Compassion Forum: David Gushee asks Obama about torture
Anyway the Iraq war continues as bloody as ever though CNN and FOX news tell us the war is over. Like Bush and Cheney they lie on a daily basis . But that's ok we North Americans as good consumers mesmerized by Television can't remember anything before last weeks episode of 'Lost' or '24'.( I never watch 24, I don't get it just more hype to keep Americans wrapped up in their fear and paranoia )
WATERBOARDING ONLY PRO-TERRORISTS ARE AGAINST TORTURE !
At least that's what Bush , Cheney & the Media & the popular tv show " 24 " keep telling us.
So anyway John Yoo and Cheney tell us torture is OK because they made it legal. That of course as any first year law student will tell you is the purpose of the law and law makers. Lawyers are legal engineers who merely twist and tweak the language to have it say or mean whatever you want it too. If a corporation is polluting the environment or making shoddy goods they hire a lawyer to defend them to prove they are not really polluting or producing shoddy goods it is after all just a matter of opinion or perception. This is also what Public Relations depts are for . Imagine someone attends a university in order to learn how to be a really good liar i.e. public relations & the law . This also sums up the situation when it comes to so called places of higher learning i.e. universities which once upon a time stood for something now they are open to the highest bidder .
But I should add as a caveat that I do have to admit there are Lawyers who are actually good people , sincere , idealistic but they tend to be less successful than the real top of the class lawyers.
(Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo)On April 1, a secret 81-page memo written by former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo in March 2003 was made public. In that memo, Yoo advised the Bush administration that the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel would not enforce U.S. criminal laws, including federal statutes against torture, assault, maiming and stalking in the detention and interrogation of enemy combatants. The week after the publication of Yoo's memo, the National Lawyers Guild issued a press release calling for the Boalt Hall Law School at the University of California to dismiss Yoo, who is now a professor of law there. The NLG also called for the prosecution of Yoo for war crimes and for his disbarment.
It appears Obama has made his strongest statement yet that he will look into whether or not criminal charges are warranted against members of the Bush administration. One can only hope that this is not just rhetoric but that he is sincere and will do the right thing . Of course Hillary has already made fun of the whole notion of doing the right thing or doing that which might actually mean pursuing justice. But Hillary only wants to get elected and as she has shown will fling as much mud at her opponent as possible. Though it seems she forgets Obama also belongs to the same political party; maybe someone should inform her.
From Philadelphia Daily News Monday, April 14, 2008
Obama would ask his AG to "immediately review" potential of crimes in Bush White House
" What I would want to do is to have my Justice Department and my Attorney General immediately review the information that's already there and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued. I can't prejudge that because we don't have access to all the material right now. I think that you are right, if crimes have been committed, they should be investigated. You're also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt because I think we've got too many problems we've got to solve.
So this is an area where I would want to exercise judgment -- I would want to find out directly from my Attorney General -- having pursued, having looked at what's out there right now -- are there possibilities of genuine crimes as opposed to really bad policies. And I think it's important-- one of the things we've got to figure out in our political culture generally is distinguishing between really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity. You know, I often get questions about impeachment at town hall meetings and I've said that is not something I think would be fruitful to pursue because I think that impeachment is something that should be reserved for exceptional circumstances. Now, if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law -- and I think that's roughly how I would look at it."
The bottom line is that: Obama sent a clear signal that -- unlike impeachment, which he's ruled out and which now seems a practical impossibility -- he is at the least open to the possibility of investigating potential high crimes in the Bush White House. To many, the information that waterboarding -- which the United States has considered torture and a violation of law in the past -- was openly planned out in the seat of American government is evidence enough to at least start asking some tough questions in January 2009.
From AlterNet.org Torturers in the White House: Why Is This Story Being Ignored? By Ruth Conniff, The Progressive. April 17, 2008.
We now have confirmation that the President of the United States gave the OK to torture. Where is the media? Where are the Democrats?
The biggest news of the last week went virtually uncovered by the mainstream, print media. ABC News first reported last Wednesday that top Bush Administration officials, including Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft, and George Tenet, Colin Powell, and Donald Rumsfeld met to discuss which particular torture techniques should be used against Al Qaeda suspects in U.S. custody.
The group signed off on specific techniques, including sleep deprivation, slapping, pushing, and waterboarding, and gave instruction "so detailed … some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed, down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic."
If John McCain is seriously considering Condoleezza Rice as a running mate, the former POW should keep in mind that Rice not only condoned torture, but chaired the National Security Council's "Principals Committee" meetings to plan the details of torture of prisoners in U.S. custody.
Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was so troubled by the meetings, he was moved to object: "Why are we discussing this in the White House?" he asked, according to ABC. "History will not judge this kindly."
