Yoo: Court Rejection Of Bush Detainee Policy Is An Effort ‘To Deny What Happened On 9/11

[seemslikeadream]

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/06/18/yoo-al-marri/



GIGOT: What do you think of the Al-Marri decision?

YOO: I think it is an effort by this court to deny what happened on September 11. It basically holds that we cannot be at war with some organizations that are not a state. So we can capture people in Afghanistan, we can capture people in Iraq. Those people would be enemy combatants. Any al-Qaeda member that makes it the United States have to be given a criminal jury trial, Miranda, lawyers. This is exactly the framework of the law that existed on September 10, 2001.

[sofa king]

1. As a matter of fact, I do deny it!

No, I don't deny the major details of what happened. What I do deny is the federal government's bullshit, full of holes, self-contradictory story of how they all acted like heroes while valiantly letting the enemy walk right the fuck past them--the national security adviser, the Secretary of Defense, dozens of spies from half a dozen countries, dozens of federal investigators, hundreds of cops, an international data collection effort that records every single phone call made, and even James Woods. And I further deny that they're lying their asses off to protect their jobs and their careers. Failure was rewarded in the Bush Administration--just look at Condoleeza Rice.

No, man, what those folks are lying about is their complicity in an enormous criminal conspiracy, some of it just plain cover-up, some of it laid after the fact to facilitate future operations like federally sanctioned kidnapping, assassination and murder; all of it plainly visible to dozens if not hundreds of people whose silence has been somehow purchased at who knows what cost to them and to ourselves.

I wonder what Seymour Hersh is writing about these days, and if he'll ever get to finish it.

[seemslikeadream]

2. I've been wondering the very same thing

Where is Sy? He has been conspicuously silent. He did say "they" would be coming out of the woodwork right after the inauguration. He better be writing a good one, taking this long. ;)

[AZCat]

3. Seymour Hersh is one of the reasons...

I subscribe to The New Yorker. I could be mistaken, but I don't think he's published an article since last summer.

[seemslikeadream]

6. The Cheney dressing up Navel Seals as Iranians

yea good one

[AZCat]

8. I think so. July something?

I have the magazine somewhere around here, but it's risky business trying to find anything in this place.

[AZCat]

10. Yep, July 7 & 14, 2008.

Same issue as "The Island in the Wind" (another very good article, IMO).

[seemslikeadream]

14. Did you see this?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=5080164&mesg_id=5080164

[AZCat]

17. No, but it looks interesting.

It might make it to Tucson. We lost one of our "indie" theaters, but The Loft still seems to be going strong (I'll be catching Rashomon there at the end of March). I don't always end up watching these movies - I still haven't seen Al Gore's movie - but I'll try to see this one.

[SDuderstadt]

30. Navel Seals?

Do you mean Naval Seals or, better yet, Navy Seals? I find it amazing how you can manage to mangle writing so much.

[Bolo Boffin]

4. I just can't believe it!

Come on, dude, this is the September 11th forum. Give me something to object to!

[AZCat]

5. It's an old article (last summer)...

You could complain about that. :shrug:

(just trying to be helpful)

[seemslikeadream]

7. yea but Yoo is all the rage again

you know torture and all

[AZCat]

9. Well fuck him.

Fuck him and all the other torture assholes. I hope he's in the news until they boot him from Berkeley and the ABA (at the very least).

[seemslikeadream]

11. He's our very own Hans Frank,

He systematically destroyed Poland. Convicted at Nuremberg and hanged.





and so goes Yoo


Look at their eyes

[AZCat]

12. Oh I don't want Yoo hung.

I'm not a big fan of the death penalty, regardless how evil a person might be.

But wikipedia has an interesting quote by Frank:

role is to safeguard the concrete order of the racial community, to eliminate dangerous elements, to prosecute all acts harmful to the community, and to arbitrate in disagreements between members of the community. The National Socialist ideology, especially as expressed in the Party programme and in the speeches of our Leader, is the basis for interpreting legal sources.

That, to this layperson, sounds a lot like the general philosophy of the Bush Administration (with the obvious replacement of certain phrases).

[seemslikeadream]

13. Well since neither you or I were the victims of Mr. Yoo's torture paradise at GITMO

perhaps we should let the poor souls who were have the last say.

[AZCat]

15. I hesitate to grant the state such a "terminal" power.

It's not that I don't think some people deserve such a punishment, it's more that I don't trust the government to wield the power properly. I recollect all too well the ~150 people put to death in Texas during the Bush years. It was IMO far to easy for him to assume the same sort of power was available to him on a national level, and I think played into his disregard for international law, our established system of justice, and his reliance on extradition and Guantanamo Bay. Once a person is granted the power to take a life, why should they assume it goes away as they ascend through the power structure? Whether the life was of an Afghani taxi driver wrongly accused of terrorism or an actual terrorist, George Bush never seemed to care.

[seemslikeadream]

19. And it may not be up to you to grant the state anything...........

There are other countries involved but then again these guys are only Muslims so we shall see.

