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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsObama's 170 degrees (going on 180) on Torture is a sad and scary spectacle
Obama Could Reaffirm a Bush-Era Reading of a Treaty on TortureBy CHARLIE SAVAGE * OCT. 18, 2014 * NYTimes
WASHINGTON When the Bush administration revealed in 2005 that it was secretly interpreting a treaty ban on cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment as not applying to C.I.A. and military prisons overseas, Barack Obama, then a newly elected Democratic senator from Illinois, joined in a bipartisan protest.
Mr. Obama supported legislation to make it clear that American officials were legally barred from using cruelty anywhere in the world. And in a Senate speech, he said enacting such a statute acknowledges and confirms existing obligations under the treaty, the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
But the Obama administration has never officially declared its position on the treaty, and now, President Obamas legal team is debating whether to back away from his earlier view. It is considering reaffirming the Bush administrations position that the treaty imposes no legal obligation on the United States to bar cruelty outside its borders, according to officials who discussed the deliberations on the condition of anonymity.
The administration must decide on its stance on the treaty by next month, when it sends a delegation to Geneva to appear before the Committee Against Torture, a United Nations panel that monitors compliance with the treaty. That presentation will be the first during Mr. Obamas presidency.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/us/politics/obama-could-reaffirm-a-bush-era-reading-of-a-treaty-on-torture.html?_r=0
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)We don't need treaties and laws....we have PLATITUDES!
MontyPow
(285 posts)Erodes them with each platitude.
Autumn
(45,056 posts)This can't continue.
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)but it doesn't. It's just plain mean-spirited, cruel and inhumane ...
About the only thing it "works" to do is create more "terrorists".
It's absolutely insane, yet here we have our "liberal" POTUS falling
over himself to double down on Bush Crime Family's "legacy" of
torture.
it's truly disgusting to me.
MontyPow
(285 posts)ballyhoo
(2,060 posts)moral baseline, then they have no moral baseline just new costumes they periodically slip into.
MontyPow
(285 posts)ballyhoo
(2,060 posts)we actually live and learn? Or do we live and accept because we can't admit error?
KingCharlemagne
(7,908 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Both parties. Both houses of Congress. Justice Department. Supreme Court. CIA. MIC. Surveillance. Propaganda. Secret laws and secret courts. All the way to the White House.
This is our government under corporate control.
Now what do we do?
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)With Occupy Wall St. we saw how our militarized police forces are "ready"
to meet any insurrection with brute force.
It may be wishful thinking, but the only way this is going to change is if
citizens somehow can up-level our collective consciousness in such a radically
evolutionary way that it's more contagious than ebola, it's so compelling that
even the cops can't resist it.
Make love not war, flowers in the barrel of a gun kind of thing.
But then I'm an old hippy, so I might be hallucinating.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)That's what Bernie is telling us. That it has to be a revolution or it will go nowhere. That we need masses....a nationwide change of consciousness and determination.
They're doing their best to close off all avenues to do that. No accident that the move to corporate internet is happening now, with all the telecoms behind the corporate politicians.
They've been systematically closing every avenue for us to fight back.
There are so many more of us, than them.
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)Which is a bi-partisan, community based movement to bring about real and very needed change.
Among things that have taken place under that movement are these:
The banning (outright!) of the three fracking wells that would have been installed in Pittsburg PA had community rights people not gotten the ban put on the ballot and overwhelmingly approved by voters. Fracking is dead in Pittsburg.
In one other PA community -- The banning (outright) of corporate-industrial pig farming (and other industrial farming) through same tactics as described above about fracking.
Other communities are seeing to it that GM labels are now required on food sold in their communities.
Only big problem is that the judicial system is starting to overturn local initiatives. Sad case where in Longmont Colorado the judge upheld the Big Energy's interests in fracking, saying the people have no legislative rights! (Our inherent rights now - according to this fascist's reasoning - must come to us not by our taking back our power, but by the method of electing legislators who are very prone to monetary influence.)
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)The tentacles are everywhere.
Yeah, keep working at community level, while also trying to educate nationally and everywhere we can. I don't know. Teach beyond DU. Call out the propaganda and the lies and amplify the messages of the few who are telling the truth for as long as possible....for as long as the PTB have to allow them to speak for the illusion of democracy. Make explicit every corporate lie and diversion and partisan manipulation, because people start to get it when they realize they can predict how they will be screwed...
I think that's what Bernie keeps trying to tell us. Our only hope is educating and growing a movement, and it has to happen well beyond DU. The PTB won't let Bernie or any other real representative of the people through, and we will continue to get the same corporate policies that are destroying us for the enrichment of plutocrats. At the very least, we can use the process to teach this time. This election will be a powerful teaching tool. It's a powerful thing when people start to see the patterns and realize they are being lied to, propagandized, deliberately manipulated by those who pretend to represent them but are really knifing them in the back. IMO that's when they start to organize.
Unitl they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.
That, he reflected, might almost have been a transcription from one of the Party textbooks.
-Orwell, 1984
truedelphi
(32,324 posts)Modern day communication specialsits see to it that the pot-fighters are labelled Kardashian, or New Jersey/Orange County housewives or whatever, while the electorate is sitting there enthralled.
