The US Torture Regime – Where Is The Swift Justice?
Earlier, Marcy and Spencer wrote about the somewhat startling admission today by Susan Crawford that the United States tortured Mohammed al-Qahtani. From Woodward and the Washington Post:
"We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani," said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not refer the case" for prosecution.
The entire article is worth a read just so that the bare facts of what the United States does in your name can set in. But the real thing that strikes me about Crawford’s admission is the unequivocal starkness of it. "We tortured". "Met the legal definition of torture".
Well okay then. What more could we ask for? Maybe that the statement was made by a Bush Administration official, in a position of authority, someone that actually speaks for and might could bind the government to the admission. Well, as convening authority for the military commissions, Susan Crawford darn well ought to suffice for that.
Sounds like what we have here is what the legal profession, and specifically the criminal justice portion thereof, calls an "admission against interest".
An admission against interest is an exception to the hearsay rule which allows a person to testify to a stament of another that reveals something incriminating, embarassing, or otherwise damaging to the maker of the statement. It is allowed into evidence on the theory that the lack of incentive to make a damaging statement is an indication of the statement’s reliability.
In criminal law, it is a statement by the defendant which acknowledges the existence or truth of some fact necessary to be proven to establish the guilt of the defendant or which tends to show guilt of the defendant or is evidence of some material fact, but not amounting to a confession.
Tonight, on MSNBC’s Countdown, former Navy JAG attorney Charles Swift laid out the background and implications of what our country has done and become (Attached are both the portion with Charlie Swift as well as a followup portion). What we have done is not good. It is not right. And it is not justified. It is a war crime under 18 USC § 2441.
For her next trick, perhaps Susan Crawford can tell us when the war crime prosecutions will be starting.
Shouldn’t she be announcing indictments? Torture requires both a torturee and a torturer. We know who the torturee was. Ms. Crawford also knows who the torturer(s) were.
Baad intelligence court decision. wiretapping international calls legal.
I have to go, but I know the subject is in good hands.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01…..=1&hp
The Bush and Cheney Family fortunes should be forced to pay a monthly stipend to the families of tortured POWs.
The Torturers at the top must be brought to justice or every American prison will be a torture chamber. God knows some are now and the rest are close enough now.
What are we going to do with the individuals who did the acts (imagine what kind of human being could torture 14 year old boys? Sounds like Texas Juvenile prisons in the 60’s though) I don’t want torturers in my neighborhood!
An conversation with Dr. Stephen Miles would be a good idea now.
But… it’s all ‘legal’.
We are in a continuing declared State of Emergency functioning under the Continuation of Government protocols (not that many know what they really say because that would threaten the government). See my post here:
http://emptywheel.firedoglake……-zubaydah/ Comment #50
– TA (the law is NOT the law)
Given Crawford’s history (just her wiki page is bad enough), I’m sticking with the moving-the-goalposts theory. If you admit that something criminal was done and then the administration and/or Congress fail to do anything about it, is it criminal any longer?
She made that very argument, according to wiki, as a judge in the CAAF, in her dissent in the case involving Lindsey Graham’s dual role as senator and military judge:
Her motivations don’t change the fact that bmaz is correct. From a legal perspective, her admission is really all that is necessary to open an investigation. In a normal case, we would have a grand jury empaneled forewith. From a political perspective, it’s no accident that the story was published immediately prior to Eric Holder’s confirmation hearings. The Cheney team’s actions are very consistent. They work the bureaucracy by using secrecy to avoid their opponents. They defend their position in court until it is untenable. As a last resort, they admit their actions and dare their opponents to try them in court. That’s where they are now.
So, to follow that logic, if a patient has a gangrenous foot and the doctor knows about it and doesn’t treat it, that means gangrene is OK. ?
The wingnuts are losing their shit over this. Billo was literally jumping out of his chair last night and screaming “We are not a torture nation. She [Crawford] said it only happened this one time” Um, no she didn’t, but boy it was fun watching him.
Crawford has handed off a big mess to Obama.
