I hope she also warned you about accepting chocolates and nylons from them as well.

I've been saying that I don't think a majority of the German or Italian people thought it was the right thing.

And what did they do about it? They played along, in part, because it was what they thought they had to do.

Mostly yes.

in our case it was a presidential directive

an executive order

http://www.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/F...4.4940_4941.pdf

Actually, the Golden Rule is significantly older than the "flower children." Take it up with Jesus. Or any of the other religious of philosophical ethical codes that incorporate it. Or not.

seeing through rose colored panties

And much of it was influenced by how we were treated by the enemy. About a third of American prisoners captured by the Japanese died in captivity. And many were never taken into custody to begin with. So in many cases we didn't take Japanese prisoners.

After Malmedy I'm sure a lot of Germans never made it to prison camps either.

http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/malmedy.htm

I suppose that implies that the enemy, our current one, will be influenced by how they are being treated by the[ir] enemy. Right?

Within the parameters of their own culture. Being "nice" isn't always the way to get people on your side when dealing with a warrior culture.

When did I ever say we should be 'nice' to them?

And, by the way, now the Arab, Persian etc culture is a 'warrior culture'?

The heck it is.

Well it's official. We torture suspects. Republicans have been lying like dogs. Torture has always been a war crime up until this administration. Thanks to all you morals and values type so-called believers. Torquemada wannabes. Everything is justifiable for the cause.

Hey...the panty boy returns. Did they let you watch the Dem farkups at the retreat?

Failed reeducation camp.

Top Bush aides pushed for Guantánamo torture
Senior officials bypassed army chief to introduce interrogation methods
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/19/guantanamo.usa

America's most senior general was "hoodwinked" by top Bush administration officials determined to push through aggressive interrogation techniques of terror suspects held at Guantánamo Bay, leading to the US military abandoning its age-old ban on the cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners, the Guardian reveals today.

General Richard Myers, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff from 2001 to 2005, wrongly believed that inmates at Guantánamo and other prisons were protected by the Geneva conventions and from abuse tantamount to torture.

The way he was duped by senior officials in Washington, who believed the Geneva conventions and other traditional safeguards were out of date, is disclosed in a devastating account of their role, extracts of which appear in today's Guardian.

In his new book, Torture Team, Philippe Sands QC, professor of law at University College London, reveals that:

· Senior Bush administration figures pushed through previously outlawed measures with the aid of inexperienced military officials at Guantánamo.

· Myers believes he was a victim of "intrigue" by top lawyers at the department of justice, the office of vice-president Dick Cheney, and at Donald Rumsfeld's defence department. . . .

Well Republicans, I hope you're happy. You've instituted torture, eliminated habeas corpus, the Geneva Conventions and the Constitution in your lust for absolute power and control.

Morals and values my ass.

Pavin' the way for four more years.

