The WaPo Did Not Scoop This Story in 2005
I’m still waiting for the media to start covering the news that a head of state–the head of our state–just admitted to approving torture. As of 9:30, only UPI has joined ABC and the WaPo in noting this story–which is about all they do, note it (though the foreign press is beginning to take note). For its part, ABC seems to have gotten bored with breaking the news that the President authorized his top aides to set up a torture regime–by 5PM yesterday they had removed the story from their Top Headlines (but worry not, you can still find the story of Sam, the dog that invited himself to his owner’s funeral, among the Top Headlines).
While we’re waiting for what I’m certain will be a barrage of stories covering the fact that the President thinks it’s okay to torture so long as John Yoo says so, I thought I’d look at the WaPo’s claim that they had already covered this story. I mean, I’m glad that the WaPo saw fit to cover the story–it even made it onto page A3; I should be glad it was not relegated to Lifestyles. But it’s clear the WaPo is missing what’s new with this story.
In its story, the WaPo claims it covered this in January 2005.
The Washington Post first reported in January 2005 that proposed CIA interrogation techniques were discussed at several White House meetings. A principal briefer at the meetings was John Yoo, who was then a senior Justice Department attorney and the author of a draft memo explaining the legal justification for the classified techniques the CIA sought to employ.
The Post reported that the attendees at one or more of these sessions included then-presidential counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, then-Defense Department general counsel William J. Haynes II, then-National Security Council legal adviser John B. Bellinger III, CIA counsel John A. Rizzo, and David S. Addington, then-counsel to Cheney.
The Post reported that the methods discussed included open-handed slapping, the threat of live burial and waterboarding. The threat of live burial was rejected, according to an official familiar with the meetings.
State Department officials and military lawyers were intentionally excluded from these deliberations, officials said.
Gonzales and his staff had no reservations about the proposed interrogation methods and did not suggest major changes, two officials involved in the deliberations said.
A search on WaPo stories from January 2005 referencing Haynes, Rizzo, and Gonzales returns just one story, regarding Alberto Gonzales’ involvement in setting up the torture regime (recall that Gonzales was up for Senate confirmation as AG in January 2005). The story does, in fact, reveal that the lawyers got together to discuss torture techniques in early 2002.
The memo was signed by Jay S. Bybee, then an assistant attorney general and now a federal appellate judge, but written with significant input from Yoo, whom Gonzales had tried to hire at the White House and later endorsed to head Justice’s legal counsel office. During the drafting of the memo, Yoo briefed Gonzales several times on its contents. He also briefed Ashcroft, Bellinger, Addington, Haynes and the CIA’s acting general counsel, John A. Rizzo, several officials said.
At least one of the meetings during this period included a detailed description of the interrogation methods the CIA wanted to use, such as open-handed slapping, the threat of live burial and "waterboarding" — a procedure that involves strapping a detainee to a board, raising the feet above the head, wrapping the face and nose in a wet towel, and dripping water onto the head. Tested repeatedly on U.S. military personnel as part of interrogation resistance training, the technique proved to produce an unbearable sensation of drowning.
But these are a completely different set of meetings from the Principals meetings that ABC has been reporting on. Not only does this earlier story suggest all these discussions remained at the level of the lawyers–Gonzales, Bellinger, Addington, Haynes, and Rizzo, rather than Condi, Cheney, Rummy, and Tenet. But it reports that the military and State were left out of the briefings entirely. It even asserts that Condi and Michael Chertoff (who may have been involved in the Torture Memo) were excluded.
Cut out in the final decision making were military lawyers, the State Department and Chertoff, as well as Rice, her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, and Rice’s legal adviser, John Bellinger.
While we don’t know whether Richard Myers was included in the Principals meetings described by ABC (I’ve got my suspicions), ABC, at least, insists that Powell was involved in those meetings, an assertion Powell doesn’t deny.
ABC News’ Diane Sawyer sat down with Powell this week for a previously scheduled interview and asked him about the ABC News report.
Powell said that he didn’t have "sufficient memory recall" about the meetings and that he had participated in "many meetings on how to deal with detainees."
Powell said, "I’m not aware of anything that we discussed in any of those meetings that was not considered legal."
And ABC describes Condi as having chaired the meetings on torture, whereas the WaPo reports she was left out of the process entirely.
But the biggest difference between the two stories, of course, is the role ascribed to Bush. The earlier WaPo article alludes to how, through Gonzales, Bush got directly involved in the process of authorizing torture.
[Former Associate White House Counsel Helgi] Walker said she is aware of criticism that Gonzales "should have been saying ‘I believe this or that’ " about some of the provocative issues presented to him. "He did not see his job as being about him" but about advocating Bush’s interests, she explained. "The judge is not consumed with his own importance, unlike some others in Washington."
[snip]
Gonzales, after reviewing a legal brief from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, advised Bush verbally on Jan. 18, 2002, that he had authority to exempt the detainees from [Geneva] protections. Bush agreed, reversing a decades-old policy aimed in part at ensuring equal treatment for U.S. military detainees around the world.
[snip]
In early February 2002, Gonzales reviewed the issue once more with Bush, who reaffirmed his initial decision regarding his legal authority but chose not to invoke it immediately for Taliban members.
Implicitly, the article suggests that the torture all went through–if not arose from–Bush. After all, if Gonzales pushes military tribunals through while "advocating Bush’s interests," doesn’t that mean Bush was the one pushing the military tribunals?
The article also reveals how callous Bush is in signing away our Constitutional guarantees.
After a final discussion with Cheney, Bush signed the order authorizing military tribunals on Nov. 13, 2001, while standing up, as he was on his way out of the White House to his Texas ranch for a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Barbara apparently never taught Bush that it is considered good form to sit down before you sign away Habeas Corpus.
So the WaPo certainly lays out Bush’s involvement in the push for torture. Yet, presumably because the article arose in anticipation of Gonzales’ confirmation hearings, it portrays Gonzales as being the central figure in the process. Also, the WaPo seems to be obsessed with the bureaucratic in-fighting behind the torture regime (which presumably betrays the motivations of its sources), and so presents the outcome as the result of competing influences, rather than the decisive role of Bush. The WaPo never voices the underlying truth: George Bush instituted a system of torture in the United States.
To be fair, I don’t know why journalists won’t voice that truth now. Perhaps it’s because they’ve known it–without saying it–for so long now, it feels stale. Perhaps its because they consider Bush a half-wit who therefore shouldn’t be held responsible for the things done in his name. Perhaps its out of some twisted attempt to protect the dignity of the office that Bush has already soiled, a belief that describing Bush’s centrality in the process will somehow taint the Presidency.
What the media seems to be missing, though, is the drama of a man who created a monstrous system, getting up and admitting (albeit in language designed to shield him from legal responsibility) that he did, indeed, deliberately create that monstrous system.
The traditional media has–laudably–spent the last six years painstakingly tracing the outlines of Bush’s regime of torture. That it took such efforts to do so is a testament to the understanding–both within the Administration and within polite society–that the torture regime was not to be spoken of openly. But here we are, after years of speaking of the torture regime in hushed tones and using primarily anonymous sources, with the President of the United States admitting it openly, casually. Sure, he hasn’t yet uttered the word torture. But the President himself has chosen to break the prohibition on admitting to the regime of torture. And, apparently, the press would prefer to carry on as if that prohibition remained.
Must be something in that White House water that causes so many memory lapses. I don’t really believe Powell. Torture is something that would sit in most people’s memories IF it troubles their conscious.
