Time bombs in the files - More memos on torture bedevil the Bush team

[UpInArms]

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/040621/usnews/21memo.htm

Just when the Bush administration thought the fuss over prisoner treatment at Abu Ghraib was dying down, a newly uncovered set of memos on the legality of torture has given opponents the fuel to turn up the heat. Things began to sour last week, when Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to turn over to Congress several Justice Department memos leaked to the press that suggest a wartime president doesn't need to obey international laws forbidding torture of detainees.

Appearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Ashcroft insisted that the administration does not approve of torture, even of al Qaeda terrorist suspects. "This administration rejects torture," he said, noting that President Bush has not issued orders that would have allowed violations of such laws prohibiting torture. Bush insisted last week that he ordered U.S. officials to adhere to the law and international treaties.

Legalese. Still, the memos show that inside the administration it was anything but clear what exactly the law was An August 2002 Justice Department memo obtained by the Washington Post last week, for instance, says the Justice Department told the White House that torturing al Qaeda terrorists held abroad "may be justified" and that international antitorture rules "may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations" in the terror war. Other memos offer a theoretical legal foundation that the administration could use to get around antitorture laws. A March 6, 2003, draft report prepared by Pentagon lawyers, for instance, outlines narrow definitions of torture and suggests legal arguments why government agents who might torture prisoners could not be prosecuted. "Even if the defendant knows that severe pain will result from his actions, if causing such harm is not his objective, he lacks the requisite specific intent even though the defendant did not act in good faith," it says. That memo says that "in light of the president's complete authority over the conduct of war, without a clear statement otherwise, criminal statutes are not read as infringing on the president's ultimate authority in these areas."

"There's a real bad flavor to these documents," says Scott Horton, chair of the Committee on International Law at the New York City Bar Association. "They're presenting arguments that are not fair and balanced and seriously misstate the law. I don't think lawyers would do that without being placed under tremendous pressure."

...more...

[struggle4progress]

1. If you want to break the law, hire a lawyer to muddy the waters!

[Media_Lies_Daily]

10. Or intimidate the lawyer to the extent that the lawyer is willing to do...

...or say anything. Remember who we're dealing with here...they're pretty bad people.

[struggle4progress]

13. But there are plenty of lawyers. It's probably not difficult ...

to find a few shysters willing to make any argument requested of them, especially if the money is good.

[Eloriel]

19. And esp. if they're fascist lawyers to begin with n/t

[HereSince1628]

22. We are NOT better then the Germans of the 1930's

we'd better accept that, or be prepared to take the long sojourn into darkness that Germany suffered.

That does NOT say the Bush is a Nazi. Personally I think he is WORSE than that.

The critical need for Americans at this time is to be very very careful when allowing the government to make decisions about what is necessary to defend the republic.

[berry]

23. the main memo-writers were apparently political appointees

At least, I read that in one of the articles about this. And it makes sense. The JAG lawyers that went to complain to the NY bar assn guy (Horton) were not political appointees.

I am confused, though, about the motives for these memos. They seem to be much more about expanding presidential power than about the specifics of torture. (And if not, WHY would they take the risk of exposing the pResident to war crimes charges over something like torture, which even they admit can be counterproductive? I know they tried to cover that with the Holland invasion act and in other ways, but this is a lot of trouble to go to just to "justify" illegal interrogation methods. Well, murder too. But it doesn't add up. There has to be more to it.)

The more I think about it, the more it looks like part of an elaborate power-grab/coup d'etat. (I know, we've all thought this, ever since 2000, but it's looking REAL now.) They must really believe that the GOP is going to be able to hold on to power for...oh 50+ years. They wouldn't want to expand presidential power if a Democrat might be in office soon, would they?

[acmavm]

2. The Department of Justice is hardly that anymore. It's little more than

a bunch of cowardly bullies who have a sense that they can lie, torture, cheat, steal, and kill as long as it furthers their agenda. Sort of like the Waffen SS was to another crazy fool idiot psychopath.

Germany is still trying to live down Hitler. I wonder how long it will take us to live down the fraud that was pResident bush*?

[UpInArms]

3. well, though I can't post an editorial

on LBN, I can give the good news that the Dallas Morning News skewered the mal-admin in print today-

here's a link to the DU posting

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x56405

[Nevernose]

16. Jesus, The Dallas Morning News printed that?

What happened? They used to be so conservative.

[daleo]

17. So did the Globe and Mail

Which is usually relatively friendly to the BFEE war on terror. Today's editorial called Bush's torture policies a setback not just for U.S. foreign policy, but for civilization.

"The prohibition against torture has come to seem an immutable law of civilized societies. Now this law may fall to a vision of necessity. That is a frightening vision on which to build this new century."

[Edmond Dantes]

18. Even the Salt Lake Tribune...

... thinks DOJ is playing "sickening legal games".

And catch this:

"It is deplorable that the Judiciary Committee's chairman, Utah's Orrin Hatch, did not set aside his obsession with extending the Patriot Act long enough to join committee Democrats in demanding that all such documents be released. Making that call a bipartisan one would help get the truth out sooner."

This is Hatch's home turf! Holy shit! :bounce:

http://www.sltrib.com/2004/Jun/06132004/opinion/174703.asp

[Media_Lies_Daily]

14. Some within the DoJ are leaking info almost as fast as the CIA...

...and that includes the FBI and and a strong faction of judges. Some rulings are expected fairly soon from the Supreme Court in regards to the rights of prisoners...and the word on the street is that the rulings will go AGAINST the NeoCon Junta.