What does he do with Qhatani? Can ANYONE see Obama actually telling 9/11 families he isn’t going to do something to/about Qhatani? I can’t imagine that the lets him go. So what does he set as US precedent? IMO,
And Crawford did not stop other trials from going forward, although supposedly they are all being refiled now, set for right when he takes office. That’s just deliberate manuevering by the Cheney crew in the Pentagon to sabotage the incoming CIC.
If Crawford stopped Qhatani’s case, what about KSM? Zubaydah? What about allegations that will be made about treatment in other cases that have not had the publication that has existed around these cases, but where there is no way to “prove” the real state of affairs? At what point does it become a res ipsa loquitor situation, when policies and opinions are deliberately put in place to allow and solicit torture, and people are blacksited or namelessly disappeared off to GITMO – for what purpose, if not torture? OTOH, would any tribunal or Obama ever proceed from a presumption of torture without proof other than allegations? Not likely.
I’d be a lot more motivated about trying to discuss some options and answers if Obambi had ever given any indication that he gave a damn. It’s been so low on his priority list as to be off the radar – all he cares about is the political gesture of signing an order. There’s been no serious discussion or efforts from him or his camp to ever even challenge the theme of all those sent to GITMO being terrorists.
Think of how many years now of court cases, from Kurnaz to the first round of Uighur cases before Robertson, where the courts have clearly spelled out that the men in their cases were not “illegal enemy combatants” at all and were not taken on any battlefield. Now go find ANY statement from Obama or his crew about the innocent people at GITMO. I swear the AP article the other day, again despite years of court cases now, was the VERY FIRST one I’ve seen with a mention of any of those being held as being innocent.
Obama is so willing to forge his “coalition” that he really doesn’t give a damn if he forges it over the bodies of innocent torture victims. After all, he’s going to sign an order moving them elsewhere, eventually, maybe.
Related to this is that I get the impression “Mrs Crawford” [Swift started to refer to her thus & stopped himself], when one considers her track record as a Military Appeals Court judge [which was mostly keeping quiet, voting always with command, only writing to criticize where the majority didn’t appear to be serving that goal] in agreeing to go on record as having spoken with Bobby WaWa wasn’t doing anything comparable to whistleblowing [I leave out of this comment Ms E Wheel’s point about both being involved to a critical degree in an exercise in establishment class message control], was not really condemning the torturers for torturing, as for having ruined the brand she’d agreed to participate in producing – being the parallel universe court system judging whether X had done some thing or things, or was so inescapably connected with the doing of things ’society’ […Boooosh….], X had thereby forfeited human status & all associated entitlements & assumptions.
From another perspective [and you may mean this, at least in part], Crawford is pissed at the EXECUTION – & to the extent she blames those up the food chain, it’s for failing to do their duties as measured in the military command structure. Related notion: What failed wasn’t that structure and the ideas underlying it, or the idea of these military courts judging whether they are ’satisfied’ that X is ’sufficiently’ identified with the Defined or Pre-Determined Unreviewable Evil Thing [non-state organized terror] – but the complete disregard for discipline.
All that flows pretty easily into the idea of an amateur c-i-c having had the right idea with his War on Terror, and doing a lot of good things to make it all run, but failing to maintain order in the ranks – the sort of ‘crime’ that gets your epaulets ripped off & you consigned to retirement to write your memoirs – – not the sort of thing that ends up with you doing jail time.
Can’t argue w/that.
But maybe he’s got some grit waiting to manifest after he becomes the guy (one prez at a time). Ya think maybe that’s why he broke bread w/Kristol & Will… just to let ‘em know, HEY… I’M GON’A INDICT ALL YOU & YOUR CRIMINAL NEOCON TORTURERING MOTHER F***ERS!
Just wondering.
Naw, Obama moves away from the grit and his promises, not toward them. You’re dreaming.
Actually, I’m snarking. Obama has lost me… entirely.
Have I offended you?