Powell’s answer sets off alarms, doesn’t it? I call that equivocation. I would have thought that he at least was too smart to try anything that raw at this late date. Not that I can think up a better answer for him to give.
Perhaps Powell, too, has visions of steel doors slamming behind him.
PS: When are you guys going to stop shipping us your atrocious “spring” weather?
It’s gorgeous here. Maybe you have “lake effect”? Heh. I mean, sorry.
It’s not a bad day here in the TC area either, except for way below normal temps for this time of year. Luckily we were just on the edge of the fuzzy rain/snow line of the storm system of the past few days. Did have ferocious winds, however. My sister, about 150 miles NW of here in central MN, got about a foot of snow and an overnight power outage.
EW, I assume you have seen the nice credit Glenn Greenwald gives you in his update to yesterday’s follow-up column about John Yoo? GG is noting the media silence too. I’ve checked all three of our big papers here — nothing. I see that even Reuters has only the first of the ABC reports on Google News.
MNchuck, blame Manitoba! Or Saskatchewan. They send us our weather too. Funny thing is, Buffalo often has tougher winters than we do, and they are south across the lake. I don’t know what causes that except the lakes.
Wiping liquids off monitor.
Are the rumors true that Sam the dog may get a Medal of Freedom?
IIRC, UPI is still a Moon operation. Does this suggest that the great man is distancing himself from the B-C Cabal?
The LA Times still hasn’t noticed this story.
I just wrote them and, in effect, said ‘WTF?’ They can have a front-page story on wild burros getting reflecting collars, or an oil company’s land-for-oil deal with the state (and I made a remark about whoever described Gaviota as ‘pristine’ coast), but they can’t cover the US President admitting he authorized torture?
Powell? I think this is an example of Gonzales syndrome. I would tell you what that is if I had an independent recollection of what it was.
This old WaPo report sounds like a partial answer to something that twigged my interest late last week:
from Yoo’s Esquire interview:
“There wasn’t a lot of back and forth — people would say this is wrong, you need to delete this.”
Questions:
1. Who are these “People” who “would say this is wrong”?
2. What was it that these “people” meant when they “would say this is wrong”?
3. What was “wrong”: the analysis, the idea of permitting torture, the inclusion or exclusion of particular methods?
4. How is it that “people” at the WH would know more about the law – and
what in the law is/was “right” or “wrong” than the OLC?
5. Why weren’t those “people” at the WH instead working in OLC, if they knew so much about what was “right” or “wrong” legally?
6. “There wasn’t a lot of back and forth” – this implies to me that the work product Yoo was discussing with “these people” was pretty close to what they wanted in the first place. Anyone who’s ever prepped a presentation knows there are fine-tuning tweaks that go on through rehearsal after rehearsal; if there “wasn’t a lot of back and forth”, then the audience of “these people” didn’t have much to say, did it?
7. “you need to delete this” – delete what? Why? Why was the part that needed to be deleted in the presentation/discussion in the first place? What was “this’” genesis as a topic for discussion? Who wanted “this” deleted? Why did that particular person(s) want “this” deleted? Had “This” come into the memo/presentation during a previous iteration of presentation? How did “this” get there?
8. “I think that there was no pressure from any other agency from within the department that the opinion was going too far — or that it wasn’t going far enough.”
Remember, the WH construction is that the OVP is not an “agency”. Likewise, the Office of the President. One wonders whether they deem the President’s counsel an agency – now, at that time, or both?
Also, the construction of the sentence is dubious – did he mean to say “from any other agency” or “from within the department”? This strikes me as the sort of on-the-fly correction one often makes when a “minor” misspeak slips into the discussion and the speaker corrects it immediately. “From within the department” would be consonant with what we know now – that it was so strongly compartmented within DoJ that likely a lot of folks didn’t know exactly what was going on. “From other agencies” would also be consonant with what we know now – that CIA was pushing for a written sign-off on torture so they would not be left hanging out to dry. So, why would he correct himself?
9. “It was very much hands off.” Well ordinary decent people wouldn’t want to touch torture with the proverbial ten-foot pole, so this is unsurprising. But, it was likely also so compartmented that no one not on the team could get their hands on it, anyway.
There’s a lot more there, to be dug into, beyond this, I’m sure. But, what it sounds like is that the WaPo reported on the lawyers getting together to make sure the program they were pitching would meet the requirements of Addington and Cheney, before getting the principals involved in hearing it. That there were not a lot of objections or back and forth, indicates that Yoo had satisfied Addington and that the principals could be briefed in, on the “completed” draft (nice construction – calling it a “Draft” could slide it into a non-disclosable lacuna in FOIA and the deliberative-process privilege) Yoo was working on.
This is a line I find interesting. Essentially saying that ALL they really cared about was an OLC “goodhousekeeing seal of approval” not the underlying legality.
It was just a beard.
which corresponds directly to Bushie’s comment in the ABC report – “we had legal opinions….”
This is all false, imo.. Nothing was wrong, NOTHING! If Yoo walked away thinking the President could order the crushing of childrens testicles.. then “what was wrong” is a complete lie.. something they were not about to consider..legally or morally.
Nothing. I repeat nothing about torture in today’s Philly Inquirer. Bitter, yes, torture, no. And this is NOT to be confused with the Natl. Inquirer, though sometimes I wonder.
Before the Bush admission by a few days, Inquirer site blog called Attitude had a meandering post on Powell’s participation in the torture mongering and his other political sallies framed in the usual demitabloid journalism which is the character of that news entity replete with enticements for several sides of the political spectrum.
I should revise that picture of CPowell, probably, with an apology; yet, the AttytoodBlog writes with sufficient ambivalence to let the reader interpret its screed in that way.
EW,
I posted this comment on an earlier thread…
Sent off letters to all my subscriptions this AM and canceled them until they GET THIS NEWS STORY told with bold headline, front page above the fold coverage.
Sent off a letter to McClatchy asking when they plan to “write truth to power?”
Aljazeera headlined with the story…
http://english.aljazeera.net/N…..F9D024.htm
ACLU sent out a press release that no has picked up.
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/g…..80412.html
Proof reader is my friend…should read:
I’ve been trying really hard to follow these threads and comments on this issue to see if there is any discussion of this (previously linked in the comments on the lake side):
The post is titled:
Signed By Bush, ALLOWING TORTURE, Memo Shows Bush NOT ‘Insulated’
Apologies if I missed this here, but really wanted to make sure you fplks knew about it.
But Audrey, Impeachment is off the table. And the Hague ain’t going after a sitting US President (not unless we lose a world war),
So, unless the next president is willing to rosecute his/her predicessor 9and which of those three do you think wants to be the first to set that precedent?)
Bush is insulated, in all the worst ways
my god!! they wrote the “hague invasion law”,to recover people convicted of war crimes! Like, if anybody gives us any shit we’ll just blow the hell out of them.
You have a law saying that you can invade The Hague to get prisoners out? Can you tell me what that is called? Now that would be a seriously bad idea, I think; if anything might get a rise out of the international community, that would.
Audrey@17 linked to a post@ daily kos that refered to the Hague invasion law wriiten in aug 2002 that was a response to the feb 2002 memo that negates geneva. I have’t read it yet.pretty scary stuff
Thanks, strider. May I ask the lawyers present: Troutfisher’s fascinating diary talks about Bush signing the NSC memo and then signing “a law” (which is the law I should have known about). Did that “law” go through Congress, or is it just one of those “resolutions” mentioned later that also emerged from the NSC? Sorry: very ignorant person here.