Pavin' the way to Hell

Best of intentions?


~~~~~~~~~~~



http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&sectio...;m=4&y=2008

9/11 changed everything.

It turned the Republican party into a recruitment tool and legal shelter for war criminals.

My guess is they have a lot of Maoist therapists at the asylum...maybe ya need to spread your visits out a bit.

Which came first: memos or torture?


John Yoo's legal opinions and questions about culpability and timing.

By Scott Horton
April 21, 2008

John C. Yoo likes the limelight, but it's causing him some grief. Of the half a dozen lawyers who played important roles in a Bush administration decision to legalize the use of highly coercive interrogation techniques, only Yoo has emerged as the public face -- and target -- related to the policy.

In 2002 and 2003, Yoo was second in command at the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and wrote two memos, one for Alberto R. Gonzales and one for the Pentagon, that provided broad legal authority for the use of extreme measures in the questioning of wartime detainees. In one famous phrase, the memo to Gonzales concluded that only techniques "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death," could be considered torture. The 81-page Pentagon memo, declassified April 1, contained similar language and added fuel to the fire over torture and the White House. Through it all, Yoo has defended his position in the media.

Yoo is now a tenured professor at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall. Recently, the National Lawyers Guild launched a campaign to have him fired because of his role in the torture issue. This move has touched off a controversy, especially among legal academics concerned about tenure and academic freedom. Boalt Hall Dean Christopher Edley Jr. posted a response on the school's website in which he criticized the torture memos but defended Yoo: He was merely a "legal advisor"; real culpability rested with those who directed or implemented the administration's program, not with Yoo. Edley saw no basis on which Yoo could be charged with a crime. He quoted university guidelines under which the "commission of a criminal act which has led to conviction in a court of law" provides the basis for dismissal of a tenured professor.

It's easy to understand the concern that academics have. If Yoo were fired on the strength of a public outcry about his ideas on torture, it could send a chill through academia. America's strengths as a nation include the preservation of an atmosphere in higher education that encourages the free expression of ideas, even radical and highly unpopular ones.

But does academic freedom really sit at the heart of this controversy? It's not Yoo's ideas in an academic setting that give rise to his current problems but his conduct as a government lawyer. Yoo says that he was asked his opinion about technical legal issues related to interrogation and detainee treatment during wartime, and he gave it his best shot. He also argues that he strained to give policymakers and actors the greatest possible latitude in which to manage a difficult conflict. But he only advised and theorized; others took the decision to implement the program.

But Yoo's account of how and why the torture memos were crafted may not hold up. Congress is preparing hearings into the subject, and they have invited Yoo to testify. International law scholar Philippe Sands and other writers have punched holes in Yoo's claims about the facts. It increasingly appears that the Bush interrogation program was already being used before Yoo was asked to write an opinion. He may therefore have provided after-the-fact legal cover. That would help explain why Yoo strained to take so many implausible positions in the memos.

It also appears that government lawyers had told Bush administration officials that some of the techniques already in use were illegal, even criminal. In fact, a senior Pentagon lawyer described to me exchanges he had with Yoo in which he stressed that those using the techniques could face prosecution. Yoo notes in his Pentagon memo that he communicated with the Criminal Division of the Justice Department and got assurances that prosecutions would not be brought. The question becomes, was Yoo giving his best effort at legal analysis, or was he attempting to protect the authors of the program from criminal investigation and prosecution?

In any case, Yoo kept the program running. Even the man who came in to run the Office of Legal Counsel after Yoo's departure, Jack Goldsmith, has written that he understood Yoo's project this way. Goldsmith also rescinded Yoo's memos.

According to Human Rights First, more than 100 people have died in U.S. detention in the war on terrorism. It documented 11 cases where the deaths resulted from coercive interrogation techniques, and others where there was at least some connection. Yoo insists that there is no relationship between the deaths and his advice, because he didn't set policy or carry it out, he merely offered a legal opinion. But had he refused to give the opinion that was sought, the program might have been suspended and some of those detainees might be alive.

Much of the legal work surrounding the torture memos was done in the shadows. It's possible that when all the facts about their preparation and use come out, Yoo will be exonerated. But the criminal law and ethical issues surrounding his work on the memos are very serious.

Is it right to say that lawyers dispensing bad advice in memos face no liability for what happens when people act in reliance on them? At the end of World War II, the U.S. took a different view in one narrow area. When the legal advice had to do with the treatment of detainees in wartime, the U.S. argued, lawyers had to adhere closely to the law or face prosecution. In one case, two German Justice Ministry lawyers were charged and sentenced to 10 years in prison for giving advice that allowed the creation of a special internment system for suspected insurgents. Their advice was close to that dispensed by Yoo.

The Bush administration came to Washington promising a culture of accountability. In this area, as in so many others, it has delivered just the opposite.

New York attorney Scott Horton teaches at Columbia Law School.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-...0,1892568.story

what this asylum needs is more mao bell

CIA Foresaw Interrogation Issues
Agency Considered Investigations 'Virtually Inevitable'



The CIA concluded that criminal, administrative or civil investigations stemming from harsh interrogation tactics were "virtually inevitable," leading the agency to seek legal support from the Justice Department, according to a CIA official's statement in court documents filed yesterday.

The CIA said it had identified more than 7,000 pages of classified memos, e-mails and other records relating to its secret prison and interrogation program, but maintained that the materials cannot be released because they relate to, in part, communications between CIA and Justice Department attorneys or discussions with the White House.

