Torture Memo Probe May Lead To Disbarments

[PeaceNikki]

Source: NPR News

by Ari Shapiro

NPR.org, May 5, 2009 · The Justice Department has nearly completed its investigation into lawyers who wrote the "torture" memos authorizing harsh interrogations.

According to two sources familiar with the investigation, the report will refer people to bar associations for possible disciplinary action. Criminal prosecution, however, seems increasingly unlikely.

The investigation focuses on three attorneys who worked in the Office of Legal Counsel during the Bush administration. John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury each played a significant role in writing the torture memos. The Office of Professional Responsibility has been investigating whether their role in crafting the memos violated legal ethics.

According to sources familiar with the investigation's findings, the report will provide a detailed play-by-play of how the memos were produced. It will contain e-mails sent from one Justice Department employee to another and from Justice Department employees to other government officials.

Read more: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103818643

[MannyGoldstein]

1. I Hate To Say I Told You So...

I particularly hate it because the bastards deserve to rot in jail. However, given all of the megashit that's been heaped on me for writing that Obama will not prosecute for torture, I at least feel vindicated. But I would have preferred to have been wrong.

[No Elephants]

5. I posted something similar and got excoriated as well. Pretty sad that Spain is our only hope.

[elleng]

2. I think disbarments highly unlikely.

.

[RedCloud]

3. Dismemberments might be more deserved.

[elleng]

4. Yes.

Different COURT!

[ConcernedCanuk]

15. . . +1

.
.
.

:thumbsup:

[pattmarty]

9. Agreed, at this point.

[Soylent Brice]

6. PROBABLY disbarment???

UNLIKELY face prosecution???

:wtf:

[Political Heretic]

7. And this suprises you, why exactly?

[Soylent Brice]

10. simply put

the reality could be potentially very different. it would have been nice if he had added something like, "unless the american people get their shit together and voice their negative view of torture on a national, unavoidable, scale".

my reply was more anger than shock.

[Old Codger]

8. New ???

Nothing new here same old same old politics as usual.. they break the law, break national treaties and trash the US Constitution and it is referred to as "ethics" violations... F*** em all. The more the promise the less we get. Change we can believe in LOL what a joke.

[DebbieCDC]

11. That's one way to get rid of Bybee

Can't serve as a judge if he's disbarred. Oh pleeez.......

[Betsy Ross]

12. That was my question.

If he is disbarred, does he automatically lose his bench or must there be an impeachment or recall?

[No Elephants]

13. I don't think that is automatic. Federal judges do not need to be lawyers.

[elleng]

14. They DO NEED to be lawyers,

tho it may not be required. (Not sure about that.)

Its hoped that bybee step down, and avoid the mess of impeachment.

[Peace Patriot]

16. Pay attention to South American news and you will often see rehearsals of what

will happen here. This is true of the DOJ's failure to prosecute for torture. The DOJ is headed by Eric Holder, who was Chiquita International's attorney when Chiquita execs were sued for their payments of many millions of dollars to rightwing paramilitary death squads, who slaughtered some 4,000 union leaders and union members on Chiquita's plantations in Colombia. Holder got Chiquita's execs off with a handslap in a deal with the Bushwhacks.

Some union leaders were shot. Some were dismembered with chain saws while alive, and their body parts thrown into mass graves. These tortures and murders were paid for and commissioned by Chiquita execs who admitted the payments. Yet they walk free--and the victims' families were denied justice--because of Eric Holder's intercession.

Global corporate predators' crimes--even the most heinous of crimes--are okay with the U.S. government, no matter who is in charge. This may not be President Obama's desire, but it is his reality. His hands are tied. No one--not Bush, not Cheney, not Rumsfeld, nor anyone in the chain of command--who ordered or implemented thousands of tortures and indefinite detentions without trial, and consignments to torture dungeons around the world, and the slaughter of one hundred thousand innocent people to steal their oil--will be prosecuted. The appointment of Eric Holder as U.S. Attorney General guaranteed this. I said it at the time, here at DU, but I am just one person. I cannot compensate for the catastrophic failures and relentless propaganda and black holes in the 'news' of our corpo/fascist 'news' monopolies, who, of course, ignored Holder's complicity in this great injustice. I would just urge U.S. progressives to get informed about events in South America, which often presage events here.

I hope that this phenomenon of South American events foreshadowing events here applies to good events as well--such as the amazing leftist democracy movement that has swept South America (and is beginning to sweep Central America, with leftists elected in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Guatemala). I hope that clean elections and transparent vote counting, achieved in South America, catch on here as well. I hope that empowerment of the poor majority catches on. I hope that social justice catches on. I hope that the trend in South America against the failed, corrupt, murderous U.S. "war on drugs" comes here. But, up until now, it has only been fascist coups, torture, murder and massive looting and corruption, which our corpo/fascists and their tools in our government try out first in Latin America, that migrate north. The story of Latin America in the 1970s through the 1990s was one of fascist dictators, violent repression and vast impoverishment, as U.S. corpo/fascists imposed "neoliberal" rule on the region. Then it came here--in the form of the nazi Bushwhacks. Torture. Torture--as official U.S. government policy! The U.S. military hijacked for a corporate resource war. The slaughter of one hundred thousand innocent people to steal their oil. Vast malfeasance and looting, culiminating in the Financial 9/11 of September 2008. And now we are fast becoming the biggest "banana republic" on earth.

They try these things out in Latin America, then they come here. Ask Argentinians about U.S.-sponsored torture. Ask Chileans. Ask Colombians today ($6 BILLION in U.S. military aid to Colombia, where union leaders have short lives). Ask Venezuelans, Bolivians, Ecuadorans, Paraguayans, Brazilians, Nicaraguans, Uruguayans, Guatemalans, El Salvadorans, about brutal economics and brutal repression, instigated by U.S. corpo/fascists.

It happens there; then it happens here--inflicted by U.S.-based global corporate predators who have loyalty to no one.

As I said, I hope that the powerful democracy movement in Latin America inspires and heartens us, and provides us with a model of good government of, by and for the people. If they can do it--after so much suffering--so can we. Our corpo/fascist 'news' monopolies have done everything they can to deny us information about this vast change for the better in Latin America. That is why so few people know what Eric Holder did, in sanctioning mass murder by Chiquita. That is his frame of mind: corporate crime should not be prosecuted, nor government crime done in the interest of global corporate predators. His appointment as AG meant that there would be no rule of law for the super-rich. We have to re-establish democracy here first, by restoring transparent vote counting and repairing other democratic institutions. Obama has said this. It is up to us. I believe he really meant it. He can only do so much. He is constrained, tied down, and was permitted to win on certain conditions, and I am convinced that not prosecuting Bushwhacks was one of them.