Hi LHP!
I do think arguing for impeachment is a worthy cause no matter what the odds, but that wasn’t what I was trying to highlight.
Yesterday some folks were saying that Bush’s statement “I approved” could have meant that he approved of the meetings and not torture. The diary shows that he was not only the chairperson (so why should he bother mentioning that he approved the meeting?) he was also actively involved in the discussion…so he was not insulated from knowing the details…just insulated from having his participation talked about in the media apparently.
The diary points to some overlooked documents on several websites I thought folks here might find interesting.
And:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4tsalJ6Trc
Hope this clarifies it.
EW,
There is a blog out there not being too kind to the bloggers on this issue. (Unfortunately pointing out specific bloggers.) The site is stating that the progressive blogosphere is not addressing impeachment strategies for Cheney and Bush on this issue. I’m not going to link. But it did get me thinking. When and where do we, the blogosphere move from trying to hold the Fourth Estate accountable to addressing an organized campaign bigger than FISA within the blogosphere?
I really lose patience with these people. Why would impeachment be a concern, if we can’t even get traction in the MSM? Liberals can’t enough pressure on Congress to get troops out of Iraq. Something like 80% of the US agrees with us. So far Congress hasn’t given in on telecom immunity, but the issue is still very much in play. Senate passed a bill to bail out the housing industry, as though what this country needs is more one-family residential housing and less infrastructure, renewable energy investment. I’m just not seeing where liberals are squandering political capitol. We have precious little.
Don’t mean to shoot at you klynn, you’re just the messenger. Frankly, it sounds to me like a Rove plant to splinter liberals.
I agree at the “splitting” concern. But there is a hidden dialogue to the “splitting”. Why has there not been any “strategy discussion? I can find none on my favorite blogs and I think that is a valid question. There was a great deal of strategy on FISA. How do we get the MSM to pay attention? What are we going to do? How are we going to get the attention of Congress or the public?
I have tried to get these questions going and no one responds.
Are the questions not valid? Is moving on ideas for change something that should or should not be discussed in blogs? I am simply new on how the blogosphere will address these matters.
I think the questions are valid.
klynn, I think your questions are valid. Why is it that the immigration folks can get the kind of action we saw on May 1, 2006, and we can’t get a coordinated event on issues like the war, torture, FISA?
What we used to do at FDL was “Spotlight” posts to the MSM. I think the technology is still available, but it’s more or less been replaced by Digging.
I think the election is draining a lot of resources. I think what we’re trying to do is elect better Democrats.
I guess you’d have to start with the House Judiciary Committee drafting the articles. IIRC, we’re still waiting for Conyers to subpoena Rove about Don Seigelman. Are you (assuming you can speak for a large number of liberals) willing to “give” on Telecom immunity, to impeach Bush and Cheney on torture? I wouldn’t trust the Vichy Dems, but I bet that’s a trade they’d consider. They want all that money from the telecoms. What leverage do you think liberals have to negotiate with? Assuming the House indicts ( a very long shot imo) do you want a conviction in the Senate?. What are you willing to give up to get that from Lieberman and other GOP Senators?
Agreed about impeachment. It is a political solution, and there will not be 66 votes in the Senate for impeachment of Bush or Cheney before January 21, 2009. A Truth and Reconciliation Commission would be a great thing for the US, but that will never happen either – there is no Mandela who has the moral authority to stand above the fray, and it is also politically suicide for anyone who proposes it – being America means never having to say you’re sorry. Maybe something similar to the Church Commission will be re-convened, maybe some senior Bushies will be prosecuted for obstruction of justice or corruption arising out of Seigleman or some other outrages, but pardons and political pressure will protect most of the perpetrators. As the epilogue to the film A Man for All Seasons ironically noted, while More was executed, Richard Rich, who perjured himself at More’s trial and was appointed Attorney General for Wales as a reward, died in his bed.
Yes, and More was canonized, but Rich is remembered (pretty much) only for turning in More to get Wales. Doing the right thing will bring rewards, but not necessarily while you can enjoy them.
“… there will not be 66 votes in the Senate for impeachment of Bush or Cheney before January 21, 2009.”
Let us not repeat these lies … how can we know this when we do not know what information will come to light by an impeachment ?
Many Republicans are in tenuous positions in November and more info. like the latest torture revelation will undoubtedly surface during an impeachment hearing and every member of Congress unwilling to indict this crime syndicate will be booted out of office.
They will indict and remove from office, if only to save their political careers … let the
gameshearings begin …I’m sorry, but as a practical matter, during an election year, I do not see the Republicans in the House, nor in the Senate, repudiating Bush or Cheney through impeachment proceedings – even as a matter of pure political calculation, I think they would judge that kind of repudiation to be more electorally damaging to their own prospects than any vote against impeachment, no matter what horrifying actions come to light – and even if absolute proof emerged of Bush watching torture porn DVDs emerged, I don’t think it would move the needle towards the public revulsion necessary in time for impeachment to move along. Remember, impeachment’s reach is limited to removal from office and prohibition from running again – MAYBE. I am not saying that there should not be consequences, just that the political likelihood of impeachment is zero.
I’m with you (I think). But I’ve sort of given up on the MSM. A long process that began back in ‘94 and intensified after ‘03.
A dialog that includes impeachment is not just desirable but absolutely essential if we are to (even partially)avoid the taint of collective complicity in this sordid mess. Why not post the link to this “heresy”?
Another critical issue is keeping the liberal blogs, such as FDL, profitable.
You mean, reading and blogging without contributing is like tapping into your neighbor’s cable tv?
What earthly purpose does a comment like that serve?
What part don’t you understand?
“Torture is wrong no matter where it occurs. . . .”
— President George W. Bush, June 26, 2004, Statement on the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture
There is nothing today about Bush’s adminssion — in our local paper, the St Louis Post Dis-Patch. However, we have a local columnist that has done some very good coverage on torture. His last column was 4/9 on the torture memos.
WaPo: “Oh, we knew all that back in ‘05. (We just didn’t bother to tell you about it)”
So long to “So Wrong”.
Anyone know how this is playing in the international press?
I too wrote to the LA Times asking when then plan to cover this huge story. I saw the ACLU link to their press release, which does the work for the lazy journalists out there.
After reading the ACLU release, I gave them more money. As far I am concerned, this is THE organization right now holding the administration accountable — not Congress, not the press. (The progressive blogs too, esp. as it relates to FISA)
Somewhat related, and relevant to EW’s post yesterday about guess who’s not coming to dinner: an early AP story at msnbc had nothing, zip, nada in its two pages about the pope’s visit to say that he was not going to attend the state dinner–possibly because of reluctance to dine with torturers.
A later wire story, by someone who sounded suitably breathless at finally breaking into the AP big time (a bit of snark there, ho hum), mentioned that the pope would be at a prayer meeting and thus unable to attend the state function in his honor. Of course, that mention was well down in the story, and merely in passing.
EW – I haven’t gone back to look at the stories, but the quotes you pulled are pretty interesting on Bellinger and some interesting timing on Muller. Did Yoo only brief Rizzo and not his predecessor? And on Bellinger – was he briefed “He also briefed Ashcroft, Bellinger, Addington, Haynes and the CIA’s acting general counsel, John A. Rizzo” or not briefed “Cut out in the final decision making were military lawyers, the State Department and Chertoff, as well as Rice, her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, and Rice’s legal adviser, John Bellinger” or briefed, but his input not used, cut off, from the decision making process.