Your right. Things are starting to become a little more ‘real’ for Obama….I bet he doesn’t change much of anything that Bush is doing to fight the War on Terror. Not that he doesn’t want to, he doesn’t understand how to. That is why Gates is staying. Congress won’t do it either mainly because when the next attack happens, there no doubt will be a story stating “the CIA had this guy, but could not extract any information out of him”. The Democrats are a lot of things, but they are not politically stupid.
I think we need to change some of the rules we fight war by. The Geneva Convention apparently only works with both sides adhere to the rules. Since enemy combatants in the War on Terror do not conform to these rules, we need to re-write the US Military rules often referenced here, as those are apparently what is being used. Extreme measures will need to be defined accurately.
really not apparent to me.
what do you mean by work and how do you reach that conclusion?
maybe i missed the invisible snark tag? hoping?
The Geneva Convention does not allow for torture. Every one of the soldiers/civilians/contractors found in Iraq (dead) had been horribly tortured and mutilated.
So that means we should torture folks because our folks were tortured?
Whatever happened to the United States setting the good example for the rest of the world? Whatever happened to the US being the ones who did NOT do as others had done?
That’s not what I said, I was just stating what has happened in Iraq.
The way I see it, things are really nice when we are sitting behind our computers blogging and sipping Starbuck’s coffee. When a commander is on the battle field, or a agent is trying to extract information from some captive combatant, things look a whole lot different…especially when innocent lives are on the line and results are expected.
Another thing, if my family’s lives were on the line, and I had access to someone who had information on them, I would not hesitate to do things that would make water boarding look like a day at Disneyland. It may very well cost me my soul one day, but I will not see my loved-ones become a statistic on the 6:00 news
Ah yes, the famous “imminent threat” scenario used by 24 to justify all sorts of law breaking.
Too bad, TV is not reality and that situation has been totally de-bunked by most rational observers. That is, those who don’t worship at the altar of Jack Bauer.
Frankly, just about anyone could be a terrorist.
Hence, we should suspect everybody else, and treat them accordingly.
And, in conclusion, ‘we’ must act before ‘they’ do;
Therefore, we have but one choice, in order to save the world, we must nuke ‘them’ all.
Anyone who objects to this most reasonable, well-considered plan, by definition, is a terrorist.
In the words of our George the Greatest, “You are either with us or against us!”
(Now there are thjose who will argue that this is making use of ‘the Big Stick’ form of fallacious argument … they are terrorists, of course).
I simply don’t understand your scruples.
Unless …
(Note the preceding snark is for the porpoises of ventotainment, and over-the-topishly parodies a ‘perspective’ too often heard these days … as the Empuh breaks up … and the comfortable mythologies of American Supremacy and Exceptionalism crumble into a primitive awareness of vulnerability and failed “leadership” … let ‘em eat yellow cake ‘cuz someone will ‘make’ a pile of money, which, colloquially, is known as a ‘killing’ …
And that is, really, what ‘it’ is all aboot …)
Pathetic, no?
No, as much as I like 24, I realize that is simply fiction. However, I also realize that not even a decade ago, we had a couple planes cruise into two of our most prominent buildings killing close to 3000 innocent people in a matter of minutes. I’m not going to stick my head in the sand and pretend like it didn’t happen, no matter how much time goes by. They forced the rules of war to change, we didn’t.
Unfortunately if we do not adapt as a nation, we are going to cease to be a nation, its that simple. I don’t like it in the slightest, it makes me sick to my stomach that one would even have to consider inflicting pain on another human. But I’ll be damned if I watch another person fall from a building set afire by some wacko-radical type regardless of religious affiliation. I’ve already commented if my family was involved so I will leave it at that.
So who are we “at war with?” What country sent soldiers to take over 4 jet liners and fly two of them into the WTC, one into the pentagon and one into a field in PA?
The country of “Terrorism?” Where is that country on the map? Terror is a tactic not a sovereign nation. To fight terror the best tactic is solid police work. Police. Not soldiers. Police who are trained in investigations, not soldiers who are trained to destroy.
Police.
Ok I can give you that, the ‘War on Terror’ has been over used and I realize liberals are trying to wash that word now that Obama is around.