I know when Steve Colbert referred to Honey Boo Boo's 2032 election the US Senate, people in the audience laughed, but it really is not a laughing matter.
polichick
(37,152 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)people honestly don't know what to say or do. We're already in Oceania in so many ways, and people don't know where to turn. We 're all in different stages of waking up to what's being done to us, and we live marinated in propaganda that tells us the answers are in the very system that's so corrupted.
polichick
(37,152 posts)And history is constantly being rewritten.
Sometimes I think of this quote:
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
― Margaret Mead
That small group will have to be incredibly strategic and brave in order to set off the movement it will take.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)their garbage, stop using their credit cards, starve them of what has given them all that control, money.
They created very successfully, a debt-ridden, consumer society, where you are more valuable to them when you are in debt than if you pay your bills. The World Bank and IMF uses the same despicable tactic when it uses disastrous situations to force countries into debt and keeps them in debt, ending their sovereignty more successfully than an invading army.
That is why they hated Chavez. He paid off Venezuela's debt freeing the country from their control over how it spends its money. They HATED him to the point of attempting to overturn a real, democratic election.
THAT should demonstrate what a trap all this consumerism is. If people could be convinced that if 'you can't afford it, you should not buy it by going into debt' they would freak out.
A Global Movement that boycotted everything that is not essential until they were starved out of existence would make it hard for them to send out their robo cops and tanks to crush protests. No one would have to leave their homes to do this.
But that is just a dream. They have so hooked people on all these 'toys' people get into debt over, it would be like trying to stop a drug addict from buying drugs.
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)see it as another opportunity to jump on ANY bandwagon that criticizes the President whether real or imagined....but but but....YOU are the real Democrats!
AgingAmerican
(12,958 posts)nt
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)just instant criticism! At the drop of ANY hat!
AgingAmerican
(12,958 posts)nt
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)G_j
(40,366 posts)BTW, FYI, Independant is not a political party.
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)It means you are NOT one OF a party....therefore....you shouldn't think you have the right to tell members of SAID PARTY....what they should or shouldn't do....YOU are not a member. and THAT is what I am always pointing out!
G_j
(40,366 posts)and an independent thinker, and I don't tell anyone what to do. I come here to share information, gain knowledge, and discuss issues.
msongs
(67,395 posts)deurbano
(2,894 posts)Should Democrats wait to dissent until the decision is made?
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)based on the original title and the ironically changed that only served to prove the point of the criticism it got!
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)Primary ELECTION that the Democratic Party members will hold. Pay no attention to those who cannot abide by a democratically held election!
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)are you planning to vote for whomever wins the Democratic Primary?
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)truedelphi
(32,324 posts)Trolls to do it!!
whistler162
(11,155 posts)truedelphi
(32,324 posts)And who remember our parents's stories of FDR (And even Eisenhower, for that matter) we are not about to let the Kill The Messenger crowd woo us with their lack of truth, their persistance and their continual outright lies.
Aging American, Glad to have people like you here on DU, as it makes me feel that someone else has my back.
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)Even though it has not.
Typical really.
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)using Democratic Underground as their place to punch Democrats!
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)The only setting they have is outrage.
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)thanks for coming through for me!
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)torture?
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)Support the winner of the Democratic Primary. .wonder what tells me that is not you?
cui bono
(19,926 posts)because critical thinking/analysis is bad mmkay" comment.
Typical really.
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)If you are so certain that Obama is going to do the right thing?
"Well, OK sure, we tortured some folks" .. but the Bush Crime Family "were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots." ~President Obama
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Worrying about the title of an OP that has already been written is looking backward.
Luminous Animal
(27,310 posts)officials?
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)it hasn't even happened YET THIS OP describes it as though already it has! We are criticizing this tactic of criticism....its not being debated by THIS OP.....read the title...
Luminous Animal
(27,310 posts)Yes, it comes anonymous sources, but much of our news these days comes from anonymous sources.
FYI, I think the title of this OP is shit.
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)complete and utter horseshit....ANY excuse to criticize the Democratic President on Democratic Underground....and this proves it!
Luminous Animal
(27,310 posts)bluesbassman
(19,370 posts)And completely ignore the reality that not only has the Obama administration condoned torture on it's watch, but is now reportedly entertaining furthering an official position via treaty. That you want to make this an issue of criticism of the President speaks more to an agenda of blind support at the cost of reasoned discussion and accountability from our leadership.
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)bluesbassman
(19,370 posts)Did Senator Obama not make that speech? Is President Obama's administration not entertaining a further acceptance of torture techniques?
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)the fact that it even changed at all in even this miniscule manner....proves what it was really about..
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)Yet nothing had actually happened. There was no change to the official policy.
The OP ... caught lying ... has now changed the OP slightly. But its still wrong.
bluesbassman
(19,370 posts)While President Obama and his administration have allowed and even appluaded the use of torture and your complaint is with a matter of percentages in an OP title?
Personally I'm a little more concerned with torture being used by the US government.
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)or is this just conjecture based on "anonymous sources" again?
bluesbassman
(19,370 posts)Actions speak so much louder than words.
VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)Or are you still using conjecture?
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)and the outcome will be shortly known, because (as the article says)
Obama & the US Gov't must stand and deliver on this within ONE MONTH
at Geneva.
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)Your OP claims.
Currently, its a lie intended to create outrage about something that has not actually happened.