And we have stories saying Rice ran the show in the Principals meetings, contrasted with stories she was “cut out” of decision making by the lawyers, and both sets of stories indicate that, contrary to the positive PR efforts in “Palace Revolt” and similar stories, Ashcroft wasn’t separated from and clueless about what Yoo was doing.
And I particularly like comparing the references in Rorschach and Awe to the “threats” of “live burial” to the newsy version – and to the reports in other places about the mummifying of detainees with duct tape. From the Rorschach and Awe story, a little different take on the “threat” of live burial:
emph added
They didn’t plan on “threatening” to bury Z alive – they planned on actually doing it, as an “interrogation tactic.” All because Bush was worried he looked bad, calling Z important and then not getting important things out of him.
In any event, that story lends support to the fact that there were two sets of meetings – lawyers (including Ashcroft and people like Bellinger) and Principals (again including Ashcroft as AG and probably Thompson).
Notice, too, how the lawyer meeting references include Haynes and Bellinger, but not Taft; talk about Rizzo but not briefings that might have included Muller. Yet supposedly Muller was giving the briefings to Congress and was the recipient of the Harman letter (as that letter briefed to the Principals?) on the tape destruction. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12…..intel.html
And after Yoo left, did the lawyers meetings continue? Who was involved? If they didn’t continue, did the Principals meetings on torture continue? After Tenet (and maybe Goss) and Ashcroft and Muller were gone, were the Principals able to reach that More Nirvanic state where all the “policies” were just “implemented” with Hayden never seeking protection for his people (the way he failed to seek protection for them at NSA) and no AG or Sec of State raising unpleasant topics – – just letting what happened, happen? Is that part of how the tapes were destroyed? Just some off the record feedback that it would be “legal” and a “go do it?”
One thing that does emerge from all the stories is that there were a cadre of WH lawyers who knew all about abuse, coercion and torture being utilized against detainees – lawyers who knew all about the STACK of lawsuits where evidence of those tactics was important and even directly at issue – lawyers who were in unique positions of knowledge – lawyers who knew that Clement was arguing before the Sup Ct that the US did not do things “like” torture or anything much untoward in its interrogations – lawyers who had ok’d burying a man alive (I really wonder if this isn’t the incident where an FBI agent threatened arrests, since apparently the CIA agents, pych crew, and lawyers were all gung ho and yet it didn’t happen – of course, WaPo contradicts R & A by saying that the live burial was “rejected” as opposed to R & A saying that it was approved)
In any event, all those lawyers and probably several more knew of the existence of evidence relating to interrogations using coercion, abuse and torture and knew those issues of coercions, abuse and torture were being raised in boatloads of lawsuits.
Who “Decidered” to not send out preservation notices, to not comply with their professional duties to preserve and to allow their client to destroy evidence rather than complying with court orders as they came out?
Because those things are not a matter of just incompetent memos – complicity in obstruction and destruction of evidence, that’s the area of questioning for the YooWhos from DOJ that seems to be thinnish so far.
10 – Yoo seems to pretty much ignore his interactions with Mora, doesn’t he?
I guess I’m a bit lost with the spec on why the press isn’t NOW in uproar, since I thought that should have been the case since about the time of the Gonzales hearings. Around then, IIRC, is when both the Bush Exec Order on not covering some persons by the GCs and the relatively contemporaneous preceding memo from Gonzales saying, “yeah, looky looky, we can get around application of the War Crimes Act for the things we have done if we just use this ‘unlawful enemy combatant’ label” along with the torture authorizations for the Bybee memos.
But I’m game for any nudging of the MSM to quit the sleepwalking.
In the Pope Benedict thread, I suggested that Bush hid behind the Yoo (and perhaps other) “legal opinions” to distance his responsibility, just as Pilate washed his hands of responsibility for Jesus’s torture and execution. As LHP has been pointing out in her posts at FDL, it is tragic that there has been so little respect for law among so many lawyers. The meetings of the Principals, reviewing torture techniques, are in their own way more damning than the bureacratic euphamisms that were used at the Wannsee Conference by the various Nazi departments which were mobilized to carry out the Final Solution. Why, in the whole upper reaches of the DOJ, was there no Thomas More, at least as portrayed in A Man for All Seasons, who would place his own conscience over his career? I saw the movie again after Paul Scofield’s recent death, and I was reminded of More’s reaction when the Duke of Norfolk attempts to persuade More to sign the Act of Succession:
“Norfolk: Look, I’m not a scholar, and frankly I don’t know whether the marriage was lawful or not — but Thomas, look at these names! You know these men! Can’t you do as I did and come along with us for fellowship?
More: And when we stand before God, and you are sent to Heaven for doing according to your conscience, and I am sent to hell for not doing according to mine, will you come along with me — for fellowship?”
The thing is, they all knew what they were doing and what they were approving, and they didn’t care! Or at least not as much as they did about keeping their jobs.
Because one does not make it to that high level in the Republican party without having been thoroughly vetted and screened for compliance with whatever the party leaders want.
In other words, if you have any tendency to not go along, you get sieved out early.
33 – I’ve made the flip of that observation: That the lawyers in DOJ had abandoned all responsibility for their own actions, washing their hands of ethics and professional responsiblity and respect for the law, the courts and the Constitution, while passing on the buck that the President was the “Decider” so they are all absolved.
Absolved of enabling, absolved of plotting, absolved of direct participation, absolved of lies to the nation and the court, and even absolved from any need to express shame for what has been done or remorse to victims or the the nation. The courts, military and the state dept both had people who stood up, fought back, and even engaged in noisey resignations and withdrawals.
The lawyers at DOJ all sat back, no one ever responsible for anything – insulated from morals, conscience and duty by laying either the fame or the blame, depending, at Bush’s feet. The ONLY action from any of them was on the USAttys firings issue – where their own self interest was involved.
The initial MSM response to the announcement by Bush that he’s a torturer seems to confirm the traditional Rove strategy of “the best defense is a good offense”. If you can’t control the release of adverse information – or soon, the government (but for political appointee acolytes ensconced in civil service positions) – then get it out yourself, admit it, brag about it and say, “I saw no problem”. Oh, then blame the water carriers for the bad plays on the field.
If Congress balks, the MSM snoozes and the next administration decides it doesn’t have enough [fill in the blank] to prosecute, it works. Apart from the odd foreign government that might awkwardly attempt a war crimes prosecution, these boys are home free.
Blogs are having a limited effect on the MSM, but in focused campaigns are making impressive gains persuading individual CongressCritters to do the right thing. Not to mention, helping elect the right CongressCritters.
As a model of that, EW has been brilliant at connecting the glass shards off the beach and showing how they comprise the liquor bottle the mayor’s teenager says he didn’t have and wasn’t drinking from when that poor li’l girl he was dating drowned.
Rizzo v. Muller on the lawyers meetings
Muller was Gen Counsel for the CIA from Oct. 2002 through July 2004.
Yoo was involved at OLC from 2001 to 2003. So, did the briefings of the lawyers stop before Oct 2002, did they include Muller after that point although he is not mentioned, or did they continue through when Yoo left (and perhaps thereafter) but sidestepping Muller?
Selective briefings? Including the people who would be running things, but excluding the ones who brief Congress or talk to the press?
It was common talk, even before 9/11, that the US needed some thugs to deal with the really bad guys. People would tell these stories about the KGB, saying that if someone double-crossed them, that person would be found dead and castrated. Similar stories were also told about the Mossad, and always with envy.