Nineteen of those documents were withheld from disclosure specifically because the Bush administration decided they are covered by a "presidential communications privilege," according to the filings, made in federal court in Manhattan. Some were "authored or solicited and received by the President's senior advisors in connection with a decision, or potential decision, to be made by the president."

Although the precise content of the documents is unknown, the agency's statements illustrate the extent to which senior White House officials were involved in decision-making on CIA detentions, interrogations, and renditions, a term for forced transfers of prisoners. These topics were the targets of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by liberal advocacy groups that compelled the CIA's disclosures.

The flow of documents, by itself, also suggests that the CIA's unorthodox interrogation program was the focus of behind-the-scenes debate at the highest levels of the Bush administration after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The documents indicate that lawyers at the CIA and elsewhere were aware that CIA personnel might be subject to criminal prosecution or other legal sanctions.

After the CIA's use of harsh interrogation tactics, including a form of simulated drowning, became known, the agency said they were authorized by a series of secret Justice Department legal opinions. President Bush has strongly defended the legality and efficacy of the program, and recently acknowledged that he approved of high-level White House meetings on precise interrogation practices.

The records submitted to the court list and briefly describe dozens of communications between the CIA and the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, or OLC. At least 10 were in 2004, five were in 2005, and seven were in 2006; virtually all were classified "top secret" or even more restricted.

"The CIA's purpose in requesting advice from OLC was the very likely prospect of criminal, civil, or administrative litigation against the CIA and CIA personnel who participate in the Program," said a declaration from Ralph S. DiMaio, information review officer for the CIA's clandestine service. He added that the CIA considered such proceedings "to be virtually inevitable."

Asked for comment, CIA spokesman George Little said, "Weighing relevant legal factors at the start of any new program is not only logical but is the responsible thing to do. Unfortunately, the fact that people and organizations follow the law does not prevent them from becoming the subject of litigation later on."

But Curt Goering, senior deputy executive director of Amnesty International USA, which is involved in the lawsuit, said the flow of documents shows that the Bush administration "didn't go into this system blind and they didn't build this system blind," adding: "It appears to be a calculated and calibrated effort to justify the unjustifiable."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...d=moreheadlines

Helen Thomas is one of the only real journalists in the Washington press corp. The rest are afraid of losing their access.


Thomas Breaks Press’s 14 Day Silence On Bush’s Torture Approval, Chides Colleagues: ‘Where Is Everybody?’»

On April 9, ABC News reported that in 2002, President Bush’s most senior advisers approved the use of harsh interrogation tactics. Days later, Bush confirmed to ABC he “approved” of the tactics. Sadly, the media have largely ignored the story since it was first reported. Moreover, not one White House press corps reporter has raised the issue with the Bush administration…until today.

During this afternoon’s White House press briefing, reporter Helen Thomas noted that Bush “has admitted that he did sign off on torture” saying it damages “the credibility of this country.” But press secretary Dana Perino denied that the United States has ever tortured detainees and referred to testimony from CIA Director Michael Hayden as evidence:

THOMAS: The president has said […] we do not torture. Now he has admitted that he did sign off on torture, he did know about it. So how do you reconcile this credibility gap? […]

PERINO: The United States has not, is not torturing any detainees in the global war on terror. And General Hayden, amongst others, have spoken on Capitol Hill fully in this regard. […] And you can go back through all the public record.

Someone should have just reached out and smacked this lying beotch right in her face.

Watch it:

In fact, during a February 5 Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Hayden said outright that “waterboarding has been used” on three detainees in U.S. custody. But Hayden has refused to label waterboarding “torture,” calling it a “legal term” which seems to fit nicely with the Bush administration’s self-serving narrowed legal definition.

But waterboarding is torture and illegal under both U.S. and international law – with experts, government officials and those who have been subject to the harsh treatment all agreeing.

Seeming to acknowledge her colleagues’ absence on this story, an exasperated Thomas said out loud after her exchange with Perino: “Where is everybody? For God’s sakes.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/23/thomas...eagues-torture/

911 was the big lie that paved the way

lies have been very very good for bush and they will never stop

CIA admits they will continue rendition program, which allows torture overseas

John Byrne
Published: Thursday April 24, 2008


Documents show they expected legal challenges from the start

The Central Intelligence Agency knew from the beginning that its secret detention and torturous interrogation tactics probably bordered on illegal from the start, according to new documents identified through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

In a filing yesterday, the CIA said it had identified 7,000 pages of classified memos, emails and other records relating to President Bush's secret detention and interrogation program. Human rights groups quickly jumped on the filing -- which came after their own Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking information about those detained.

The CIA also acknowledged in their filings that the program “will continue.” Terror suspects detained or "renditioned" by the United States are transferred to third party countries that allow torture which gives the US a legal loophole to allow harsh interrogation without being legally liable. Such suspects, who effectively disappear, are held without access to courts.

The US has refused to produce a list of the suspects it is holding in sites overseas, and only recently provided a list of those held captive at Guantánamo Bay.

Amnesty International says at least 30 people are believed to still be held in secret prisons.

In 2006, President Bush muted dissent surrounding the program by announcing that he would transfer 14 "high-value" detainees to Guantánamo Bay.

The filing also shows that the agency sought legal advice from the White House Office of Legal Counsel numerous times over several years.

"The CIA's purpose in requesting advice from OLC was the very likely prospect of criminal, civil, or administrative litigation against the CIA and CIA personnel who participate in the Program," Ralph S. DiMaio, information review officer for the CIA's clandestine service, said in the documents.

Such proceedings, he added, would "be virtually inevitable."