Apparently.
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)Last edited Sun Oct 19, 2014, 06:58 PM - Edit history (1)
"Its important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had. [The Bush Crime Family was] working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots, the president said on 8/1/14
And now within the WH there is a "debate" behind closed doors seriously considering going onto the world stage, to completely buy-into the Bush Crime Family's outrageous flouting of the Geneva Conventions by the USA.
Do you not see a problematic trajectory here?
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)You lied. And now you changed your OP.
The new title is also BS, btw.
The policy has not changed.
The only thing I see ... is faux outrage from the Combustible Hair Club.
If you guys skipped the lies ... maybe you'd be taken more seriously.
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)Well, excuse me for being a little "sanctimonious" regarding torture, and
for not wanting to have any truck with those who want to excuse
the Bush Crime Family as "good patriots".
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)You put the word sanctimonious in quotes as if I used it in regards to you.
I did not.
I said your OP title was a lie. Which it was.
Stomping your feet here does not change that fact.
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)Give me Gitmo.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/03/a-gitmo-prisoner-alleges-he-has-been-tortured-under-obama/284369/
Give me continued "renderings" under Obama
https://www.aclu.org/blog/human-rights-national-security/rendition-program-continue-under-obamas-watch
Give me a barf-bag.
You are seriously defending Obama's breach of these super-important international agreements to treat one another with a modicum of humanity?
Really?
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)Your OP title is a lie and you now scramble around trying to deflect from that fact.
Stop digging, let your BS thread die.
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)are the pathetic sanctimonious defenses of the indefensible on this string ...
Good riddance.
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)Dude, this IS HAPPENING NOW.
A decision must be made on this within 30 days, and "is being debated" behind closed doors at the WH.
Did you not read the article. This is NOT mere speculation.
GummyBearz
(2,931 posts)... what would you do if this article was about bush? defend our almighty (former) leader?
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)DisgustipatedinCA
(12,530 posts)grasswire
(50,130 posts)What, indeed?
In another era, the word would be a 13-letter word that begins with c and ends with r.
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)i think maybe your letter count is off by a few
Art_from_Ark
(27,247 posts)VanillaRhapsody
(21,115 posts)link or quit making false accusations!
grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Too much thoughtcrime, too many doubleplusungood ideas in this thread.
grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)wrong and must be prosecuted. If they fail to do that, you know they are on the darkside, if you will.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Very telling.
grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)truedelphi
(32,324 posts)Scary beyond belief.
I remember back in the Bush era days, Mike Malloy asked the audience about the Holocaust. How could it happen? When did the writing on the wall indicate that the society was headed in that direction?
After some hours of discussion, what it all boiled down to was this: once one person could have their life ruined by torture or death due to unproven charges, then so could ten or twenty people or a hundred or a half million or ten million.
And seeing that the American people have now - not once - but twice embarked on horrible torturous wars, once on account of OOOGAH BOOGAH, scarey Saddam Hussein, and now OOOGAH BOOGAH, scarey ISIS, I guess we are gonna see a Holocaust in our lifetimes. It won't be against most Jewish people, (just those who dissent.) And it most certainly will not affect the One Percent. But it will be against poor people, and dissidents and those who are unfortunate enough to have a Muslim name, or those who are against Gm seeds and Monsanto, or who believe in the truth involving what is painting our California skies with plumes of rain-drying up dessicants, etc.
grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)madokie
(51,076 posts)Some days its just not worth chewing through the restraints and this my friends is one of those days
I don't and won't believe anything that is linked back to the nytimes. Period. f* the bunch of 'm
Response to 99th_Monkey (Original post)
Post removed
ucrdem
(15,512 posts)Looks like ISIS kind of took the wind out of the drone meme, which started right here at the good ol' NYT with a presidential "profile." Good times.
And TPP has been D.O.A. since last summer, and the midterms are next week!!
What to do, what to do . . . ??
Ah ha! Torture!!
Now we didn't we think of that earlier?!
Comrade Grumpy
(13,184 posts)And if and when Obama does a 180, we can count on some posters in this thread to explain why he was absolutely correct to do so.
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)It's the trajectory that has me concerned.
The fact that this is even being seriously "debated" in the WH is outrageous
to me, but apparently not so much with the OBAMA-right-or-wrong crowd.
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)a distinct lack of ANY thing to support your claim, regarding the substance
of a NYT article that you apparently wish that I had completely ignored.
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)him how important it is as a tool in their tool bag.
MisterP
(23,730 posts)before it smashes you into pink paste!
sulphurdunn
(6,891 posts)the president will take on any issue, ask Penny Pritzker.
JEB
(4,748 posts)sharp_stick
(14,400 posts)but I try to find other avenues that aren't so "easy"
grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)democrank
(11,092 posts)If President Obama is against torture as he stated, why would anyone in his administration have to debate whether or not he should walk away from his earlier view?
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)That's what I wonder too, and that's why I'm so concerned.
The very last thing we need is for a "liberal" Democratic POTUS to go to Geneva
and arrogantly insist that the USA has every right to "torture folks" in violation
of the Geneva Convention.
JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)They will even debate positions that they know they don't agree with, because they know they will face pressure from the other side.
The OP lied.
There has been no change in the official position. None.
If Obama was not against torture ... he could have easily OKed it after the 2012 election ... don't you think?