On Friday, ABC added this blockbuster: Bush himself was aware of the meetings. Unlike Ashcroft, he had no compunctions. There was nothing "startling" about the revelations that his top advisers were directing the waterboarding of individual prisoners, Bush told ABC's Martha Raddatz. "And yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue and I approved," Bush said.
Why is this not bigger news?
...In his new book The Terror Presidency, Yoo's colleague Jack Goldsmith writes about his evolution from friend and supporter of the officials who brought us to this pass to a conscientious objector to their illegal and morally corrupt practices.
Back when he worked for Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, Goldsmith wrote a memo warning that Bush Administration officials could be indicted by the International Criminal Court for their actions in the war on terror.
After he went to work for Justice, Goldsmith began standing up to the torture cabal at the White House -- to his enduring discomfort. In one incident, recounted in his book and in a September profile by Jeffrey Rosen of the New York Times Magazine, he knocked heads with Dick Cheney's advisor (now his chief of staff) David Addington. Goldsmith delivered the bad news that terror suspects were, in fact, covered by the Fourth Geneva Convention against torture of civilians: "'The president has already decided that terrorists do not receive Geneva Convention protections,'" Addington replied angrily, according to Goldsmith. 'You cannot question his decision.'"
Goldsmith also criticized the torture memos for their "extremely broad and unnecessary analysis of the President's Commander-in-Chief power" and for their extremely loose definition of torture as limited to causing a level of pain akin to organ failure.
Pointing out that the Administration was violating the War Crimes Act of 1996, the Geneva Conventions, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Goldmith withdrew Yoo's torture memos -- and promptly resigned his post.
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From MWC NEWS:Call for Dismissal and Prosecution of John Yoo by Marjorie Cohn april 17/2008
Center for Constitutional Rights Supports National Lawyers Guild
(Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo)
On April 1, a secret 81-page memo written by former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo in March 2003 was made public. In that memo, Yoo advised the Bush administration that the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel would not enforce U.S. criminal laws, including federal statutes against torture, assault, maiming and stalking in the detention and interrogation of enemy combatants. The week after the publication of Yoo's memo, the National Lawyers Guild issued a press release calling for the Boalt Hall Law School at the University of California to dismiss Yoo, who is now a professor of law there. The NLG also called for the prosecution of Yoo for war crimes and for his disbarment.
Two days later, the Center for Constitutional Rights released a letter supporting the NLG's call for Yoo’s dismissal and prosecution. CCR Executive Director Vincent Warren wrote, "The 'Torture Memo' was not an abstract, academic foray. Rather, it was crafted to sidestep U.S. and international laws that make coercive interrogation and torture a crime. It was written with the knowledge that its legal conclusions were to be applied to the interrogations of hundreds of individual detainees... And it worked. It became the basis for the CIA’s use of extreme interrogation methods as well the basis for DOD interrogation policy... Yoo’s legal opinions as well as the others issued by the Office of Legal Counsel were the keystone of the torture program, and were the necessary precondition for the torture program’s creation and implementation."
Indeed, ABC News reported last week that Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, George Tenet, and John Ashcroft met in the White House and micromanaged the torture of terrorism suspects by approving specific torture techniques such as waterboarding. George W. Bush, the decider-in-chief, admitted, "yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."
These top U.S. officials are liable for war crimes under the U.S. War Crimes Act, and for violation of the Convention Against Torture and the Geneva Conventions, which are all part of U.S. law. They ordered the torture which was carried out by the interrogators.
But John Yoo and the other Justice Department lawyers, including David Addington, Jay Bybee, William Haynes and Alberto Gonzales, are also liable for the same offenses. They were an integral part of a criminal conspiracy to violate U.S. laws. In U.S. v. Altstoetter, Nazi lawyers were convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity for advising Hitler on how to "legally" disappear political suspects to special detention camps. The United States charged that since they were lawyers, "not farmers or factory workers," they should have known their technical justifications for circumventing the Hague and Geneva Conventions were illegal.
The cases of Altstoetter and those of the Bush lawyers share common aspects. Both dealt with people detained during wartime who were not POWs; in both, it was reasonably foreseeable that the advice they gave would result in great physical or mental harm or death to many detainees; and in both, the advice was legally erroneous. More than 108 people have died in U.S. detention since 9/11, many from torture. And the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel later withdrew the memoranda, an admission that the advice in them was defective.
Furthermore, the Bush lawyers have engaged in ethical violations which should result in their disbarment. As New York University School of Law Professor Stephen Gillers wrote in The Nation, H. Marshall Jarrett, counsel for the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility, who is examining the legal advice these lawyers provided, "should find that this work is not 'consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys."
and so it goes,
GORD.
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