Nineteen documents were withheld; the Bush Administration cited "presidential communications privilege." The withholding of documents under presidential privlige has been a common practice of the Bush Administration -- but its decision to do so in this case appears a tacit acknowledgment of the high-level interaction between Bush advisors and CIA officials.

The filing says that some of the withheld documents were "authored or solicited and received by the President's senior advisors in connection with a decision, or potential decision, to be made by the president."
Rights groups say CIA is hiding criminal activity

Amnesty International USA, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the International Human Rights Clinic at NYU School of Law were the key litigants seeking the documents made the claim following a summary judgment motion by the agency.

“For the first time, the CIA has acknowledged that extensive records exist relating to its use of enforced disappearances and secret prisons,” Curt Goering, AIUSA senior deputy executive director, said in a statement yesterday. “Given what we already know about documents written by Bush administration officials trying to justify torture and other human rights crimes, one does not need a fertile imagination to conclude that the real reason for refusing to disclose these documents has more to do with avoiding disclosure of criminal activity than national security.”

RAW STORY was the first news outlet to identify the exact location of one of the sites in the CIA's secret prison network, which was revealed first by the Washington Post. Raw Story identified a prison in northeastern Poland, Stare Kiejkuty, that was used as a transit point for terror suspects.

Once a Soviet-era compound once used by German intelligence in World War II, Stare Kiejkuty is best known as having been the only Russian intelligence training school to operate outside the Soviet Union. Its prominence in the Soviet era suggests that it may have been the facility first identified – but never named – when the Washington Post’s Dana Priest revealed the existence of the CIA’s secret prison network in November 2005.

The groups say that they're not the only ones being stonewalled. Congress, they say, is getting the short end of the stick as well.

"Documents released to plaintiffs by the CIA demonstrate that many within the government itself have been unable to obtain accurate information from the CIA," the groups said. "These documents, which include letters from Members of Congress to the CIA, demonstrate a pattern of withholding information from Congress. In a pointed bipartisan letter on Oct. 16, 2003, then-Chair and Ranking Member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence requested that CIA Director George Tenet provide senior level briefings on the treatment of, and information obtained by, three men known to be held in secret CIA detention, admonishing the CIA by stating that the committee was 'frustrated with the quality of the information' provided in past briefings."

“The CIA has employed illegal techniques such as torture, enforced disappearances, and extraordinary rendition,” said Meg Satterthwaite, Director of the NYU IHRC. “It cannot use FOIA exemptions as a shield to hide its violations of U.S. and international law.”

CIA has begun to lose, destroy documents

Two recent reports signal that the agency has begun to destroy evidence of harsh interrogations conducted at US prisons. Last year, the CIA acknowledged it had destroyed videotapes of two interrogations they were asked to provide to the Sept. 11 commission.

Earlier this week, the erstwhile director of interrogations at Guantánamo Bay said records of a prisoner who accused his captors of torturing him had been destroyed.

"Retired general Michael Dunlavey, who supervised Guantánamo for eight months in 2002, tried to locate records on Mohammed al-Qahtani, accused by the US of plotting the 9/11 attacks, but found they had disappeared," the Guardian writes. "The records on al-Qahtani, who was interrogated for 48 days - "were backed up ... after I left, there was a snafu and all was lost."

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/CIA_knew_sec...ogram_0424.html

Feith: ‘We Took An Extremely Strong Pro-Geneva Convention Position In The Pentagon’

feithpentagon.jpgSince writing his new book, Iraq war architect Doug Feith has consistently tried to rewrite the history of Bush administration foreign policy, blaming its failures on others. Feith continued these gross distortions yesterday, in a three-hour interview with right-wing radio talker Hugh Hewitt.

It is well-known that the administration’s torture program violates the Geneva conventions, which even conservatives admit. Feith told Hewitt the administration was “strongly pro-Geneva convention,” and so was he:

FEITH: We took an extremely strongly pro-Geneva Convention position in the Pentagon. And what I said when I briefed Secretary Rumsfeld on this, and briefed the President on it, is we have troops all over the world. There is no country in the world that has a stronger interest in promoting respect for the Geneva Conventions than the United States, and there’s no institution of the U.S. government that has a stronger interest in that than the Pentagon. … [T]hey are a part of the law of the United States, they’re treaties in force, and I thought the Pentagon had an extremely strong interest in promoting respect for the Geneva Conventions.

Listen to it:

If Feith had such respect for the Geneva Conventions, then why did he help the administration evade them? In his new book on the administration’s torture program, British international lawyer Phillippe Sands interviewed Feith and reported that Feith “took the steps to ensure that none of these detainees could rely on Geneva.”

Sands told Vanity Fair that Feith’s argument against Geneva “prevailed,” as the President signed an order turning Guantanamo into a “Geneva-free zone.” Feith seemed unrepentant:

The Common Article 3 restrictions on torture or “outrages upon personal dignity” were gone. “This year I was really a player,” Feith said, thinking back on 2002 and relishing the memory. I asked him whether, in the end, he was at all concerned that the Geneva decision might have diminished America’s moral authority. He was not. “The problem with moral authority,” he said, was “people who should know better, like yourself, siding with the assholes, to put it crudely.”

“As he saw it, either you were a detainee to whom Geneva didn’t apply or you were a detainee to whom Geneva applied but whose rights you couldn’t invoke,” Sands noted. “That’s the point,” Feith admitted.

Furthermore, Feith reportedly sought the help of torture advocate John Yoo, then at the Justice Department, in evading the Conventions. Judge Advocate General lawyers, who rejected Feith’s views, “said he had a dismissive, if not derisive, attitude toward the Geneva Conventions,” according to lawyer Scott Horton.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/24/feith-geneva/

Lots of jobs done gone overseas...why not panties?

not til yer outa diapers

Letters show latitude on U.S. interrogations: report

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Recent letters from the U.S. Justice Department to Congress state that intelligence agents working on counter-terrorism can legally use interrogation techniques that might otherwise be banned by international law, The New York Times reported in its Sunday editions.