Why didn't he do that?
still_one
(92,136 posts)The Torture policy
grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)still_one
(92,136 posts)grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)my neighborhood!
cheapdate
(3,811 posts)torture.
The legal questions and question of authority are more complicated than the article presents.
Bernadette Meehan, a National Security Council spokeswoman, said Mr. Obamas opposition to torture and cruel interrogations anywhere in the world was clear, separate from the legal question of whether the United Nations treaty applies to American behavior overseas.
She's arguably not just making that up. The specific, Senate ratification of the treaty in 1990 was not "carte blanche"; it came with a list of caveats and exceptions, e.g.:
I. The Senate's advice and consent is subject to the following reservations:
...
(3) That pursuant to Article 30(2) the United States declares that it does not consider itself bound by Article 30(1), but reserves the right specifically to agree to follow this or any other procedure for arbitration in a particular case
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/Z?r101:S27OC0-B457
There are both legal arguments and arguments on principle from the government's and the administration's side that I don't think can be easily dismissed or ignored without a full and proper consideration.
I support full compliance with the treaty. The Senate in it's ratification didn't. And the "legislation to make it clear that American officials were legally barred from using cruelty anywhere in the world." that candidate Obama supported never materialized.
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)But that is no excuse for torture. There is not one good reason to torture, period.
There ARE a number of not-so-good reasons, but that's not why we're here ... is it?
cheapdate
(3,811 posts)Its shameful and degrading to our national identity. It's morally wrong, unnecessary and ineffective as an intelligence tool, and I would argue, clearly illegal.
The Obama administration ended the use of "enhanced interrogation" methods, or torture, in 2009 for these very reasons.
Mr. Koh argued that both treaties protected prisoners in American custody or control anywhere. In a 90-page memo he signed in 2013, before leaving the State Department to return to teaching at Yale Law School, he declared, In my legal opinion, it is not legally available to policy makers to claim that the torture treaty has no application abroad.
In March, the Obama administration rejected Mr. Kohs view about the Bill of Rights-style accord, telling the United Nations that the United States still believed that it applied only on domestic soil. That treaty, however, raised more complications than the torture treaty does.
I'd go with Mr. Koh -- without having read his 90 page legal memo, or studied the senate ratification resolution with it's amendments and restrictions, or having heard a full account of the administration's position.
I suppose we'll see. Obama is mightily conservative on national security issues.
stupidicus
(2,570 posts)And its important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had. And a lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots.
But having said all that, we did some things that were wrong. And thats what that report reflects. And thats the reason why, after I took office, one of the first things I did was to ban some of the extraordinary interrogation techniques that are the subject of that report.
I'd bet that we're still using "techniques" that others still define as torture, still paying others to do it for us, or both.
It's really too bad that his "sanctimonious" standard isn't applied to say, his attitude towards whistleblowers. Apparently the state can commit crimes with impunity/without fear of reprisal -- a liberty we little people don't have, and in some cases, even the right to make the public aware of state crimes.
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)Thank you for amplifying it.
You totally pegged it.
stupidicus
(2,570 posts)obviously, to "amplify" things further...lol For some reason I don't think any "Well, at least no one died under my torture program!" will be a good talking point.
If it eventually comes out that all he's done is eliminate the worst of the practices while leaving some of the lesser abuses in full use -- as all that reads to me -- it can be easily, reasonably, and justifiably be argued that the lack of prosecutions is also about sparing his own ass the hotseat it belongs on too, given that would make his use of it as premeditated and illegal as Bush's. And then there's leaving the legal and moral duty to prosecute without any support for not having done so whatsoever, not that it's been justified to those of us who see this issue in black and white terms anyway...
Since I voted for him twice, and especially for the victims, I hope this isn't the case, but if it is, what will the "world" think upon discovering that even the "good" president tortures? They already see us as the biggest threat to peace, and that would make us an even darker beacon of lawlessness, and whatever vestige of moral authority we have left/regained in the world denied.
On the other hand, I hope it is the case, if for no other reason other than to finally wake up the many on the left who remain oblivious to or in denial of the good cop/bad cop game we're all burdened and worse by in so many ways. Hopefully that will lead to awareness and conditions underwhich none of us -- to quote the sage words of his predecessor the shrub -- will be "fooled again".
If that is what's happening, it'll be interesting to see whether he'll get support for it in a measure comparable to that Bush recieved from the right, or if it will be an impeachable offense too. What I don't understand at all, given all the time and effort that's been made to make the case that torture led nowhere intel-wise, why it would still be in use in any form other than by sadists.
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)other than for Sadists.
Thank you.
orpupilofnature57
(15,472 posts)grasswire
(50,130 posts)....if the administration allows torture of those we capture?
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)BLOWBACK BABY! Just sayin'
NYC Liberal
(20,135 posts)The NY Times headline could just as easily read "Obama Could Reaffirm His Own Reading of a Treaty on Torture".
I like how this post omits the part of the article that talks about the State Department, which is strongly pushing to reject Bush's interpretation:
And this part:
We are considering that question, and other questions posed by the committee, carefully as we prepare for the presentation in November, Ms. Meehan said. But there is no question that torture and cruel treatment in armed conflict are clearly and categorically prohibited in all places.