The Democratic Party has always been accused of being softies, and maybe acceptance of this kind of macho bull, the idea that torture is a way of being tough, is the subconscious response of our current crop of Democratic Congresspeople.
Sometimes I think the Democratic party is just full of softies. I want someone to fight for my side.
Another good example of DFH bloggers deconstructing Bush’s lies and inverted logic, a job the MSM gave up when it no longer involved saliva and semen.
http://www.atlargely.com/2008/……html#more
Apropos of an important comment on an earlier thread, that activism – like durable, high-quality daily writing and research for a web log – isn’t an afternoon’s occupation:
– Tom Englehardt, introducing a new piece by Rebecca Solnit
http://www.tomdispatch.com/ [emph. added]
Preview is my friend… Tom “Engelhardt”. Apologies.
Anybody else think we may be seeing an attempt to make Yoo the fall guy or the whole ball o’ wax? Don’t think it’ll work, but that theory seems consistent with all the recent optics.
I think that Yoo was probably Addington’s fall guy, so he didn’t have to be the guy who wrote the Torture Memo – or at least sign it, maybe he did write it or endorse it. This whole thing about legal opinions justifying crimes is just so wrong – I could write opinions for clients to do all kinds of things, but at the end of the day, it doesn’t do anything to absolve them of liability for their actions. Lawyers can only interpret the law for clients, to the best of their ability (hopefully) – Congress legislates what is legal, not the lawyers at the DOJ, or anywhere else.
Addington is number one on John Deans impeachment list.
Glenn Greenwald warns against that — see link @13 (where he also gives EW a nice credit for this weekend’s work).
We used to say “It’s the cover-up, not the crime” that would get the crooks, and there undoubtedly have been a multitude of cover-ups through this admin, but about Bush’s tactics this week, I agree with earlofhuntingdon @ 40 — this is hiding in plain view, the ole purloined-letter trick. Ok: it’s not as sophisticated as Poe, more like sneering defiance, but it seems to work on the media.
Sorry, ‘or’ should be ‘for’
The truth of the matter is that it is too late for impeachment proceedings now and everyone knows it. With Mukasey at DOJ making bizarre arguments about his need to “balance equities” that exist only for the purpose of interposing delay, and with the level of complexity of all the inter-related crimes and criminals – there’s no way anything commenced today could make it through at all, with, IMO, the exception of a fast impeachment of Bradbury as being illegally in office.
Even that has no realistic chance. But there’s just no way to get anything else accomplished now before Bush leaves office and everything that anyone does to try to frame the issues for impeachment basically just helps Bush to frame the terms of his pardons.
It’s a sad state of affairs – the most that you can hope for is that someone or some crimes get left off the pardon list and that in some fairytale of future govt there is an AG that has something other than a fully corrupted, wholly complicit, DOJ with which to go after some crimes and secure some sentencing. If they do, though, what about the Dems who were part of the multiple versions of the “gangs” (4,8, whichever) and who were in on the conspiracies and said nothing as well?
Other than that – some actions by the bar associations, which won’t be able to take place bc they won’t have the power to override the claims of classification and state secrets to get at enough, from an evidentiary standpoint, to take action. No court will get the shot that some of them would want to take action against the lying weasels (Gonzales not having a job lined up makes me believe more and more that there was some kind of FISC showdown – possibly from his approval of the “emergency” wiretap being in bad faith? – that precipitated his resignation) because both the Congress and the Executive are aligned against them and the courts themselves have had DOJ dutifully working at corrupting them.
It’s basically what you have when the Dept of Justice sits in the pocket of criminals. The only thing that could have been done was to start impeachment early – at no later than the time of the Gonzales hearings – and Pelosi, as a loyal Gang Member, made sure that didn’t happen.
Realistic and depressing. Confirming once again how corrupt are so called Justice system continues to be.
No need to wonder why so many young people and others hold no regard or hope for the U.S. Justice system.
Well, the discussion about the responsibilities of bloggers, whether shirked or not, is a little too nuanced for me to grok this Sunday afternoon, but I can say that without EW (and others, but to a far lesser degree), I wouldn’t know how low the mighty in this country have stooped.
Ishmael @ 56 — I think more folks than Addington are now pointing at Yoo’s permission slip. Also from Goldsmith’s book I had the understanding that OLC opinions are different in that the Exec Branch treats them as effectively pre-Judgements and as such they can have at least a partial exculpatory effect in the event of later lawsuit(s) — though only to the extent they are reasonable and basically sound, which is where the Yoo and Bybee opinions fail miserably.
skdadl @ 58 — My point was more that this could be a conscious plan by The Principals to offer Yoo up on a skewer. (That nobody else in OLC was eager-beaver to do the job in the first place may help support that.) I took Glenn’s piece as advice against press & public focusing only on Yoo, not as theorizing about any plan on The Principals’ part.
MSM too busy reporting about Bradgelina, Obama’s pastor, Bill’s slip, and who won whatever ball game is being played to write about our head of state approving torture and committing war crimes.
flick through the channels all blondes, boobs and smooz on the news.
DHS wants to turn eye-in-the-sky on Americans. What was that again about the Fourth Amendment being operative across the board? Wait, don’t tell me, it all depends on what the meaning of the word “reasonable” is…
I agree.
Audry@17 refered to a link @dailykos in reference to the “Hague Invasion law” could you elaborate?
American Servicemembers Protection Act of 2002. Basically a standing declaration of war on the Netherlands should the ICC in the Hague ever be so bold as to try to put a US war criminal on trial. One of Jesse Helms’ greatest pieces of legislation; which pretty much tells you all you need to know….
Thanks. I was looking for that.
So it did go through Congress. Thanks, bmaz.
Ooops. The Wikipedia page that corresponds to that link posts an error message.
That is weird. Here is the test from the Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A…..ection_Act
Here is the text.
Thanks. I suspect it was a wikipedia issue; the page came up via google. For geeks, a few sites that provide more informed context and criticism for the US legislation follow:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A…..ection_Act
http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/08/aspa080302.htm
http://www.globalsolutions.org…..enter/ASPA
http://www.iccnow.org/?mod=usaicc
The final stick in the eye from one of America’s greatest bigots. The whole thing makes abysmal reading, so much for the driving force behind the original League of Nations (which a recalcitrant Congress kept us out of) adn the United Nations, in recognition of the horrors and unintended costs of war, which in reality, no one really wins.
I especially liked this part:
That language would prohibit US persons from assisting the Court in pursuing non-USA targets. Augusto Pinochet, for example, or Saddam Hussein, at least one of whom our own government would have considered a war criminal. Who needs a sheriff when you can pay for your own posse and have a Texas necktie party? That way, the sheriff never comes after you.
thanks bmaz that was a real shocker
Geez. I follow the news as much as I can, and had no idea this existed. No idea at all.
I read this, though, as saying that if a President Obama or Clinton decided that it was in the interest of the United States to hold trials, that could be done. Yes?
I just read that section the same way. The section that interests me is below. Note that the bill was passed in August 2002, after Afghanistan and before Iraq. I also found that they had begun proposing legislation of this sort in July 2001, but haven’t yet found the early drafts. Check this out:
Emphasis added.
Note that in August of 2002, they already had their list of reasons for invading Iraq, and in order:
1)responding to acts of terrorism [Saddam=9/11]
2)preventing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction [WMD, WMD!]
3)deterring agression [fighting them over there so we don’t have to over here].