The Justice Department's interpretation shows the Bush administration is contending that the boundaries should have a degree of latitude, the Times said, despite the president's order last summer which he said meant the CIA would hew to international norms on the treatment of detainees.

The United States has faced heavy criticism from rights groups and some allies for its use of a simulated form of drowning known as "waterboarding" during interrogations and for holding hundreds of suspected militants in a prison camp at a U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

A March 5 letter from the Justice Department to Congress makes clear the Bush administration has not set boundaries for which interrogation methods might violate the ban in the Geneva Conventions on "outrages upon personal dignity," the Times reported.

"The fact that an act is undertaken to prevent a threatened terrorist attack, rather than for the purpose of humiliation or abuse, would be relevant to a reasonable observer in measuring the outrageousness of the act," Brian Benczkowski, a deputy assistant attorney general, wrote in one letter.

The Times said the letters were provided by the staff of Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

The committee had received classified briefings on the matter and Wyden had requested further information, which yielded the letters, the paper said.

A senior Justice Department official, speaking to the Times on condition of anonymity, said of the classified information: "I certainly don't want to suggest that if there's a good purpose you can head off and humiliate someone."

But he said "the fact that you are doing something for a legitimate security purpose would be relevant."

"There are certainly things that can be insulting that would not raise to the level of an outrage on personal dignity," the official said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN2640291420080427

So the Department of Justification cleared it.



DOJ giving interrogators room to breach international law.»

The New York Times reports that recent letters from the Justice Department state that “American intelligence operatives attempting to thwart terrorist attacks can legally use interrogation methods that might otherwise be prohibited under international law, specifically, the Geneva Conventions:

While the Geneva Conventions prohibit “outrages upon personal dignity,” a letter sent by the Justice Department to Congress on March 5 makes clear that the administration has not drawn a precise line in deciding which interrogation methods would violate that standard, and is reserving the right to make case-by-case judgments.

“The fact that an act is undertaken to prevent a threatened terrorist attack, rather than for the purpose of humiliation or abuse, would be relevant to a reasonable observer in measuring the outrageousness of the act,” said Brian A. Benczkowski, a deputy assistant attorney general, in the letter, which had not previously been made public.

“What they are saying is that if my intent is to defend the United States rather than to humiliate you, than I have not committed an offense,” said Scott L. Silliman of Duke University.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/26/doj-gi...l-law/#comments

we are a rogue nation

Is The US Now A Non-Geneva State?

28 Apr 2008 09:31 am


The manner in which free societies lose their moral compass is always incremental. Step by step by step, certain core values are whittled away. There is rarely a moment at which a government stands up, and asks its people if they wish to abandon such "quaint" notions as the Geneva Conventions, the rule of law, humane interrogation or habeas corpus. These things are abandoned incrementally or secretly, slice by slice, euphemism by euphemism, the chronology always clearer in retrospect than at the time. And each incremental step is always portrayed as a small but essential temporary sacrifice for the sake of security in a time of great and imminent peril.

And so defenders of torture have long argued that is is essential to make torture legal - but only in the ticking time bomb scenario. And yet, such a scenario has not yet happened and the United States has still indisputably abused and dehumanized thousands of prisoners in its custody, "disappeared" and tortured hundreds, and seen more than a dozen die in "interrogation". We now know, moreover, the following undisputed facts: the president of the United States and his closest advisers devised, orchestrated and monitored interrogation methods banned by the Geneva Conventions at Guantanamo Bay and subsequently in every theater of combat; these techniques were used not only in the extra-legal no-man's land of Guantanamo Bay but also at the prison at Abu Ghraib where photographic evidence of many of the actual techniques explicitly authorized by the president - stress positions, hoods, mock-executions, etc. - was incontrovertible. We now know that those techniques that the president expressed "shock" at were already explicitly authorized for use by other agents by him long before Abu Ghraib was exposed.

Moreover, even after attempts by the Court and the Congress to rein in these methods - which were once prosecuted by the US as war-crimes - the president continued to defend, use and advance violations of Common Article Three in violation of the law and the Constitution. In the last week, we have also learned the following: that some Gitmo inmates have testified to being injected with some kind of substance:

Adel al-Nusairi remembers his first six months at Guantanamo Bay as this: hours and hours of questions, but first, a needle. "I'd fall asleep" after the shot, Nusairi, a former Saudi policeman captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2002, recalled in an interview with his attorney at the military prison in Cuba, according to notes. After being roused, Nusairi eventually did talk, giving U.S. officials what he later described as a made-up confession to buy some peace.

"I was completely gone," he remembered. "I said, 'Let me go. I want to go to sleep. If it takes saying I'm a member of al-Qaeda, I will.' "

We have also discovered that the president is still insisting that he has the power to violate Geneva at will on a case-by-case basis, rendering the rule of law moot and the Constitution toothless. Money quote:

While the Geneva Conventions prohibit “outrages upon personal dignity,” a letter sent by the Justice Department to Congress on March 5 makes clear that the administration has not drawn a precise line in deciding which interrogation methods would violate that standard, and is reserving the right to make case-by-case judgments.

“The fact that an act is undertaken to prevent a threatened terrorist attack, rather than for the purpose of humiliation or abuse, would be relevant to a reasonable observer in measuring the outrageousness of the act,” said Brian A. Benczkowski, a deputy assistant attorney general, in the letter, which had not previously been made public.