In fact, the majority of the article talks about the strong opposition within the administration to reading it as Bush did. And everything we know says Pres. Obama's stance is consistently against it as well.
Corruption Inc
(1,568 posts)Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell and Cheney planned, constructed and used torture camps in your and my name as an American. It doesn't matter who's for it or against it, it's a war crime and a crime against humanity.
NYC Liberal
(20,135 posts)What a silly statement.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)Obama called on the former general chairman of the RNC to stop Spain's investigation of US torture crimes.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/12/25/105786/wikileaks-how-us-tried-to-stop.html
MIAMI It was three months into Barack Obama's presidency, and the administration -- under pressure to do something about alleged abuses in Bush-era interrogation policies -- turned to a Florida senator to deliver a sensitive message to Spain:
Don't indict former President George W. Bush's legal brain trust for alleged torture in the treatment of war on terror detainees, warned Mel Martinez on one of his frequent trips to Madrid. Doing so would chill U.S.-Spanish relations.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/202776?INTCMP=SRCH
6. (C) As reported in SEPTEL, Senator Mel Martinez, accompanied by the Charge d'Affaires, met Acting FM Angel Lossada during a visit to the Spanish MFA on April 15. Martinez and the Charge underscored that the prosecutions would not be understood or accepted in the U.S. and would have an enormous impact on the bilateral relationship. The Senator also asked if the GOS had thoroughly considered the source of the material on which the allegations were based to ensure the charges were not based on misinformation or factually wrong statements. Lossada responded that the GOS recognized all of the complications presented by universal jurisdiction, but that the independence of the judiciary and the process must be respected. The GOS would use all appropriate legal tools in the matter. While it did not have much margin to operate, the GOS would advise Conde Pumpido that the official administration position was that the GOS was "not in accord with the National Court." Lossada reiterated to Martinez that the executive branch of government could not close any judicial investigation and urged that this case not affect the overall relationship, adding that our interests were much broader, and that the universal jurisdiction case should not be viewed as a reflection of the GOS position.
Judd Gregg, Obama's Republican nominee for Commerce secretary, didn't like the investigations either.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/202776?INTCMP=SRCH
4. (C) As reported in REF A, Senator Judd Gregg, accompanied by the Charge d'Affaires, raised the issue with Luis Felipe Fernandez de la Pena, Director General Policy Director for North America and Europe during a visit to the Spanish MFA on April 13. Senator Gregg expressed his concern about the case. Fernandez de la Pena lamented this development, adding that judicial independence notwithstanding, the MFA disagreed with efforts to apply universal jurisdiction in such cases.
Why the aversion? To protect Bushco, of course!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/200177
The fact that this complaint targets former Administration legal officials may reflect a "stepping-stone" strategy designed to pave the way for complaints against even more senior officials.
Eric Holder got the message.
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=7410267&page=1
As lawmakers call for hearings and debate brews over forming commissions to examine the Bush administration's policies on harsh interrogation techniques, Attorney General Eric Holder confirmed to a House panel that intelligence officials who relied on legal advice from the Bush-era Justice Department would not be prosecuted.
"Those intelligence community officials who acted reasonably and in good faith and in reliance on Department of Justice opinions are not going to be prosecuted," he told members of a House Appropriations Subcommittee, reaffirming the White House sentiment. "It would not be fair, in my view, to bring such prosecutions."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/feedarticle/8470942
Associated Press Writer= WASHINGTON (AP) â Attorney General Eric Holder left open the possibility Thursday to prosecuting former Bush administration officials but ruled out filing charges merely over disagreements about policy.
"I will not permit the criminalization of policy differences," Holder testified before a House Appropriations subcommittee.
"However, it is my responsibility as attorney general to enforce the law. It is my duty to enforce the law. If I see evidence of wrongdoing I will pursue it to the full extent of the law," he said.
~snip~
"It is certainly the intention of this administration not to play hide and seek, or not to release certain things," said Holder. "It is not our intention to try to advance a political agenda or to try to hide things from the American people."
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/06/cia-exhales-99-out-of-101-torture-cases-dropped/
This is how one of the darkest chapters in U.S. counterterrorism ends: with practically every instance of suspected CIA torture dodging criminal scrutiny. Its one of the greatest gifts the Justice Department could have given the CIA as David Petraeus takes over the agency.
Over two years after Attorney General Eric Holder instructed a special prosecutor, John Durham, to preliminar(ily) review whether CIA interrogators unlawfully tortured detainees in their custody, Holder announced on Thursday afternoon that hell pursue criminal investigations in precisely two out of 101 cases of suspected detainee abuse. Some of them turned out not to have involved CIA officials after all. Both of the cases that move on to a criminal phase involved the death in custody of detainees, Holder said.
But just because theres a further criminal inquiry doesnt necessarily mean there will be any charges brought against CIA officials involved in those deaths. If Holders decision on Thursday doesnt actually end the Justice Departments review of torture in CIA facilities, it brings it awfully close, as outgoing CIA Director Leon Panetta noted.
On this, my last day as Director, I welcome the news that the broader inquiries are behind us, Panetta wrote to the CIA staff on Thursday. We are now finally about to close this chapter of our Agencys history.