So we are going to fight a ‘conflict’ with a bunch of FBI, LAPD, NYPD, and local authorities? Those police are going to stop state-sponsored individuals from coming into our country and leveling our buildings. The thing about police is…they are so over-stretched, they respond after the event has occured, doesn’t even matter what the event is. If you have any police friends, go talk to them, they will tell you that very phrase. Also, do you think the police have the ability to deal with a ‘dirty nuke, or God forbid some biological agent? What you are saying is insanity at best. Investigations take a very long time, and in this sue-happy society, they take even longer. If a policy like this were ever enacted, again America would fail to exist.
Well given that number of FBI field agents DID have information on the various pieces of the 9/11 plot, reported it to the DC headquarters where they were roundly ignored until it was too late, yes, I think we can rely on FBI and such when properly led.
And once again, who is the “state-sponsored individuals?” What sovereign state is doing this? If you have special information on which nation is sponsoring these actions, then you must be planning to lead the attack against them yourself.
I suppose want you want is to prevent crime? Prevent crime that is before it happens? Does this imply you believe in guilty until proven innocent?
If you kill enough people or lock up enough people, you might nab some of the people you are after (terrorists). However, in your quest to prevent terror you have also locked up innocents, with no mechanism for the innocent people to seek a remedy (based on the current Bush system). Not only are they all guilty until proved innocent, they have no mechanism to prove their innocence nor a chance to prove the government is malicious.
As you know, under the current system, Bush’s government does not have to prove its case that a terrorist is a terrorist.
Think about all the other ways we could use this process to protect Americans:
How could we have protected America from the ravages of Wall Street?
Simple. We should have put into prison all the investment bankers and all the mortgage brokers before this happened. Perhaps all the hedge fund owners and all the day traders, too.
Now that the investment banks and mortgage brokers have disappeared like a bunch of Twin Towers and swallowed up in the dust cloud $billions and $billions of our net worth and retirement savings, we should go after the remaining workers in these trades.
Take away their cell phone and crackberries. Lock them all up until we find the culprits.
Or
We could use human intelligence and more government oversight to prevent catastrophes–difficult to find in this current administration, but worthy goals nevertheless.
and follow the rules of law to bring the bad actors to justice.
Bush was criticized rightly for failing to connect the dots pre-9/11.
Now he criticized rightly for connecting the wrong dots after 9/11.
There was no Saddam Hussein/NYC World Trade Center connection.
At least 50% of the prisoners in Gitmo are not terrorists or combatants.
Torture does not provide valid intelligence. Torture provides only fake confessions used to perpetuate the myth that the torturing nation is capturing true ‘bad guys.’
If I may, I would suggest that you distinguish between criminal acts and acts of war/terrorism.
It may be that using the methods and procedures we deem best in criminal apprehension are not the appropriate methods for prevent massive attacks against our society.
The fact that a corrupt and despised administration has employed repugnant methods should not prevent an honest examination of how to protect ourselves.
When someone argues an ends-justifies-the-means defense, I don’t think definitions mean very much. Your interpretation of criminal may be someone else’s war.
Protecting family at any cost and the-rules-be-damned (the scenario Kurt suggests above) has consequences at a local and societal level. Especially when each vigilante has their own sense of right and wrong and of being right and wronged.
Let’s take an hypothetical example in a village in Afghanistan:
The Taliban rapes a little girl–let’s say she is about 10 years old.
The country is then liberated by a foreign army which patrols this village as a peace keeper.
The mother of this little girl gives her up to a local man in exchange for his goats.
The man returns a little while later, and in a public display of anger demands his goats back, because this girl is not a virgin (how he learns this and what his motivations for finding out can be left out of this little hypothetical).
The mother wants to keep the goats, and flatly refuses to undo the exchange.
The man retaliates right there, and without warning swings an axe and cuts the little girl’s head off.
The Peace Force sees the man swinging an axe in public, and shoots the man dead.
Two dead bodies in the marketplace.
Aside from the dead little girl, who is the aggrieved person in this scenario?
Who has committed a crime? Who has committed an act of war/terror? Whom was protected?