As far as Ashcroft and his closest DoJ cronies, their days are numbered.

One more thing...the Waffen-SS was the actual combat arm of the overall SS organization. The REAL bad guys inside the SS were the SS-Totenkopfverbande, or "Death's Head" units, who ran the concentration/death camps along with many other notorious duties.

That's not to say that some Waffen-SS troops didn't commit atrocities, because some most certainly did during combat operations.

<http://www.feldgrau.com/ss.html>

Excerpt:

"The Waffen-SS, formed in 1940, was the true military formation of the larger SS, and as such, it is the main focus of this section. Formed from the SS-Verfungstruppe after the Campaign in France in 1940, the Waffen-SS would become an elite military formation of nearly 600,000 men by the time WWII was over. Its units would spearhead some of the most crucial battles of WWII while its men would shoulder some of the most difficult and daunting combat opertations of all the units in the German military."

[wabeewoman]

4. Question...

I haven't heard anything about the 6 soldiers they were court marshaling for being 'responsible' for the prison torture. Anyone know what is happening with that?

[UpInArms]

7. this is the only thing I found:

regarding the court martials:

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1323969p-7446230c.html

Spate of military cases results in scrutiny

In the coming weeks and months, North Carolinians will get a rare view inside the military justice system through the Army base at Fort Bragg.

Army reservist Pfc. Lynndie England is scheduled later this month for a weeklong pretrial hearing on charges that she and other military police abused prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last year. In the fall, Sgt. Hasan Akbar will be court- martialed on charges that in Kuwait last year, he threw grenades into tents of sleeping soldiers and shot them as they emerged.

The Army is also fighting an appellate court's March ruling that threw out the death sentence for Sgt. William Kreutzer, convicted of shooting 19 fellow soldiers at Fort Bragg in 1995.

And the fairness of military justice will come under scrutiny not only from those high-profile cases, but also during the prosecutions of terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay and of other soldiers who served at Abu Ghraib.

...more...

[gratuitous]

5. Biden had it right last week

When he dressed Ashcroft down: If the U.S. doesn't respect international treaties and our own laws, we can't expect anyone else to honor prohibitions against torture. It's so simple and pragmatic, you wonder why the ideologues in the administration didn't come up with it.

Today on Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor lamented that the U.S. used to be the country people would come to after they'd been tortured, and that if it was to become the policy of the U.S. to inflict torture, we as a country would have lost more than we could ever hope to gain through its use.

The very fact that this question was so heavily researched is a black eye for our country. That the lawyers strained so mightily to justify using torture is a travesty, and against everything that the U.S. has historically stood for. When these memos came in, the President should have torn them into confetti, roundly condemned them, and perhaps even fired the lawyers who had written them. Instead, this president and his administration wanted more.

[ewagner]

12. Great post gratuitous!

You summed it up very well. Thanks.

[TacticalPeek]

6. A spear chunked from the old Bush crowd:

...These memos cleared the way for the horrors that have been revealed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo and make a mockery of administration assertions that a few misguided enlisted personnel perpetrated the vile abuse of prisoners.

I can think of nothing that can more devastatingly undercut America's standing in the world or, more important, our view of ourselves, than these decisions....

Donald P. Gregg, national security adviser to George H. W. Bush from 1982 to 1988 and ambassador to Korea from 1989 to 1993, worked for the C.I.A. for 30 years.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x56415

[Mechatanketra]

8. These dumbass lawyers should be disbarred for incompetence.

That memo says that "in light of the president's complete authority over the conduct of war, without a clear statement otherwise, criminal statutes are not read as infringing on the president's ultimate authority in these areas."

Go back and read the constitution, boys and girls, specifically the part that enumerates the President's duties. You see the one that says "he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed" (Article II, Section 3)? Yeah, that one.

That places criminal statutes above "the president's ultimate authority". It's the President's job to uphold the law, and make sure others are upholding it too; thus, any time the President breaks the law, or allows others to, he is failing to carry out one of his Constitutionally mandated duties.

Any other interpretation can only come from those who are 'reading' the thing with their hands over their eyes.

[ElectroPrincess]

9. These leaker's rock!

The folks that are leaking Ashcroft's "Kiss-off Biden" Memos are geniuses. One trickles down, the Bush Administration lies lies lies. "Just a wild and crazy night with MPs" Then another leaks out *proving* the Administration LIED. They reshuffle and lie again. We always follow the Geneva Conventions in Iraq. Ooops! Another leak and modification of last excuses and lies.

Any swing voter, especially if he/she reads the newspapers sees through the Administrations lies and and constant revisions when contrary information is leaked by these brilliant and brave folks.

Bravo!

[TacticalPeek]

11. Precision drips.

:evilgrin:

[Gloria]

15. This should be right up former prosecutor Kerry's alley....

I'm waiting. I want to see him draw some blood. Just compare the spin/lies to the documents. Destroy these suckers.

[Tellurian]

20. Get Thee to the International Criminal Court, Mr. Bush.

You are going on trial for War Crimes...

don't bother packing a bag. We provide suitable clothing and three squares!

[dArKeR]

21. Every interrogation is video/sound recorded. Are the Press that stupid

not to report this? What level of Arabic speaking do you think our well trained torturers are? If anything like Asia, China, Taiwan, PI, Thailand... they are at least 20 dialects of completely different Iraqi Arabic. While being tortured the Iraqi could/would mutter something just before we killed them or they blackout. These tapes would surely be put to American databases and cross referenced.

I can NOT believe the American Whore Media could be so stupid or corrupt that they wouldn't publish that ALL interrogations are on video tape.