By SCOTT SHANE
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/us/holder-rules-out-prosecutions-in-cia-interrogations.html
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced Thursday that no one would be prosecuted for the deaths of a prisoner in Afghanistan in 2002 and another in Iraq in 2003, eliminating the last possibility that any criminal charges will be brought as a result of the brutal interrogations carried out by the C.I.A.
Mr. Holder had already ruled out any charges related to the use of waterboarding and other methods that most human rights experts consider to be torture. His announcement closes a contentious three-year investigation by the Justice Department and brings to an end years of dispute over whether line intelligence or military personnel or their superiors would be held accountable for the abuse of prisoners in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The closing of the two cases means that the Obama administrations limited effort to scrutinize the counterterrorism programs carried out under President George W. Bush has come to an end. Without elaborating, Mr. Holder suggested that the end of the criminal investigation should not be seen as a moral exoneration of those involved in the prisoners treatment and deaths.
Based on the fully developed factual record concerning the two deaths, the department has declined prosecution because the admissible evidence would not be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction beyond a reasonable doubt, his statement said. It said the investigation was not intended to, and does not resolve, broader questions regarding the propriety of the examined conduct.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1160238/How-MI5-colluded-torture-Binyam-Mohamed-claims-British-agents-fed-Moroccan-torturers-questions--WORLD-EXCLUSIVE.html#ixzz256BI1FmS
Documents obtained by this newspaper - which were disclosed to Mohamed through a court case he filed in America - show that months after he was taken to Morocco aboard an illegal 'extraordinary rendition' flight by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, MI5 twice gave the CIA details of questions they wanted his interrogators to put to him, together with dossiers of photographs.
At the time, in November 2002, Mohamed was being subject to intense, regular beatings and sessions in which his chief Moroccan torturer, a man he knew as Marwan, slashed his chest and genitals with a scalpel.
~snip~
The revelations will put Foreign Secretary David Miliband under even greater pressure to come clean about British involvement in the rendition and alleged torture of Muslim terror suspects.
Last month his lawyers persuaded the High Court not to allow parts of a judgement that summarised Mohamed's treatment to be published, on the grounds that to do so would jeopardise Britians intelligence-sharing relationship with America.
http://www.hrw.org/news/2009/05/11/libyaus-investigate-death-former-cia-prisoner
(New York) The Libyan authorities should carry out a full and transparent investigation of the reported suicide of the Libyan prisoner Ali Mohamed al-Fakheri, also known as Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, Human Rights Watch said today. Al-Libi, who was held in secret US and Egyptian detention from late 2001 to at least 2005, was found dead in his cell in Abu Salim prison in Tripoli. Human Rights Watch spoke with him briefly in the Tripoli prison on April 27, though he refused to be interviewed.
After his arrest in Pakistan in late 2001, al-Libi was sent by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to Egypt in 2002, under the procedure known as rendition. According to a CIA declassified cable and a US Senate report, he was tortured in Egypt and gave false information about a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda that Colin Powell, then the secretary of state, used in his speech to the UN Security Council on the planned war with Iraq. Al-Libi was later held by the CIA in a series of secret prisons in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
~snip~
Al-Libi was returned from US custody to Libya in late 2005 or early 2006 and was detained at Abu Salim prison. The Abu Salim prison authorities told Human Rights Watch in April 2009 that he had been sentenced to life imprisonment by the State Security Court, a court whose trial proceedings fail to conform to international fair trial standards.
Human Rights Watch briefly met with al-Libi on April 27 during a research mission to Libya. He refused to be interviewed, and would say nothing more than: Where were you when I was being tortured in American jails. Human Rights Watch has strongly condemned the CIAs detention program and documented how detainees in CIA custody were abused, but, like other human rights groups, was never granted access to prisoners in CIA custody.
CIA Has Run a Secret Facility for Some Al Qaeda Detainees, Officials Say
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5918-2004Dec16.html
Within the heavily guarded perimeters of the Defense Department's much-discussed Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, the CIA has maintained a detention facility for valuable al Qaeda captives that has never been mentioned in public, according to military officials and several current and former intelligence officers.
~snip~
Most international terrorism suspects in U.S. custody are held not by the CIA but by the Defense Department at the Guantanamo Bay prison. They are guaranteed access to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and, as a result of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling this year, have the right to challenge their imprisonment in federal courts.
CIA detainees, by contrast, are held under separate rules and far greater secrecy. Under a presidential directive and authorities approved by administration lawyers, the CIA is allowed to capture and hold certain classes of suspects without accounting for them in any public way and without revealing the rules for their treatment. The roster of CIA prisoners is not public, but current and former U.S. intelligence officials say the agency holds the most valuable al Qaeda leaders and many mid-level members with knowledge of the group's logistics, financing and regional operations.
http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/documents/cia_oig_report.pdf
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p. 15
http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/paper/index.php?article=4282
Nineteen-year-old Mohamed Jawad has set foot in Afghanistan after seven years in detention making him one of the youngest prisoners to be released from Guantánamo. He is set to sue the US Government in the next couple of months for inhumane treatment and torture in addition to being a minor in detention.