Do local customs allow a man to be judge, jury and executioner in Afghanistan?
Do rules of war allow the peacekeeping force to shoot on site?
still not following. would you be willing to start at a very simple level and go slow?
Do the militants in Iraq follow the guidelines set forth by the Geneva Convention? The answer to that is obviously ‘no’ and in their defense they really can’t or the war would have been over after a few days. Since the Geneva Conventions doesn’t apply to this war bu the way it is being waged, we need to find and define new rules of war, so soldiers know how to respond to whatever situation may arise.
how exactly does the answer to this question change, or indeed have any bearing on our decision to torture suspects?
of course the geneva conventions still apply. have you read them? i read them (and the commentaries) in the winter of 2002, which is why i knew rumsfeld and bush were full of shit when they said the geneva conventions don’t apply. in fact, they explicitly apply regardless of the actions of our enemies.
one of the provisions of the conventions is that as a high contracting party we are required to teach members of the armed services about them. so there should be no problem with soldiers knowing how to respond.
more importantly, putting aside the legal and moral issues for a moment, how do you think using torture makes the citizens of our country safer and not less safe?
Oh — and did your mama ever say to you, “Just because so-and-so did it, you can do it too?”
I don’t care what any other country does — My country was founded on equal protection under the law and that includes everyone, not just U.S. citizens. Torturing anyone, no matter what crime they may have committed is breaking the law.
IF you are a Christian, sir, I suggest you contemplate this text from Matthew: “And Jesus said unto them…’whatever you have done unto the least of these, my bretheren, ye have done unto me.’”
Brisingamen
Actually, this country does distinguish between citizens and non-citizens in affording legal protections.
Brisingamen,
I appreciate your sentiment, and I am a Catholic, which I will admit puts me at odds sometimes with their beliefs in war and capitol punishment. However, I am not going to sit in a church pew for the rest of my life without my kids, or wife because I failed to act.
Let me ask you a question, and this can relate to the current Israeli conflict. You and your family are living peacefully in your home when someone just randomly drives by a shoots your house a few times. Then it starts happening more and more and goes on for a period of months. Are you going to just sit there and take it? No, you will probably call the police, right? Another element, what happens if you find out who is doing it, but can’t prove it to the police, what do you do then? Are you simply going to turn the other cheek and let the shooting continue?
Is there a statute of limitations on torture?
I couldn’t tell based on this llink http://www.loc.gov/lawweb/serv…..3_416_text
Good question. There is not one stated in the statute, not its relevant vicinity. Many people, some of them so called experts, have taken this to mean there is not statute. It appears somewhat unclear, and I don’t have the time to do a full blown exhaustive review, what the status is.
I’ll say this much, were I defending someone accused of this, I would instantly be arguing that no direct reference to a different statute of limitation means that the section is therefore under the umbrella of the general Federal statute of limitation of five year, which from all appearances seems to have expired. These issues are why a full blown investigation should have been requested and pursued.
Instead, it looks like Crawford is out on the Jack Goldsmith “Gee Ain’t I Great” admit something that no longer matters, act heroic and rehab your earning value. What a pile of dung. However, it is a direct admission, and if the Obama Administration has one credible bone in its body, they will use it as such and investigate this and every instance of related abuse, which as Crawford alludes, and folks here have pointed out, includes Zubaydah, KSM, and others.
Where is the investigation? Where’s the beef??
Are criminal limitations ever tolled? With Constitutional officers having a sworn duty to uphold the law it seems to me that intentional destruction of evidence should have a tolling effect.
Doesn’t the comgressional committee have a problem letting this go on so long. Secret tetimony under oath they heard from CIA and Military? Are they looking a losing political capital or will they be part of the defendents?
Statute of limitations?
We don’t need (to worry about) no stinking statute of limitations…
Ongoing criminal conspiracy resulting in death…
And the clock certainly doesn’t start ticking until at least January 19, 2009. Since the conspiracy will continue after that point (in all liklihood), where does statute of limitations remotely come into it at all? Remember, no limit on prosecuting murder, and some of the tortured certainly did die from it (oops, my bad). Doesn’t matter that the conspiracy is large and that all didn’t know each other personally. The existence and function of that group was known to all participating. Gonna need a whole lot of scaffolds if real justice is done.