They knew they were setting themselves up for ICC and laid out their reasons for exemption very carefully. It’s a miracle they allowed the section on the next president waiving exemption to turn their sorry asses over to the ICC. Will that president have the courage?
that link you provided is the transfer of funds from all those agencies right?
Scroll way, way down to Section 2002 to find the stuff relevant here. The bill as passed had a lot of other funding baggage attached to it.
M L @balkin seems to think that the ICC would prefer that the US deal with all of this,although the military commissions act that gives everbody immunity is a “gateway” for the ICC to act. Watch out for the tap on the shoulder when their out of the US
Oh, it looks to this non-lawyer like those are non-waivers from the point of view of an American defendent. The supposed waivers are in section 2003, which has several subsections. As all contain similar language, I’ll just quote from subsection c, which appears to allow a President to waive the prohibition for cases involving “named individuals:”
In other words, it looks as if the waiver would not cover the same military or civilian officers of the US government that the main part of the law “protects” in the first place. I suspect you or I ordinary citizens had better watch our step, however.
Yeah, the way I read it (and I just scanned it, so I may have missed something) is that it allows specific designated waivers of one year by a president, that are renewable, but only as to sections 2005 and 2007, regarding UN Peacekeeping missions and military assistance to ICC respectively; but not as to any US troops or authorities. I am not quite sure what to make of section 2011. If you believe in the Unitary Executive theory, I guess it would allow a president to do whatever he wants; if you don’t, then I think it would not allow the next president to send any of the torture turds to the ICC. Curiously, after saying what powers the president does have, it then winds up with a sentence saying he has no statutory permission to do that. What a total pile of junk this act is.
The next president will not, however, be able to simply sign something to nullify this act. It will have to either be rescinded by superseding legislation or mooted by US joinder in and ratification of the ICC treaty/agreement.
What a total pile of junk this act is.
The abridged review, with which I heartily concur. You really have to wonder about the tangled web of a mind that could even write the thing up.
It looks to me as if section 2004 refers to co-operation with the ICCt in the form —
Oh Christ, later, later! I’ve said it before, and say it again, part of the strategy is to exhaust us.
I think so. And also, if we actually join the international court, wouldn’t that make moot all the rest of the BS?
radiofreewill – I think most of what you say is how I feel about the shell cracking about Bush. But, I don’t excuse Pelosi, Reid, Harmon, Rockefeller, etc. on the Dem side at all. They are either explicitly part of the problem like Lieberman or they are controlled. Think TSP/TIA/WTF here.
And someone up thread with line about handing the ring to either a black man or a woman. The answer is clearly no. The question is how do they stop it? Martial Law or something?
the 4th link of earlofhuntington@83 will take you to the coalition for the international crimminal court,which states that Clinton signed on to this on 12/31/2000.1/4/02
the rome statute goes into force.Bush nullifies Clinton signiture on6/may/02. So my guess is that the new pres can do the same and nullify Bush’s,but that creates a whole other set of problems. this is a huge deal, where’s bmaz or the earl or when you need them?
Or EW? She’s busy…!
that goes without saying
BillE – I hear you that We ’should’ have an expectation that Pelosi and the rest of the Dem leadership be Stand-Up People whenever they ’see’ wrong, however, there always seems to be more to the Story where Bush is involved, too – things might not be what they seem.
For instance, imagine if Pelosi ‘knows’ that Bush has had ‘full-spectrum’ electronic surveillance of all the Key Leadership going since 911, or so? Not to mention Media, Corporations, Judges, Lawyers, and his own Cabinet? Think about it – Bush is a Torturer – what Moral Synapses are left to stop him from Spying on US, too?
In an atmosphere like that hypothetical, as long as Bush keeps the patina of ‘Legality’ for his Programs, very few (intelligent) People would challenge him openly.
However, that’s not to suggest that behind the veneer of Law, all of Bush’s eager Henchpeople are busily stealing US blind.
To the contrary – behind that ‘false’ wall of Banana Republic OLC Pronouncements are thousands of Good Americans in Government – restrained out of Respect for a System they aren’t willing to invalidate by Breaking it to Fix it.
Once the Wall of Hoseshit UE Law is refuted, these folks will feel like Free Americans, again, able to Speak Out without Fear of Retaliation, from Bush’s Cloaked and Secret Spies.
I’ll bet the Only thing holding back Droves and Droves of Whistle-blowers is the Fear of getting disappeared, real or not. Bush doesn’t Lead People with Assurances of the Law, he Drives Fear into them with the Vagueness of His Unlimited Power.
In a POW situation – which may not be too far from the Truth for Pelosi, et al – the best survival advice is to ‘be the gray man’ – don’t stand out, either high or low, and attract attention to yourself.
Once the Fear of Retaliation goes away – meaning Congress and the Courts regain Effective Checks and Balances with the Executive – and Bush and his HenchPeople lose their Invisibility Cloak, then the Full Ugly is going to come rushing out – and I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if the consensus long view becomes that the ‘gray man strategy’ was the correct one.
Words fail you, is the idea? Then I’m with bmaz.
No doubt so he could gaze longingly into Pooty-Poot’s eyes.
– Tom
At this point, it doesn’t matter whether GWBush is a genius or a moron; what matters is that he casually admitted to enabling and implementing a Torture Regime that violated legal and moral boundaries. He admitted it; we have now crossed a watershed.
As a result of GWBush’s admission, the press, electeds, pundits, blogs, and citizens can no longer continue to sustain a narrative that perpetuates the illusions that Bu$hCheney have created. For at least seven years, they have operated under false assumptions, using flawed and faulty information. Rather than seek to correct their basic assumptions, they perpetuated their own illusions, expecting the press to enhance and magnify their profoundly delusional ‘we create our own realities’ view of things. These people are inherently delusional; everything they’ve done has been premised on maintaining fictions and illusions, rather than on seeking accurate information and a clear view of the world.
As long as the fig leaves and pretense of ‘there’s no hard evidence that GWBush was involved in enabling Torture’ could be maintained, the press didn’t have to step forward and explain to how deeply this administration has perverted the Rule of Law. But now, GWBush himself has admitted complicity, and that means the press is confronted with a choice. The press will either serve Bush, OR ELSE the press will serve the truth. To serve the truth, they have to explain to an angry, upset, agitated public that their president is a war criminal.
I don’t envy the press.
Some may be too queasy to meet this responsibility; one can understand why the press would prefer to emphasize baseball, but that is ultimately self defeating.
From the instant GWBush casually admitted to overseeing a Torture Regime, there’s no denying the system is in place, and was created by Bush and his administration. Nothing can make this knowledge go away; we’re either as depraved as our most despised enemies, OR ELSE we have to clean up this mess.
Failure to speak plainly about GWBush’s actions and participation will leave the press complicit in perpetuating this system. It’s either follow Bush off the cliffs of illusion, or suck it up and call the Bu$hCheney Torture Regime for what it is. There’s no way to have it both ways any longer.
The illusion that the ‘war on terror’ required new, unprecedented, ‘innovative’ means of ‘enhanced interrogation’ is still in place. Bush has now frankly, casually, officially sanctioned the fact that this ‘war on terror’ was fought using means that meet the legal criteria for war crimes.
But GWBush’s casual admission of overseeing his participation in this system now means that the press will either serve a war criminal, or else it will have to serve the truth. The former would be simpler and easier than the latter. The latter will challenge the public, who doesn’t enjoy hearing about such topics. (But it’s hardly going to be ‘news’ after Abu Gharib, the USAGs, and other events.) Our illusions are generally more comforting than unanticipated, confusing reality. Continuing to repeat GWBush’s illusions is definitely the simpler, easier path.
