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[The Bobster]

Obama Plans Probe Of Bush Torture Whether Or Not Officials Are Pardoned

[TheUrbanMyth]

[mises]

Glen Greewald at Salon had a good podcast on this topic.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/radio/2008/11/19/horton/index.html

[Cheonmunka]

[The Bobster]

[TheUrbanMyth]

[TheUrbanMyth]

Anyway, back on topic. Notice the people talking about this are Democrats. Like I said it's partisan posturing. And as the article points out, quite a few of them may want nothing to do with it as their hands are not that clean either.

[The Bobster]

[bacasper]

Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue

By Joseph L. Galloway | McClatchy Newspapers

With two months still to go before his inauguration as the 44th President of the United States, Barack Obama and his transition team are already getting off on the wrong foot, signaling that they have no intention of investigating anyone in the Bush administration for possible war crimes.

What we're talking about here is the torture of detained terrorist suspects in American custody in a grotesque violation of both our treaty obligations under the Geneva Conventions and our historic principles as a democratic nation.

By their own machinations and attempts to redefine and pervert both treaties and our own laws, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales, Cheney's chief of staff David Addington and any number of lesser suspects sought to shield themselves from, or put themselves above, justice.

more at link

The people of this nation have spoken loudly. They voted to throw the rascals out. They voted for a different way of governing, a different way of law making. They voted for equal rights under the law.

If their desires aren't satisfied � if the new broom sweeps no cleaner than the old one � the next time around they may move things up a notch and throw all the bastards out � and they'd be fully justified in doing so.

[TheUrbanMyth]

[The Bobster]

Yes, I see my optimism was unjustified once again.

You speak of terrorists and then speak of making them afraid, seeming to forget that this is just and exactly the definition of terrorism itself, and exactly the opposite of how a mature and civilized democratic societies behave. I asked for you to give evidence for your assertions about mercy and tolerance being seen as weakness, and of course you have nothing to show. I asked for justification for your comparisons to WW1 and WW2, and what I see are instead assertions that they are different from the so-called "War" on Terror, which was always obvious - so why did you make such comparisons to start with? I've asked you to provide evidence that the legal system truly is unable to cope with extremist criminals while protecting civil liberties of the rest of us - you merely laugh and do not even try to do so. (It's because no such evidence exists.)

When you are ready to have a serious and mature discussion on matters that are important to the world, perhaps even to you, why not give it a shot? Until such time, why exert yourself uselessly and create useless wear and tear on your keyboard? I really wonder what you are up to, unless it's a wanton display of your own prejudices and ignorance.

[TheUrbanMyth]

[The Bobster]

You are tiresome, but until now you have not resorted to such slander as to misrepresent the words, expressions and opinions of people who disagree with you - odd, that you would do so now, especially when you have in the past been so sensitive about others doing anything remotely similar to you. Perhaps it shows a bit of desperation on your part?

Read thread again, especially what you wrote. You made a claim about captured prisoners not understanding mercy and tolerance and seeing it as weakness. Your only support for that claim - that they don't understand mercy and tolerance - is that the leadership of extremist groups such as Al Queda, the Taliban, and splinter groups of them, do not practice it. Just how how does one leap from this to saying that the men illegally incarcerated in Gitmo and kidnapped and tortured via clandestine rendition will not respond instead to more legal - and effective - ways of intelligence retrieval?

It's what I meant about a wanton display of ignorance and prejudice. It's a reactionary response to violence that just aids the spread of more violence in return - which is exactly what the extremists desire most to happen - and it's motivated by fear, not strength and confidence. It's sad, it's exactly what the neocon demagogues have inculcated and cynically manipulated in American society ... and the good news is that the election of Barrack Obama is a very clear indication that it doesn't work any more.

As for all your cute little wisdom about fighting fire with fire, I have it on good authority from people who do fight fires for a living - they tell me you end up with either 2 fires feeding each other or one great big fire that doesn't want to go out on its own. I haven't had all that much training in it, myself, but when I have been camping I generally find that water is the best way to do it.

(We didn't win WW2 by using the methods of our enemies. We did it by being smarter and believing - knowing that we were morally superior to the Nazis and the Rising Sun Empire. We proved it by refraining from empires or Reichs of our own after the fighting was over, though it might have been pretty easy at just that moment.)