–TA (the law is NOT the law)
Thanks for the response.
If torture really does have a shelf life and we cannot prosecute after 5 yrs (seems torture as a war crime should have no statute of limitations), then maybe we can redefine when the clock started ticking.
If the Bush administration did not inform us about the torture until today (or was it yesterday), then we still have 4 yrs and 3 hundred plus days to prosecute. Up until now they have been denying torture occurred.
They have covered up their crimes to boot—lost tapes, etc. Is there a statue of limitation to obstructing war crimes?
Can’t we just prosecute them anyway?
…and let the Supreme Court deal with the political fallout of claiming torturers should be set free?
Questions, questions
It’s just a law and not an international treaty?
How did they nail Pinochet?
Because Britain has different laws?
And an ironclad extradition treaty with Spain?
And if there is a s.o.l. in the U.S. does this just mean that they better watch their back when they go overseas?
Dahlia Lithwick and Phillipe Sands on Susan Crawford’s admissions.
http://www.slate.com/id/2208688/
What will be the consequence now that Holder has stated waterbording is torture? Apparently the law is clear.
If some people are worried about releasing ‘terrorists’ at gitmo into civil society and are loath to do so, why are cheney, bush, rummy, wolfowity, feith, yoo, haynes, pearle, ledeen, etc. allow to walk around freely???
Heck no. Heh, I kind of thought you were being facetious.
Ok, just checking. Well there is always the risk of facetiousness on here (smiling) especially as we can not see each others eyes. It was an earnest question because I have never briefed a criminal statute of limitations. I would imagine tolling provisions are different in light of the 5th Amendment. But as suggested if the executive branch, with a heightened duty as the prosecuting authority, engaged in active concealment of its criminal conduct the competing interests are different. Still I could see this theory having the unintended consequence of letting the “unitary executive” in through the back door.
I missed the seminar that Erwin Cherminsky gave in Abq. this winter on liability for wrongful prosecution under Sec. 1983 but it seems like current circumstances might show the chinks in notions of prosecutorial immunity and highlight the distinction between prosecutorial functions and strictly ministerial functions in the executive and the duty to maintain a distinction. The special circumstance here relate back to issues of enmeshment of DOJ with the WH unique to this administration. In this respect the situation demonstrates the depths of the problems with such enmeshment.
If Boumediene showed us anything it is a willingness of the current SC to address fundamental issues of Constitutional power. Moreover prosecutorial misconduct is a judge created and policed doctrine. So here’s to thinking out loud (though a lot of this thinking has been out of the bag here for awhile)! There will be no deterrent, not withstanding the apparent deal with respect to FISA, without some consequences.
I think one wierd outcome, but probably of little importance to most Principals, was the terra ringleaders actually had their dispositions protracted because of the expansiveness of the administrations claims and the matching mostly pro bono refutations emanating from detainee counsels. In other words, the skirmishing created so much flak that the courts had to clear that the administration did not get its chance to take key plotters to capital punishment. Perhaps that was never the intention, and in the abstract it may have been of paramount importance to obtain information to input into communities-of-interest algorithms for various ends.
The whole issue of the impact of torture has wide ramifications. I wonder about the heinous crimes provisions in law. Reversing the prosecutorial discovery loup’s prioritization schema, one might find in gtmo soldier men and soldier women who were physically, or otherwise abusive later than the January 31 2004 time, then working up the responsibility relationships to ownership of the command to have an abuse spree, easily the web would encompass many leadership people in the administration other than the perennial spy monger exceptions which have existed since Herb Philbrick and sodium pentothal truts serum.
Another peculiar aspect of the anticipated deportations, viewed from afar, is likely to be that the original countries of citizenship of a majority of the executive detainees are lands which have preserved corporeal abuse formats in their corrections systems, a feature, likely, for the Principals who might have sensed some leeway to torture nationals of countries which practice explicit or tacit institutionalized torture.