~snip~
Jawad claims his captors tortured him and other prisoners, deprived them of food and sleep. He has described having his hands tied behind his back and being forced to eat by bending over and putting his mouth into a plate of food. He received substantial abuse, including the frequent flier treatment which is a form of torture where the victim is shifted from cell to cell. Mohamed was shifted through 152 locations in a weeks time, staying a maximum of 2 hours and 55 seconds in each location.
http://www.aclu.org/national-security/government-seeks-continue-detaining-mohammed-jawad-guantanamo-despite-lack-evidenc
NEW YORK After admitting to a federal judge that Guantánamo detainee and American Civil Liberties Union client Mohammed Jawad had been tortured and illegally detained for nearly seven years, the Obama administration today asked the court for permission to continue to detain Jawad while it decides whether to bring a criminal case against him. The request, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, comes after U.S. District Court Judge Ellen S. Huvelle berated government lawyers last week for their inadequate case against Jawad.
Last fall, a military judge in Jawad's Guantánamo military commission proceeding threw out the bulk of the evidence against him finding that it was obtained through torture. Despite that ruling, the Obama administration continued to rely on those same statements in Jawad's habeas corpus challenge before Judge Huvelle until last week when it said it would no longer rely on that evidence. The Afghan Attorney General recently sent a letter to the U.S. government demanding Jawad's return and suggesting he was as young as 12 when he was captured in Afghanistan and illegally rendered from that country nearly seven years ago.
Following his 2002 arrest in Afghanistan for allegedly throwing a grenade at two U.S. soldiers and their interpreter, Jawad was subjected to repeated torture and other mistreatment and to a systematic program of harsh and highly coercive interrogations designed to break him physically and mentally. Jawad tried to commit suicide in his cell by slamming his head repeatedly against the wall.
http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/documents/cia_oig_report.pdf
[IMG][/IMG]
p. 42.
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/2/8/he_was_the_agency_ex_cia#transcript
AMY GOODMAN: That was CIA Director-designate John Brennan being questioned yesterday during his Senate confirmation hearing by Democratic Senator Carl Levin of Michigan.
For more, were joined by Melvin Goodman, former CIA and State Department analyst, senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, director of the Centers National Security Project, his latest book, National Insecurity: The Cost of American Militarism.
Your response to that line of questioning, Mel Goodman?
MELVIN GOODMAN: Well, I think it was very disturbing on a lot of levels. Its a step backward, for one thing. Former Director Leon Panetta did define waterboarding as torture. The attorney general has defined waterboarding as torture. But John Brennan wont do so. And also, when John Brennan was a deputy executive assistant to Buzzy Krongard and to George Tenet, remember, he was the cheerleader for some of these onerous policies, particularly renditions and extraordinary renditions. So, for John Brennan today to say he read the Senate committee intelligence report on torture and he learned things he never knew before and that he was shocked with what he learned, this is a case of incredible willful ignorance. Hes been at the top of the CIA and now at the top in the White Housein fact, hes probably stepping down in becoming the director of the CIA. He has written the manual for targeted killings. Hes written the disposition matrix, which is something out of George Orwell, that allows the president of the United States to pick targets based on evidence that Brennan collects from the CIA, presumably the same kind of evidence that was taken to the country in 2002 and 2003 that allowed the United States to go to war. So, all of this is extremely disturbing about who Brennan is.
JOHN BRENNAN: I did not take steps to stop the CIAs use of those techniques. I was not in the chain of command of that program. I served as deputy executive director at the time. I had responsibility for overseeing the management of the agency in all of its various functions. And I was aware of the program. I was ccd on some of those documents. But I had no oversight of it. I wasnt involved in its creation. I had expressed my personal objections and views to mysome agency colleagues about certain of those EITs, such as waterboarding, nudity and others, where I professed my personal objections to it. But I did not try to stop it, because it was, you know, something that was being done in a different part of the agency under the authority of others, and it was something that was directed by the administration at the time.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Mel Goodman, your response to his answer?
MELVIN GOODMAN: Well, very disturbing for him to say he was in a different part of the agency. He was the agency. He was on the seventh floor of the agency. He was an executive assistant to the director and to the executive secretary of the CIA. He was the one they allowed to go on Sunday morning talk shows to defend renditions, and particularly extraordinary renditions, which involve not only kidnapping people off the streets of Europe and the Middle East and Africa, but sending them to countries where we knew these people would be tortured.
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/2/7/globalizing_torture_ahead_of_brennan_hearing#transcript
MARGARET WARNER: So, was Secretary Rice correct today when she called it a vital tool in combating terrorism?
JOHN BRENNAN: I think its an absolutely vital tool. I have been intimately familiar now over the past decade with the cases of rendition that the U.S. government has been involved in, and I can say without a doubt that it has been very successful as far as producing intelligence that has saved lives.
MARGARET WARNER: So is itare you saying, bothin two ways, both in getting terrorists off the streets and also in the interrogation?
JOHN BRENNAN: Yes. The rendition is the practice or the process of rendering somebody from one place to another place. It is moving them. And U.S. government will frequently facilitate that movement from a country to another.
MARGARET WARNER: Why would you not, if thisif you have a suspect whos a danger to the United States, keep itkeep him in the United States custody? Is it because we want another country to do the dirty work?
JOHN BRENNAN: No, I dont think thats it at all. Also, I think its rather arrogant to think that were the only country that respects human rights. I think that we have a lot of assurances from these countries that we hand over terrorists to that they will in fact respect human rights. And there are different ways to gain those assurances. But also, lets say an individual goes to Egypt, because theyre an Egyptian citizen. And Egyptians then have a longer history in terms of dealing with them, and they have family members and others that they can bring in, in fact, to be part of the whole interrogation process.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was John Brennan speaking to PBSs Margaret Warner in 2005.