It's a pointless argument as far as this thread goes because you and I have agreed from the start that there will be no impeachments, but we disagreed on the reasons. My case was they would never happen because of political expediency, and that definitely seems likely if the whole thing can be thrown out with an 11th-hour blanket pardon from the Dubya night before Obama's inauguration, wouldn't you say.

I'm pretty sure your position has been, and likely still is, what I would call The Bart Simpson Legal Strategy : They didn't do it. Nobody saw them do it. And you can't prove a thing. We'll add to that the final bit of foam on a delicious mug of beer, which is : Since it hasn't been proven in court so far, it obviously can't be proven, and therefore it didn't happen.

Has nothing to do actual guilt or innocence, and we both know that. Nixon was a war criminal because he ordered bombs dropped on Laos despite deliberate and clear injunctions from Congress against expanding the war beyond Vietnam. Oliver North was a war criminal because he continued a clandestine aggression by proxy against Nicaragua, also in opposition to Congressional directions. Very likely, Reagan knew about it all, and approved it, so he ought to have gone on trial also.

And it is almost certainly true that member of the Bush administration deliberately misled the public and members of Congress about Saddam's complicity with Al Queda and the existence of imminent danger of the nonexistent WMDs. It has already been shown that lawyers for the White House twisted definitions of what torture means in legal briefings and memos, consistently claimed that it didn't happen and then did everything possible to shield themselves and their underlings from the consequences of breaking international law by using such "enhanced interrogation techniques." Courts have shown that the NSA acted illegally (under directions from the White House) by tapping phone lines without judicial oversight, and even while the White House has refused to admit it, get this, they have promised not to do it again.

Most rational people would look at all this - in particular the massive and mounting human carnage, to say nothing of the economic mayhem on the American economy - and opine that, well, impeachment's likely too good for them.

But you, TUM, even now, even today, you are still unwilling to say that.

That says a lot about you, so much that it makes completely unnecessary any desire I might have to ridicule and display the tiny and fearfully ignorant spot of darkness at the center of your soul that you have inexplicably allowed to seize the reigns of what might otherwise be the higher levels of your thought processes. But the rest of us can be happy that people similarly consumed are on their way out, and saner people are on the way.

Despite all our agreement, you probably want to continue looking foolish, inarticulate, pitiable, and motivated by hate, fear and willful ignorance. Why bother?

If you do need to continue, though, why not do so here, instead?

[TheUrbanMyth]

[bacasper]

Panel blames White House, not soldiers, for abuse

By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press � December 11, 2008

WASHINGTON � The physical and mental abuse of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was the direct result of Bush administration detention policies and should not be dismissed as the work of bad guards or interrogators, according to a bipartisan Senate report released Thursday.

The Senate Armed Services Committee report concludes that harsh interrogation techniques used by the CIA and the U.S. military were directly adapted from the training techniques used to prepare special forces personnel to resist interrogation by enemies that torture and abuse prisoners. The techniques included forced nudity, painful stress positions, sleep deprivation, and until 2003, waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning.

The report is the result of a nearly two-year investigation that directly links President Bush's policies after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, legal memos on torture, and interrogation rule changes with the abuse photographed at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq four years ago. Much of the report remains classified. Unclassified portions of the report were released by the committee Thursday.

Administration officials publicly blamed the abuses on low-level soldiers_ the work "of a few bad apples." Committee Chairman Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., called that "both unconscionable and false."

"The message from top officials was clear; it was acceptable to use degrading and abusive techniques against detainees," Levin said.

Arizona Republican and former prisoner of war Sen. John McCain, called the link between the survival training and U.S. interrogations of detainees inexcusable.

"These policies are wrong and must never be repeated," he said in a statement.

Lawrence Di Rita, a senior aide to former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld at the time the Abu Ghraib and other abuses took place, disputed the report.

"This oddly timed report provides no evidence that contradicts more than a dozen other investigations that found that there was no systematic or widespread detainee mismanagement," Di Rita told The AP. "A relatively small number of people abused detainees, and they were brought to justice in criminal or civil proceedings."

The report comes as the Bush administration continues to delay and in some cases bar members of Congress from gaining access to key legal documents and memos about the detainee program, including an August 2002 memo that evaluated whether specific interrogation techniques proposed to be used by the CIA would constitute torture.

That memo, written by Jay Bybee, then-chief of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, was guided in part by an assessment of the psychological effects of resistance survival training on U.S. military personnel. The CIA provided that document to his office, Bybee told the Senate Armed Services Committee in an October letter, obtained by The Associated Press.