Obama has nominated a substantial contingent of law experts from ACS. These, as well as others in his soon-to-coalesce administration, and new leadership in congress, are going to need to examine the imperial assaults on preexisting protections built into the bureaucracy to safeguard a policy of humane treatment. Yoo, Bybee, Haynes, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, even Ashcroft. There were many elements in the strategy. Rove and the party machine got out in front to criticize anyone out to spoil their fun and their strategy, what Rumsfeld and Bush characterized, for Iraq specifically, before mission-accomplished, as a “Good War Plan”. The first three names on that list, notably, likely did all their skulduggery before January 31 2004.
I agree that Obama has a degree of removal, and little need to stir the muck in the torture extirpation dioramas that likely will take place in congress, and on television.
Reading, like this morning, in Reuters, the same propaganda as yesterday, in one international synopsis of the Crawford ‘admission’ I read, that the US only tortured three people, after reading the FBI IG report depicting a military crazed by new permissions and inept at torturing except in the most brutal disorganized way until the best torturers took command eventually and systematized it with reorganizations in waves implemented from Pentagon and the intell quagmire, is an exercise in newspeak beyonder than which I think I will not elaborate, nor, likely, would Obama. Sen. L.Graham can have his day, and Hatch can change the subject; those are their senatorial prerogatives.
Since I translated one sentence from the foreign press report of the Crawford event, I include it here. NB: the date of the admitted actions is outside the January 31 2004 limit, if, indeed, that is a limit.
“Pentagon spokesperson Geoff Morrell explained in an email to the Post that the Agency reviewed the Qahtani interrogation concluding the Guantanamo methods including special techniques used on Qahtani in 2002 were legal at the time.”
The FBI IG report had a lot to say about how the torture experiments migrated in several versions between Baghram and gitmo, much of it well within the January 31 2004 boundary. Yet, I think there was a conscious view toward a 5-year statute of limitations for the scalebacks that occurred at gitmo, as the IG report tries to characterize it, referencing, if I recall, Congress’ restated intent and the presidential signing statement guarantee appended to it, for intell, to provide the usual waivers for spies to continue as they were perennially, sodium pentothal and all. But it was way more than ‘only three’, as depicted in the FBI IG report; more like standard operating procedure, anyone was encouraged to brutalize captives, however acquired.
Torture is a war crime.
Not prosecuting war crimes is a war crime, too.
At what point in his Presidency will Obama become complicit in the Bush torture war crimes by choosing not to prosecute?
I hope this point is HAMMERED upon PEBO but the people around him. Even though he’s slumming with Lindsay Graham and George Will, he also has people with integrity around too. That gives me a little ray of cautious hope.
whoops “but” = “by”. shucks.
It shouldn’t take long for the stink to rub off, though. I would imagine that the first time a decision is in front of him that involves a tortured prisoner, or a torturer, he will realize: this is on me now.
Well, I don’t care about Crawford’s reasons for saying “we torture”. The fact that someone in the legal arena who is actively dealing with the stuff actually said it is a step towards reality. That’s a good thing. It’s appalling that this is being carried out in our name, but the fact that someone acknowledged it so baldly is something.
It struck me today that with the inauguration coming, I feel liberated, like Stalin has been dragged to the woodshed. I know, I’m skeptical about PEBO too and I expect to be disappointed. But I also expect that there will be better speeches anyway.
I think this leaves Obama with no choice but to prosecute. Listening to the AG nominee being vetted on C-span right now, I believe he will.
The Bush Administration has SHAMED our Country by the Torturing of the detainees! I am not sure we will ever regain the Moral high ground we had built up since the very founding of our country. George Washington, during the Revolutionary War, forbade any form of Torture and the Bush Administration totally disregarded Hundreds of years of civil treatment of our War prisoners!
We are a lessor country for these incidents and we will never regain that moral high ground if those who were part of these crimes are not brought to Justice!
Be sure and DIGG this post!
very well said. thank you.