Apart from being morally corrupt, the BushCheney illusory worldview is outdated; it assumes economic, communications, social, technical, business, and resource models that are no longer congruent with the way the world operates in an era of rapid climate change, enormous refugee movements, and many other factors. To perpetuate such an outmoded set of assumptions is negligent, irresponsible, and craven. For all those reasons, it is evil.
The greater the illusions, the greater the evil.
So the press is at a crossroads.
It can’t have it both ways anymore.
Neither can Congress.
BTW: Been on this thread (off and on) nearly an hour; or $14.1 million dollars for the Iraq War. Just in case anyone happening to read this forgot that the failure to act is also extremely expensive.
The illusion is alive and well. The NYT’s lead editorial today explicitly says that fighting al-Qaeda is the most important challenge of this generation.
So much for global warming; health care reform; the cost and quality of and access to education; longterm employment trends; undoing the corruption of a government built on torture abroad and intimidation at home; and rebuilding smashed alliances necessary to function in an interdependent world.
Adding insult to injury, the Times refers to the 140,000 troops that will still be in Iraq by mid-summer, but ignores the equal or greater number of unregulated mercenaries and “outsourced service providers”, each much more costly per person than our troops.
Finally, the Times implies that if the invasion of Iraq had gone well, it might have been worth it. A deceptive, uninformed, utilitarian argument. It ignores that any invasion of a country that posed no immediate and dire threat to the United States was both illegal and immoral, which places all the costs of rebuilding the country we “bought and broke” on our shoulders.
The Times editorial makes several good observations, but sandwiching in these zingers debases their argument and those who made it.
[see http://www.nytimes.com for its op/ed page]
Sigh….
Let’s hope they read their own paper, starting with Krugman and Kristoff.
Or their excellent science writer, Natalie Angier.
They’re still trying to cut it both ways; the time for that passed the minute GWBush admitted (casually) to overseeing the creation of the Torture Regime.
Here it is.
It’s always darkest before the dawn may sound trite, but we do appear to have a news blackout going on regarding Bush’s Admission of Torture.
First – it’s only a matter of time before that single admission – I Approved Torture – on camera – will come back to get him, and everyone who ’supports’ and ‘covers’ for him.
Honestly, an Admission like that would normally be grounds for An Investigation, at the very least.
However, rather than accepting an Impeachment Inquiry gracefully, Bush is hollering at US, “Bring it on!”
Imvho, We should all be stocking up on Popcorn – Who doesn’t think Trump Cards are going to Rain Down in the next Few Weeks?
– Details of the Torture Tape Destruction – Could take Bush down.
– A single Revelation of Secretly ‘Out-sourcing’ Torture to Contractors as a means of getting around Objections by the Principals – Could take Bush down.
– Any number of ‘known’ but not disclosed Bush-signed Memos – Could take Bush down.
It’s only a question of Time, the Truth is ‘on camera’ now…
…and politically, the Dems have ‘the killer app’ for ‘08 – Torture.
Either the Republicans are going to come forward and join the Democrats to Impeach and Try Bush, or the Dems will Beat Every Republican They Face!
There will be No More Republican Party IF THE REPUBLICANS DON’T REJECT EMBRACING THE TORTURE OF THEIR OWN PARTY LEADER.
The choice is Up to the Rats who fed the Rat King…
and the republicans know this to be the case and the administration knows this to be the case
and they are not moved, they are not worried, they hold fast
all roads point to depravity, no roads point to an election
Thanks. I suspect it was a wikipedia issue; your reference popped up via google. For geeks, here are a few sites that provide more informed context and criticism (assuming they get passed the censors), including one from International Criminal Court’s site:
http://www.hrw.org/press/2002/08/aspa080302.htm
http://www.globalsolutions.org…..enter/ASPA
http://www.iccnow.org/?mod=usaicc
I just responded to a looseheadprop quote from the lake and it is a few threads old before I read it, I really want to make this point on an active thread and it’s on point here so here I go;
but here is the problem looseheadprop, I have been saying this from the very start;
the president has a lawyers opinion that what he wants to do is fine, he and all those he ordered simply fall back on that memo, it doesn’t matter if it carries the weight of law, it doesn’t matter if it carries the weight of precedence, all that matters is the president has someone who is recognized by the bar writing an opinion and he claims he can use that opinion regardless of anything contrary
yoo must be disbarred, there is nothing else that matters less then impeachment and we know impeachment will not happen yoo must be disbarred
yoo is under the impression there is imperial rule, if the emperor does it becomes by that very fact, legal
Nixon said it best;
“if the president does it, that means it is NOT illegal”
this is the principle they are applying, they believe it with all their hearts and soles, they must believe it because if they do not they are all going to prison
they do not care that the president derives his power from congress, congress gave the president his power, by not impeaching him they are saying he does indeed have this power
since they will not reign in the powers of the president, all of this carries the weight of precedence and I guarantee
let me say that again;
I guarantee
alito and Roberts and Scala will say the president is correct, and what yoo said is correct
I guarantee it, I also guarantee yoo has a wink and a nod that if this is brought before the scotus they will agree with his opinion, he could not, would not have written that pedestrian opinion unless he was told it would stand
I tell you, yoo is not a moron, he is highly educated and knows the law, he knows what makes a good and a bad brief, he would not have written this one if he didn’t have the wink and the nod, he would not, he could not
it doesn’t matter that his opinion has been rebuked, refutiated, pulled, whatever, all that matters is that he was given a wink and a nod that his opinion will hold if brought before the scotus
yoo must be disbarred, there is absolutely no other choice
here’s what everyone is missine;
they have the ring
this is the end of the trilogy and they are now lord of the ring
what do I mean?
they can make, break, rewrite, and create from whole cloth any rule, any law, any presedent they want
imagine you and I are playing tennis and I not only have the official in my pocket but I don’t care what anyone thinks, nor does the official
well, I am going to hit the ball on two bounces, the official will first claim it was one bounce, when he is shown the video tape that I hit the ball on two bounces he will say, “but I already ruled and what I ruled goes”
then, the next time I hit the ball on two bounces the official will say;
“well, he did it before, there is no reason I am going to stop him this time around”
they are making it up as they go, they are making it up as they need it made up, they are brazen, they are depraved, they are sociopaths
the sociopathy they are demonstrating though is not that of someone born with the disorder, it is not chronic;
“it is because it is”
they aquired the power they have the power they are going to continue to use the power, it is what it is
they are now the lord of the ring
so, let me say this again, I have said it too many times but I must insist;
does anyone here
anyone at all
think they are going to give the ring to a black man or a women?
anyone?`
there are times I say something as a fact and I pray I am made to look like a fool
I would love to look like a fool after the comming election
however I do not think it is possible these despots will give the power of the ring to anyone else, I do not believe that can happen.
I am now under the impression the ring has to be taken from them, they will not give it willingly
How appropriate that ‘Judgment at Nuremberg’ is showing this week on TCM. Should be required viewing in every household in America.
The thing about Yoo’s opinion is that it is, as he says, largely a cut and paste job on the 2002 memo done by Judge Jay Bybee.
the thing that matters is that the president had him write it, he wrote it and the idiots in the republican party will make believe they agree with it
the other problem is pelosi is inept in her office, she has no clue what her job is, I am sorely disapointed in her, when she first took office I was certain she would be the first female president and now look at her
man oh man oh man, I am so disilusioned
perris – Hang in there! The most massive defeats come on the heels of an aggressive over-commitment by one side, while the other ‘bends but doesn’t break’!