And so abuse and torture are entirely dependent, we are told, on the apparent motives of the abusers and torturers. But torture is actually defined in the law as an illegal tool devised not for sadism's sake but as a means to extract information. And notice the extremely slippery slope. We no longer have torture as an extreme last resort in the face of a ticking time-bomb; we have authorized it simply "to prevent a threatened terrorist attack." That means any time anywhere by anyone authorized by the government after 9/11, no? And if a foreign government were to use such a standard? What do we say then?

We also know that the torture and interrogation camp at Guantanamo Bay has become for many of its inmates the functional equivalent of a lunatic asylum. It is not very hard to see why. If you were not crazy before you got there, it will not take long for the abuse and isolation and total hopelessness of the place to get into your head. The cells are 8 by 12 feet, have no windows and inmates are in solitary confinement and stationary for 22 hours a day. There is no escape and no possibility of a fair trial by any traditional standards of "fair". No one locked up in these conditions has been tried or convicted of anything. And we wonder why some have attempted suicide or gone on hunger-strike? From the New York Times a few days ago on the conditions endured by the most high-profile of the prisoners:

“Conditions are asphalt, excrement and worse,” [Hamdan] wrote his lawyers in February. “Why, why, why?” At Guantánamo, there are no family visits, no televisions and no radios. A new policy will for the first time permit one telephone call a year.

In the cells where Mr. Hamdan and more than 200 of Guantánamo’s 280 detainees are held, communication with other detainees is generally by shouting through the slit in the door used for the delivery of meals. Mail is late and often censored, lawyers say.

Conditions are more isolating than many death rows and maximum-security prisons in the United States, said Jules Lobel, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who is an expert on American prison conditions.

We have evidence of what abuse and torture does to prisoners, in the case of Jose Padilla, an American citizen subjected to torture at the behest of the president:

Dr. Hegarty, one of two mental health professionals who examined him, said Mr. Padilla was "fearful of being thought of as crazy." She described him as "hypervigilant," his eyes darting about, his face twitching into grimaces, his "startle response" on constant high alert.

"During questioning, he often exhibits facial tics, unusual eye movements and contortions of his body," Mr. Patel said. "The contortions are particularly poignant since he is usually manacled and bound by a belly chain when he has meetings with counsel."

These things are continuing for all we know. This is what the United States has become. To see what is in front of one's nose needs a constant struggle.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_...now-a.html#more

remove the rose tint glasses

The term "monster" comes to mind. I hope you rightwing turds are happy with what you've done. You've turned us into torturers and tyrants. This blowhard ass hole is a perfect representative of your corrupt, amoral cult. You shelter and defend war criminals and people like this clown.


Scalia: Does Torture Violate ‘Cruel And Unusual Punishment’ Provision? ‘No.’

Last night, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia granted his first broad-based television interview, to Lesley Stahl on CBS’s 60 Minutes. There he explained that the torture of detainees does not violate the 8th Amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment” because, according to Scalia, torture is not used as punishment:

STAHL: If someone’s in custody, as in Abu Ghraib, and they are brutalized, by a law enforcement person — if you listen to the expression “cruel and unusual punishment,” doesn’t that apply?

SCALIA: No. To the contrary. You think — Has anybody ever referred to torture as punishment? I don’t think so.

STAHL: Well I think if you’re in custody, and you have a policeman who’s taken you into custody–

SCALIA: And you say he’s punishing you? What’s he punishing you for? … When he’s hurting you in order to get information from you, you wouldn’t say he’s punishing you. What is he punishing you for?

Watch it:

Scalia’s parsing of the 8th Amendment blindly ignores reports showing that the abuse at Abu Ghraib was about torture and humiliation, not information-gathering. In 2004, the Washington Post reported MPs involved in the abuse “said detainees were beaten and sexually humiliated as punishment or for fun.” A recent New Yorker profile of one of the soldiers there confirmed that “mostly what interrogators wanted when they asked for ’special treatment’ was punishment: take away his mattress, keep him awake, take away his clothes.”

What’s more, as Human Rights First points out, torture raises other constitutional questions besides 8th Amendment violations:

[I]t seems Justice Scalia has forgotten about the 5th Amendment’s guarantee of due process. Furthermore, a court holding a witness in contempt for refusing to cooperate with a judicial proceeding is, in fact, quite different than an interrogator resorting to physical abuse when a prisoner refuses to talk.

Scalia has repeatedly latched on to the “red herring” idea of a ticking time-bomb scenario to justify torture. He approvingly cites torture-happy Jack Bauer, the fictional star of “24,” and recently he declared it would be “absurd to say that you can’t stick something under the fingernails, smack them in the face.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/28/scalia-60-minutes/

That's why panties were used. As long as ya have fun with punishment...ya can't call it torture.

you'd put em on Jesus on the cross

Best Intentions

28 Apr 2008 12:16 pm

Phillip Carter writes:

The Bush administration has essentially adopted a consequentialist legal calculus for its detention and interrogation system. But if you're going to be a consequentialist, then you need to be a good one, and accurately assess the costs and benefits of a given policy choice before adopting (or continuing) it. Senior officials in the White House, Justice Department, Pentagon and CIA may honestly believe that torture (or coercive interrogation, or whatever label you choose) is necessary. They may honestly think these policies are in the national interest. But if so, they're wearing blinders -- and totally oblivious to the strategic blowback from these policies.

At this point, they've gone too far into criminality to turn back, I fear.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_...intentions.html

Just another day at Guantanamo, I guess.

On the witness stand was the former chief prosecutor for the tribunals, Col. Morris Davis. Called to testify by defense lawyers, he told the court what he'd told the press -- that he'd quit after becoming convinced that the political appointees overseeing the system were about politics first and justice second, that he was told "we can't have acquittals," and that he was pushed to land indictments or plea deals before the election. He also said that his superiors saw no problem with using confessions obtained through torture, including waterboarding. Everything is "fair game," he says he was told, "let the judge sort it out."