[AZCat]

20. It seems you think I am dismissing the wrongs done.

Why would I give a shit if they were Muslims or something else? Does that change whether torture is wrong? And how does killing someone somehow correct that wrong, even if he was one of the architects of the policy on torture?

[seemslikeadream]

22. I didn't mean you sorry

I was addressing the world in general

[seemslikeadream]

24. It will never correct that which was done

That would never be the reason.

I wonder how the victims of Hitler's antics feel about it?

[AZCat]

27. They may have wanted Hitler dead...

but how does that in any way justify killing someone? IMO it's still wrong, no matter who the person is.


FYI: You should probably know my dad spent a miserable year in Vietnam patching up the victims (on both sides) of that tragic war. He brought back a distaste for war and killing that has had some influence on his progeny. This isn't something I'm going to compromise.

[Bolo Boffin]

16. Quite an interesting progressive stance you have there, SLAD. n/t

[Name removed]

18. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Bolo Boffin]

23. I just realized...

that could be taken a couple of ways.

SLAD, you seem a little, oh, what's the word? You're got this antagonistic feeling for Yoo that's almost, um, what's that word?

Oh, yeah.

Bloodthirsty.

[seemslikeadream]

29. Scott Horton: Former Gitmo Guard Tells All : Brutality; Rape; Contempt for Islam

Brutality; Rape; Contempt for Islam




http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/02/hbc-90004409

By Scott Horton
February 15, 2009



Army Private Brandon Neely served as a prison guard at Guantánamo in the first years the facility was in operation. With the Bush Administration, and thus the threat of retaliation against him, now gone, Neely decided to step forward and tell his story. “The stuff I did and the stuff I saw was just wrong,” he told the Associated Press. Neely describes the arrival of detainees in full sensory-deprivation garb, he details their sexual abuse by medical personnel, torture by other medical personnel, brutal beatings out of frustration, fear, and retribution, the first hunger strike and its causes, torturous shackling, positional torture, interference with religious practices and beliefs, verbal abuse, restriction of recreation, the behavior of mentally ill detainees, an isolation regime that was put in place for child-detainees, and his conversations with prisoners David Hicks and Rhuhel Ahmed.

.....

Three things struck me in reading through the account.

First, Neely and other guards had been trained to the U.S. military’s traditional application of the Geneva Convention rules. They were put under great pressure to get rough with the prisoners and to violate the standards they learned. This placed the prison guards under unjustifiable mental stress and anxiety, and, as any person familiar with the vast psychological literature in the area (think of the Stanford Prison Experiment, for instance) would have anticipated produced abuses. Neely discusses at some length the notion of IRF (initial reaction force), a technique devised to brutalize or physically beat a detainee under the pretense that he required being physically subdued. The IRF approach was devised to use a perceived legal loophole in the prohibition on torture. Neely’s testimony makes clear that IRF was understood by everyone, including the prison guards who applied it, as a subterfuge for beating and mistreating prisoners—and that it had nothing to do with the need to preserve discipline and order in the prison.

Second, there is a good deal of discussion of displays of contempt for Islam by the camp authorities, and also specific documentation of mistreatment of the Qu’ran. Remember that the Neocon-laden Pentagon Public Affairs office launched a war against Newsweek based on a very brief piece that appeared in the magazine’s Periscope section concerning the mistreatment of a Qu’ran by a prison guard. Not only was the Newsweek report accurate in its essence, it actually understated the gravity and scope of the problem. Moreover, it is clear that the Pentagon Public Affairs office was fully aware, even as it went on the attack against Newsweek, that its claims were false and the weekly’s reporting was accurate.

Third, the Nelly account shows that health professionals are right in the thick of the torture and abuse of the prisoners—suggesting a systematic collapse of professional ethics driven by the Pentagon itself. He describes body searches undertaken for no legitimate security purpose, simply to sexually invade and humiliate the prisoners. This was a standardized Bush Administration tactic–the importance of which became apparent to me when I participated in some Capitol Hill negotiations with White House representatives relating to legislation creating criminal law accountability for contractors. The Bush White House vehemently objected to provisions of the law dealing with rape by instrumentality. When House negotiators pressed to know why, they were met first with silence and then an embarrassed acknowledgement that a key part of the Bush program included invasion of the bodies of prisoners in a way that might be deemed rape by instrumentality under existing federal and state criminal statutes. While these techniques have long been known, the role of health care professionals in implementing them is shocking.

Neely’s account demonstrates once more how much the Bush team kept secret and how little we still know about their comprehensive program of official cruelty and torture.




http://www.newsweek.com/id/184801

A Torture Report Could Spell Big Trouble For Bush Lawyers

[seemslikeadream]

21. Since we are talking similarities how about that Reichstag's Fire?

;)

[AZCat]

25. Careful...

Wouldn't want to upset the fragile calm we've established here.

[seemslikeadream]

26. ........

:rofl: just



I thought I could get you to

[AZCat]

28. I am already awake.

We just don't share the same perspective of certain events.