Gettysburg was like that – the only battle fought on Northern soil, and it was Decisive – Pickett’s poorly coordinated charge was the over-commitment that ended the Civil War.
Waterloo was like that, too – Napoleon was consistently the Aggressor in the battle, and it was his decision to commit his Reserve – the best of the best of his Grand Armee, the Imperial Guard – to an attack ‘up the middle,’ where they got raked from three sides – that ended his bloody, tyrannical reign.
So, it would be wise to wait for a bit and ’see’ if Bush can maintain his ‘inflated boogeyman’ act during the course of the next week.
After seven years, even the Dems know Bush is a One Trick Pony – Shock and Awe – load up and hit ‘em hard!
However, Bush is looking increasingly ‘punched out.’ He may not have much left…
And, regarding Pelosi (and Reid for that matter,) I think she may have direct personal observations of Bush that told her that he’s unstable to the point of being dangerous – and he has the nuclear football walking around behind him all the time, too.
So, it may yet still be the case that our Dem leaders could come forward and explain themselves in such a way that we might see ourselves – were we in their shoes – doing basically what they did. Let’s give them a chance, once the dust clears.
In Pelosi’s case, it may have been obvious to her that Bush is Depraved to the point of borderline paranoia, and so she took Impeachment off the table as a ploy to back Smirky down from his hair-trigger “they’re out to get me” mind-state.
Bush’s behavior, imvho, bespeaks of someone who knows he did something really, really Bad – A Mistake possibly of the Magnitude of Negligent Homicide of 4,000 Servicemen, or worse, if that’s possible – and his Pride (a psychological defense mechanism that keeps selfish people in positions of Power from ‘looking at’ the damage to the ‘victims’ of their abuse) won’t let him reconcile himself with it.
The problem with that, of couse, is that Bush won’t let His Victims have reconcilation, either.
Personally, imvho, Bush’s Day of Reckoning is much closer than most people seem to realize, but let’s wait and see what the next week brings.
Remember, the real weaklings in this tragedy are the Republicans themselves – we’d have solved this problem a long time ago if the Goopers had had any Integrity at all.
Conversely, it’s because of their weakness that they won’t go down with Bush – no way – these people are kept by their Leadership in a not-very-bright, morally blind and eaten-up with Pride state – but they aren’t stupid.
As soon as it looks like their Gravy Train is coming to an end, they’ll Trash Bush like yesterday’s diapers – and act like they were the real ‘victims’ all along.
For those interested in the technical aspects of the ethics of Yoo’s opinion, here is an excellent discussion.
Thanks for this. I forwarded the info to my relatives in Wisconsin.
Bob in HI
Aha! Yoo had rolled out the “sever pain” canard before. Didn’t he? Now someone, in a close reading of the torture memo, has caught him making things up out of whole cloth to justify torture.
I’ve mentioned this a couple of times in the past,but it never seems to get traction. Note this paragraph in the WaPo’s 2005 story
The meme du jour could be “Bush OK’s Torturing American Soldiers.” The reason we signed the Geneva Conventions on Torture is not that we’re such fine and noble people (tho some of us have been in our history) but because we didn’t want our sons / husbands / fathers abused and tortured in POW camps. See McCain, John.
We observe the Conventions because we want our soldiers coming home in one piece. By stepping outside the Geneva Conventions, Bush makes McCain’s treatment by the North Vietnamese acceptable. ‘Legal.’ Why aren’t there thousands of G.I.’s mothers and fathers screaming “Bush thinks it’s ok to torture my child”?
I note that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest of these don’t have any ’skin in the game’. To them, it’s not torture as long as it’s other people’s children on the waterboard.
Posted that here and in a thread by Christy a few days ago. I was surprised at the lack of response…That concept of “equal treatment” is the foundation to upholding the Geneva Conventions. So, it tells you what Bush thinks of our men and women in uniform. HE DOES NOT CARE.
Have fun repugs maintaining service personnel with actions and arrogance like that. It is difficult enough to make the decision to join the armed services. To think you will be filleted like a fish and have to face the worst torture imaginable if caught, quite frankly, is not convincing to sign up to serve.
BTW everyone here at EW’s. Have been having interesting conversations with my son the last few days. He has to present a two minute persuasive argument in a class in two days. He is trying to decide between the importance of the MSM upholding their role as the fourth estate or the importance of adhering national policy to the Geneva Conventions. I’ll let him type the rest…
Hi EW posters, I’m “son of klynn.” Just wanted to know of the two topics my Mom mentioned in her introduction of me to all of you, which one would you find the MOST important? MSM as Fourth Estate or Upholding The Geneva Conventions? Now I will say, my Uncle served in Iraq for 4.5 years. I figured I could “local end” my points for either argument with his experience. bmaz, I hope you give your vote and perhaps your top two points you would want stated in a high school classroom to future voters. (BTW I had also considered the topic of upholding the Constitution/Rule Of Law in a Democratic Society. Throw that into the voting if anyone wants to.)
Son of Klynn again,
Thank you in advance to anyone who responds.
Get back to first things: John Adams (I believe) wrote that ‘We are a nation of laws, not of men’ meaning that upholding the law was the primary obligation of the state, and to be ruled by the fiat of fallible men was to return to tyranny. If we were ruled by men, John Yoo could issue a memo declaring that the President could bite the heads off of live kittens in the Rose Garden on live TV if he found that necessary to defending America, and that such abuse is legal. I’m sure, given some Texans’ history of blowing up live animals in their youths, there is someone in Washington who might even direct John Yoo to write that memo. From there, we get to the 21st-century version of “Through the Looking-Glass” where ‘a law means what ever is say it means’.
“Are we there yet?”, Klynn’s child asks from the back seat. Schroedinger’s Mom replies “Maybe.” John Yoo says “I’m driving there as fast as I can!” (H.T. to Good Celery.)
I wonder about developing the meme that there is no such thing as America; America is the condition where men and women agree to live peacefully together under the rules that all are equal, all have ‘certain inalienable rights’, all have a duty to protect the rules that protect all (see ‘Constitution, U.S.’). Etc. Once you leave that condition, you are no longer a good, patriotic American. Under that scenario, Osama bin Laden can’t destroy America. Only we can. Bush and Yoo are doing their part.
I vote for the Constitution and rule of law, because without them, the others become impossible. The MSM is failing in its job, but the blogosphere is doing what it can to pick up the slack. If we do away with the first amendment, neither the press nor blogosphere is functional. Similarly, Bush is trying to use Yoo to circumvent Geneva, but with proper application of the Constitution and rule of law, Yoo’s justifications will fall away and Bush and his minions will face the prospect of prosecution.
Bush is still working for the constituents he cares about:
Excellent post EW. You’re dead right, as usual. W’s naked dishonesty is as striking, in it’s small way, as the larger legal and moral horror – but the supine posture of the MSM on this issue points to something more deeply wrong, an atmosphere of apathetic permissiveness, or fear, that makes state torture possible.
Hello, Son of Klynn. I’m an alien and no expert on these things, but one point I hope you will make if you talk about international law is how great a role American lawyers and judges played at Nuremberg in producing the jurisprudence that led to revisions of the Geneva Conventions (in 1949, I think), among many other things.
Some Americans have been encouraged to be suspicious of all international bodies and treaties, which I think is a pity, since those owe so much to the best you have produced.