AMY GOODMAN: The report is called "Globalizing Torture." It also identifies 54 foreign governments that aided the United States in these operations. The countries include Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Finland, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Libya, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Uzbekistan, Yemen and Zimbabwe.
One country thats not listed is India, but the report is making headlines there, too, because, for more, were joined now by the reports author, Amrit Singh. Shes senior legal officer at the National Security and Counterterrorism program at the Open Society Justice Initiative. The full name of her new report is "Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition." Shes co-author with Jameel Jaffer of the book Administration of Torture: A Documentary Record from Washington to Abu Ghraib and Beyond_. And interestingly, the new torture report has become news in India. The human-rights-secret-detention-amrit-singh">headline in The Times of India reads, quote: "Prime Ministers Daughter Blows Whistle on 54 Nations that Helped U.S. Detention Programme." Another website headline, their story: "PMs Daughter Takes on CIA over Torture." Thats right, our guest, Amrit Singh, is the daughter of Indias prime minister, Manmohan Singh.
Amrit Singh, welcome to Democracy Now!
AMRIT SINGH: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Lets talk about John Brennan first. He goes to Capitol Hill today for his confirmation hearing. You wrote a piece in the Los Angeles Times. What do you think he should be asked? What do you think of the nomination of John Brennan to be head of the CIA?
AMRIT SINGH: Well, I think John Brennan should be asked what he meant when he said that he was intimately familiar with cases of rendition and that rendition is an absolutely vital tool in combating terrorism, because by the time Brennan made that statement in December of 2005, a number of people had been rendered to foreign governments where they were tortured. By December of 2005, Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad al-Zery had been rendered to Egypt and subjected to electric shock. By December of 2005, Maher Arar, a Canadian national, had been rendered to Syria and subjected to being locked up in a tiny grave-like cell and beaten with cables. By December 2005, a number of other individuals, including Khalid El-Masri, had been rendered. Khalid El-Masri was captured and kidnapped in Macedonia and transferred to Afghanistan and abused. A recent court decision by the European Court of Human Rights found that Khalid El-Masris treatment by the CIA amounted to torture. So I think that John Brennan has a lot of explaining to do as to what exactly he meant.
Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition
http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/reports/globalizing-torture-cia-secret-detention-and-extraordinary-rendition
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2010/02/justice-department-will-not-punish-yoo.html
To show misconduct, according to the standard that Margolis finds most relevant, one would have to show that Yoo or Bybee intentionally made arguments that they knew were wrong and false or did so not caring whether they were wrong or false. That standard could not be met for Jay Bybee, because Bybee was, to put it bluntly, an empty suit who relied on the advice of others and didn't analyze the memos all that closely. He just signed the papers. This makes him pathetic, but not, in Margolis's view, someone who unambiguously violated existing rules of professional responsibility.
As for John Yoo, Margolis explains (although he puts it far more diplomatically) that Yoo was an ideologue who entered government service with a warped vision of the world in which he sincerely believed. Yoo had crazy ideas even before he entered government; which strongly suggests that he probably shouldn't have been hired in the first place. Therefore it is hard to conclude that Yoo deliberately gave advice that he knew was wrong to the CIA. Yoo isn't putting people on when he says the absurd things he says in these memos and elsewhere. He actually believes that the President is a dictator and that the President doesn't have to obey statutes that make torture a crime. He actually believes that you should read the torture statute so narrowly that it lets the CIA torture people. John Yoo used every trick in the book to twist the law because he actually believes in a law that is twisted. And Margolis points out that other department lawyers, who, presumably, did have properly functioning consciences and were not seriously incompetent, looked at the torture memos and told Bybee that, on the whole, in the context of the limited audience for the memos, and putting aside their most ridiculous claims, the torture memos made defensible legal arguments of the kind that lawyers sometimes make on behalf of their clients. It is important to understand that Margolis reached this conclusion not because Yoo's arguments were just or sensible, or even plausible, but because lawyers can make really really crazy arguments and still avoid professional sanction. This is less a defense of Yoo than an indictment of the doctrines of professional responsibility.
Margolis concludes (p. 67), perhaps more in sorrow than in anger, that Yoo did not intentionally give incorrect legal advice, although, Margolis admits that "{i}t is a close question." He notes that "OPR's findings and my decision are less important than the public's ability to make its own judgments about these documents and learn lessons for the future." Margolis' last point is especially important, since the former Vice-President of the United States is now going around the country telling people that he supports waterboarding and actively sought to use it when he was in office. Put differently, there is at least one member of the previous Administration walking around that is an admitted war criminal, although, to be sure, confessing to the elements of a war crime on television apparently does not, at least in this country, lead to any serious danger that one will actually be prosecuted for such crimes.
99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)Now that is a lot of relevant info Dude. Thanks for weighing in.
OnyxCollie
(9,958 posts)99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)OK, dealio.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Thank you.
raouldukelives
(5,178 posts)Just a slight compromise is all that is needed. They obviously want full torture while we, I'm pretty sure, desire little to no torture. So we just half torture.
Everyone is happy again!