And then there's Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the alleged driver for Osama bin Laden. Hamdan's lawyers say that interrogators beat him and sexually humiliated him, among other things, and are arguing that he's unfit to stand trial because he's essentially been driven crazy by spending 22 hours in solitary confinement for the past several years. His lawyers say "he is suicidal, hears voices, has flashbacks, talks to himself and says the restrictions of Guantánamo 'boil his mind.'"

Nevertheless, Hamdan was there yesterday -- sort of:

But Hamdan, during the morning session, also appeared to show some evidence of mental deterioration, which his attorneys have ascribed to mistreatment and lengthy solitary confinement. He seemed in a daze as he was led into court in his khaki detention uniform.

He then engaged in a short, subdued rant to Allred about how he believes he is not being afforded human rights and would like to use the bathroom without soldiers watching him. He also tried at one point to get up from the defense table to leave the room. "I refuse participating in this, and I refuse all the lawyers operating on my behalf," Hamdan said. He returned for the afternoon session in traditional Yemeni garb and a sport coat and agreed to continue.

And just to complete the context for the scene, the Post notes, is the fact that the Supreme Court is nearing "a decision on whether the Military Commissions Act of 2006 that laid the legal foundation for these hearings violates the Constitution by barring any of the approximately 275 remaining Guantanamo Bay prisoners from forcing a civilian judicial review of their detention." In the meantime, the ugliness of Gitmo is on full display.


http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/...st_read_326.php

Cheney Lawyer Claims ‘Congress Lacks Constitutional Power’ To Investigate VP’s Role In Torture Approval

Earlier this month, British international lawyer Phillippe Sands revealed in his new book that Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff David Addington personally traveled to Guantanamo Bay in 2002, witnessed an interrogation, and sent approval back to Washington.

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) has requested that Addington “testify about his involvement in the approval of interrogation tactics used at Guantanamo Bay.” But the Guardian notes that in a response today, Counsel to the Vice President Kathryn Wheelberger claimed that “Congress lacks any authority to examine [Cheney or Addington’s] behaviour on the job”:

Ruling out voluntary cooperation by Addington, Cheney lawyer Kathryn Wheelbarger said Cheney’s conduct is “not within the [congressional] committee’s power of inquiry.” “Congress lacks the constitutional power to regulate by law what a vice-president communicates in the performance of the vice president’s official duties, or what a vice president recommends that a president communicate,” Wheelberger wrote.

As the Guardian notes, the “exception claimed by Cheney’s office recalls his attempt last year to evade rules for classified documents by deeming the vice-president’s office a hybrid branch of government - both executive and legislative.” “It is hard to know what aspect of the invitation [to you] has given rise to concern that the committee might seek to regulate the vice president’s recommendations to the president,” Conyers told Wheelberger.

The lawyers for former Office of Legal Counsel chief John Yoo and former Attorney General John Ashcroft, key players in the torture program, have also rejected Conyers’ invitation to testify. In a statement yesterday, Conyers provided a May 2 deadline for response or, he said, “I will have no choice but to consider the use of compulsory process.”


http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/29/adding...estify-torture/

didn't you know he's above the law?

if anything happens, he'll go hang out with Ken Lay

I wonder what Jesus thinks of this lying sack of dogsheit?


Spurned By Negative Media Attention, Ashcroft Now Keeping His Mouth Shut On Waterboarding

As ThinkProgress has repeatedly highlighted, former attorney general John Ashcroft likes to dismiss the seriousness of the Bush administration’s harsh interrogation techniques when he’s out of Washington and the public glare.

For example, speaking at the University of Colorado in November 2007, Ashcroft caused an uproar when he said Guantanamo Bay was a “good place” for detainees. He also claimed that he would be willing to be waterboarded. More recently, on April 21, Ashcroft joked about waterboarding to an audience at St. John’s University:

Going to a high school dance, having to listen to loud music, to me that’s torture. I was on the Daily Show once. I was interviewed by Jon Stewart. That was torture.

Spurned by all the negative media attention, Ashcroft is now keeping his mouth shut. At an event yesterday at Denison University in Ohio, Ashcroft refused to discuss waterboarding and made only vague statements about torture, tempering his usually aggressive support for Bush’s policies:

Questioned by Green and another student about approving the use of “waterboarding” by the CIA for interrogation of prisoners, Ashcroft, a former Missouri U.S. senator, said, “I haven’t made a statement about waterboarding. I didn’t make one at Knox College (where he spoke last week) and I’m not going to make it here.” […]

On torture, Ashcroft said, “Torture, for legal purposes, is what Congress says it is. Within the law there are times when there will be different interrogation techniques used. Various interrogation techniques make sense. Torture is not legal in the United States, as defined by Congress.

No John, it's not what some corrupt, amoral Republican congressmen say it is. Torture is what the law defines it as. It is a bright red line. You and your cohorts crossed that line and you know you did.

Ashcroft now faces a subpoena threat from House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-MI) to testify about his role in the administration’s approval of torture.

Once student also asked Ashcroft how he sleeps at night, in light of some of the policies he has supported. “I sleep at night because I believe the protection of American liberty is the number one job we have,” replied Ashcroft.

BS. You are a felon who is neck deep in war crimes.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/04/29/ashcro...orture-denison/

Rove on Stress Positions

01 May 2008 11:28 am

Great catch by Jon Chait:

Rove writes, "Another McCain story, somewhat better known, is about the Vietnamese practice of torturing him by tying his head between his ankles with his arms behind him, and then leaving him for hours." So, wait, now putting prisoners in stress positions is torture?

I was going to say "it's funny because it's true" but it's really not all that funny that we now torture people as a matter of policy in the United States.

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/arc...s_positions.php

Pentagon-backed Fox analyst calls waterboarding a ‘very useful tool’

When Hillary Clinton appeared on The O’Reilly Factor, she stated that she does not support waterboarding because experienced interrogators tell her it doesn’t produce high-quality intelligence.

The hosts of Fox and Friends turned to “former CIA guy” and “terror analyst” Wayne Simmons to ask, “Is she telling the truth?”

