then, what will be left of their justification for despoiling our country's reputation for upholding human rights?... [emphasis added]
The author makes a good point here. What the right fears the most is not that a terrorist might go free on US soil. They fear the high profile exposure of the truth before the world that they are war criminals, every bit as guilty as the terrorists who will be tried. They fear a worldwide public outcry that they be brought to judgment for their crimes against humanity. They fear that the exposure if their accountability will permanently remove their ilk from power in this country. Let the trials proceed and let the truth be heard, the truth about the terrorists and the truth about the war criminals.
One thing can be said for Eric Holder’s decision. It’s controversial.
The Obama administration said Friday that it would prosecute Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, in a Manhattan federal courtroom, a decision that ignited a sharp political debate but took a step toward resolving one of the most pressing terrorism detention issues.
The decision, announced by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., could mean one of the highest-profile and highest-security terrorism trials in history would be set just blocks from where hijackers for Al Qaeda destroyed the World Trade Center, killing nearly 3,000 people.
Mr. Holder said he would instruct prosecutors to seek death sentences for Mr. Mohammed and four accused Sept. 11 co-conspirators who would be tried alongside him.
But while the civilian system would handle those cases, he said five other detainees would be prosecuted before a military commission.
Those facing a military trial include Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who is accused of planning Al Qaeda’s 2000 bombing of the Navy destroyer Cole in Yemen. All 10 detainees are being held at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
“Today’s announcement marks a significant step forward in our efforts to close Guantánamo and to bring to justice those individuals who have conspired to attack our nation and our interests abroad,” Mr. Holder said.
No decision has yet been made about where to hold the military trials, Mr. Holder said. But the administration’s decision to bring five Sept. 11 detainees onto United States soil for prosecution in the civilian legal system drew immediate fire from members of Congress as well as relatives of victims and neighbors of the federal courthouse.
They argued that Qaeda suspects did not deserve the protections afforded by the American criminal justice system, that bringing them into the United States would heighten the risk of another terrorist attack, that civilian trials increase the risk of disclosing classified information, and that if the detainees were acquitted they could be released into the population.
“We should not be increasing the danger of another terrorist strike against Americans at home and abroad,” said Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York…
I support Holder’s decision. I consider holding the trials in the neighborhood of ground zero poetic in its appropriateness. To hold the trials of these men in a closed Military Commission, although legal, will create the appearance before the world that US justice is just a kangaroo court. While it is true that these terrorists do not deserve the protections afforded by the US criminal justice system, look at the statement that giving them these protections anyway makes about the US before the world. Dispensing justice in full transparency can go a long way toward undoing some of the damage that eight years of torture and abuse of prisoners under Bush and the GOP did to our world prestige. The risk of another terrorist attack is minimal. When we have been prepared, we have prevented such attacks well. We have only been caught with our pants down when we have let our guard down. The 9/11 attack could have been easily prevented had Bush and the GOP not been asleep at the switch. We need not worry about disclosing classified information. The GOP will task Hoekstra do that regardless of any trial. It is on the question of a detainee being acquitted and released in the US, that I got the biggest laugh.
Here's John Boehner's (R-OH) reaction to the announcement that the United States government is capable of administering justice in accordance with our laws:
The Obama Administration’s irresponsible decision to prosecute the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks in New York City puts the interests of liberal special interest groups before the safety and security of the American people. The possibility that Khalid Sheik Mohammed and his co-conspirators could be found ‘not guilty’ due to some legal technicality just blocks from Ground Zero should give every American pause...
Boner is limp with fear that a 9/11 terrorist will be released in the US. This will not happen. First, if the government did not already have an air-tight case, they would not be following this path. Second, if a suspect were to be acquitted, the government would charge him with a whole new set of offenses that are being held in reserve just in case such a scenario were to occur. But if it did happen, I have a couple satisfactory solutions. First would be to move the terrorist next door to Boner. That will keep him shaking in his boots to such an extent that he will have no energy left to disrupt the nation’s business. The other solution is to move the terrorist into C-Street to live with the family. When he discovers that he has so much in common with the residents there, he would probably convert and become a proud part of the American Taliban, Rumor has it that Boner was only able to stand again after an emergency intervention from Pfizer.
When Barack Obama was running for the Presidency he promised a new openness and unprecedented transparency in government. This does not deliver on the promise.
The long road to the proverbial day in court just got longer for five men who claim they were "disappeared" and tortured by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
The men, who say they were victims of the extraordinary rendition programme conducted during the administration of President George W. Bush, have been trying since 2007 to get their cases heard on the merits.
But it is now far from clear that the merits of these cases will be heard any time soon - if ever. The reason is that the Department of Justice - first through Bush administration lawyers, now through Barack Obama administration lawyers - has invoked the so-called "state secrets" privilege, claiming that a public trial would endanger U.S. national security.
The latest development in the case came last week, when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals set aside an earlier ruling by three of its own judges and said a majority of its judges had voted to refer the case to an 11-judge panel for a new hearing. The request to rehear the case, now scheduled for Dec. 15, came from the Obama administration.
That decision put on hold the earlier findings of the three-judge panel, which had reinstated the Mohamed suit in April. That 3-0 ruling rejected arguments by the Bush and Obama administrations that the case concerned secrets too sensitive to disclose in court.
In its tortuous journey toward justice, the Jeppesen case has taken on many aspects of an international spy thriller - involving high courts, senior diplomatic officials in two countries, prisoner abuse and threats to withhold intelligence-sharing among allies if the abuse was publicly disclosed.
The case is known as Mohamed et al v. Jeppesen Dataplan. The Mohamed is Binyam Mohamed, an Ethiopian citizen and British resident who, while in CIA custody in 2002, was stripped, blindfolded, shackled, dressed in a tracksuit, strapped to the seat of a plane and flown to Morocco where he was secretly detained for 18 months and interrogated and tortured by Moroccan intelligence services… [emphasis added]
We have the power to dry up the support for organizations like Al Qaeda. What we call “terrorist” is really nothing more than guerrilla warfare, the same tactic we used against the British in our War of Independence and that the Vietnamese used against us in their War of Independence. Defeating a guerrilla force is almost impossible as long as that force enjoys popular support. The popular view among Muslims is now that the US is engaged in an anti-Islam campaign to the end of controlling their natural resources. The eight years of the Bush/GOP Regime solidified that view. Osama could not have had more recruiting assistance than he got from Bush and the GOP. In order to undo that damage, and in the process earn the support of the world’s Muslim population, the US needs to tangibly demonstrate that the US has changed. To deny Bush/GOP victims a fair hearing in US courts under the guise that the truth will somehow imperil our national security tangibly demonstrates that nothing has changed. It ensures continued support for Muslim guerilla forces. It contradicts Obama’s promise of openness and security.
I'm just a retreaded activist from the 1960s trying to promote progressive values one day at a time, remove the GOP stranglehold on our nation, and insist that Democrats stop acting like Republicans.
Fresh off a news cycle that saw him define executive power as bestowing the president the right to massacre whole villages, notorious torture lawyer John Yoo has published a new piece in the Wall Street Journal, boldly titled “My Gift to the Obama Presidency.” [Murdoch delinked]