“She’s clearly misinformed,” Simmons answered. “As most of the candidates are. In fact, even McCain is misinformed on this. … Waterboarding is not torture, it is a very, very, very useful tool to extract intel from our enemies. Has saved American lives and will continue to do so.”

You lying son of a bi tch. It was always considered torture up until this administration. A war crime. Just because Saint Bush says it isn't doesn't allow you scumbag CSers to redefine it. Every one of you pieces of sheit who autorized or carried out waterboarding should be hung by the neck until dead. Just like we did to the Nazis you are imitating.

When asked whether techniques like waterboarding elicit faulty information because “they’ll say anything to make you stop,” Simmons replied, “That’s the old myth. It’s the old myth about interrogation — and we’re not talking about torture because this is not torture.”

What a lying mofo.

“The way you do it,” Simmons continued, “is you extract the intel, you vet the intel, and if it’s not true you come back and you see them and you make it very, very difficult on them.”

Good god. What a pack of heartless monsters. The victim will say ANYTHING to stop the pain and you're going to punish him even more when he does. This is the defining issue in this election as far as I'm concerned. You animals have turned us into villians.

According to an online biography, “Simmons has been a Terrorism Analyst for the Fox News Channel since 2002. In 2004, under Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, he became a part of the Pentagon Outreach Program for Military and Intelligence Analysts. Simmons was one of the first outside Intelligence officers to visit GITMO (Guantanamo Bay, Cuba) in July, 2005 and again in July, 2006.”

The New York Times recently sparked a firestorm of outrage over the Pentagon Outreach Program when it exposed it as no more than a propaganda outlet for the military. According to the Times, “In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. … The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.”

“To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as ‘military analysts’ whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world. Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.”

This video is from Fox’s Fox & Friends, broadcast May 2, 2008.

http://rawstory.com/rawreplay/?p=960

Bingo. Propaganda tool. fark him.

What I think is ironic is the douchebag torture defender says John McCain, the only sitting senator (as far as I know) who has experienced real torture firsthand, is mistaken about whether waterboarding is torture or that it is effective. He has already said the victim will say ANYTHING to make the pain stop, but that is dismissed.

Of course all these Republican scumbags have to lie about it because members of this administration would be considered war criminals by any definition used in the last 60 years.

Bush admits he approved torture
By HELEN THOMAS


WASHINGTON -- The American people have heard President Bush and his spokespeople say many times that the U.S. government does not engage in torture.

Whether Bush was believed or not is another story -- especially in light of the photographic evidence of the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib. It's understood that many of the photos are too sadistically graphic to be made public.

Still, the official U.S. denials of torture continued until earlier this month when Bush acknowledged in an interview with ABC-TV that he knew about and approved "enhanced interrogation" of detainees, including "waterboarding" or simulated drowning.

"As a matter of fact," Bush added, "I told the country we did that. And I told them it was legal. We had legal opinions that enabled us to do it."

The president added, "I didn't have any problems at all trying to find out what Khalid Sheik Mohammed knew."

"He was the person who ordered the suicide attack -- I mean, the 9/11 attacks," Bush said. "And back then, there was all kind of concern about people saying, 'Well, the administration is not connecting the dots.' You might remember those -- that period." Bush said.

Bush also said in the interview that he had been aware of several meetings his national security advisers held to discuss "enhanced interrogation" methods.

Surely he is aware of the U.S. commitment to international treaties barring "cruel and inhumane" treatment of prisoners.

What is startling is that he feels no remorse about the cruel image he has created for us -- and the damage done to our credibility and probity.

In referring to the legality of torture, Bush apparently was thinking of a 2002-2003 memo by John Yoo, a Justice Department official who argued military interrogators could subject detainees to harsh treatment as long as it didn't cause "death, organ failure or permanent damage." The memo was rescinded.

Bush, who has insisted "we do not torture," also recently vetoed legislation that explicitly banned torture. Sen. John McCain, whose whole political persona has been defined by the fact that he had been tortured while a prisoner of war during the Vietnam era, supported Bush's veto.

For both Bush and McCain, I recall the words of Joseph Welch, the special counselor for the Army during the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings when Welch asked Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis.: "Sir, have you no sense of decency?"

We expected the usual cast of characters including Vice President Dick Cheney to be in on the sinister torture-planning sessions.

But it came as a shock that Gen. Colin Powell, then secretary of state, sat in on the meetings and went along with the planning. Powell had been on record warning against U.S. torture policies on the basis that if we mistreat our prisoners, foreign countries will feel no qualms about abusing American captives in wartime.

Once revered for his integrity, Powell has lost his halo.

Now we have this week's testimony of Air Force Col. Morris Davis, a former chief prosecutor, who took the witness stand at Guantanamo Bay on behalf of a prisoner. Davis told how top Pentagon officials had pressured him on sensitive prosecutorial decisions for political reasons. He said he was told that the charges against well-known detainees "could have real strategic value" and that there could be no acquittals.

Davis also testified Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann reversed a decision he made and insisted prosecutors proceed with evidence they obtained through waterboarding and other methods of torture.

Davis also testified he was told to speed up the cases to give the system legitimacy before a new president takes over in January.

Is Congress so cowed that it accepts the statements of a president who has little regard for the truth?

Is there no lawmaker who is appalled about the tarnishing of our image in world opinion? And where are the voices of the other presidential candidates who will inherit the Bush legacy of torture? Why the silence?

I count on the American people to refuse to be shamed any more.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/361447_thomas02.html

LaHood THE LIAR sent me a letter that said "The US does not torture". I should make a million copies and cover Peoria with them.