NYTimes Bombshell: "Shameful" Torture Secretly Approved by OLC

[kpete]

NYTimes Bombshell: "Shameful" Torture Secretly Approved by OLC
by drational
Thu Oct 04, 2007 at 03:35:18 AM PDT

In an amazing article in Today's NY Times,http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/04/washington/04interrogate.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&hp&adxnnlx=1191492029-LIpFCDBaILGMCg0ZCBJgFw&oref=slogin We learn that the Bush Administration's December 2004 OLC legal opinion denouncing torture as unacceptable was secretly replaced in February 2005 by a memo that allowed combinations of interrogation techniques that many in the government felt were extreme.

James Comey, the former Deputy Attorney General who stood up to the Administration over warrantless wiretapping told colleagues at the Department of Justice "that they would all be 'ashamed' when the world eventually learned of it."

Now the world knows about it.

According to the article:

When the Justice Department publicly declared torture "abhorrent" in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Thus after Alberto Gonzales became AG, the memo decrying torture as "abhorrent" was secretly replaced with a memo that approved torture.

...............

The article also chronicles the purge of the last remnants of integrity at the DOJ. Jack Goldsmith, who also opposed the Administration on warrantless wiretapping, resigned as he withdrew the existing Bybee/Yoo torture memo that approved techniques some in the Government felt abhorrent and in violation of international law.

Goldsmiths replacement, Daniel Levin, authored the December 2004 memo on interrogations that seemed to outlaw torture techniques. This memo remains on the Justice Department website as the public face of the Administration's torture policy. But this memo was in reality in effects for 3 months. By February, 2005, Levin had been transferred, and Bradbury wrote the top secret memo permitting combinations of severe techniques that James Comey warned would be considered shameful.


more at:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/10/4/61351/1881

[bullimiami]

1. shame on our country shame on our entire government.

that we should allow pre-meditated torturers, international criminals, to reside in the white house and run this country.
shame that they are not impeached, bundled up and sent to the hague for the justice they havent seen fit to give so many others.
our government has openly and proudly adopted the amorality of those we despised.
shame on us.

[tekisui]

2. It was pushed by Dickie and Gonzo never challenged him.

Sick criminals. I can't wait for the day they are all tried and convicted.

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. A secret opinion. Why am I not surprised.

[spanone]

4. criminal

[gratuitous]

5. A high crime or a misdemeanor?

Regardless, where is the investigation and the folks being held accountable? White House mouthpiece Tony Fratto says they're not going to answer any questions about this. Well, Democrats? Silence equals consent.

[chill_wind]

11. "Silence equals consent". Yes. The facilitatiion of War Crimes. K&R. n/t

[Solly Mack]

6. kick

[Solly Mack]

7. kickx2

[me b zola]

8. k&r

[Quantess]

9. I want USA to be the good guys.

F this administration!

[Spazito]

10. It seems because the bush cabal re-defined what constitutes

torture by saying torture is not torture, torture is no longer torture. The Geneva Convention has not re-defined it, the US Code has not re-defined and the US Code stipulates the US, by signing the Geneva Convention must adhere to it yet it has NO meaning because the bush cabal has 're-defined' torture.

It was fascinating to hear Perino's response to a reporter's question re a captured American being subjected to the same 'treatment' as is now being defined as "within the law" by the US being seen as appropriate. Guess what, she didn't say it was A-okay, huh, go figure!

[L. Coyote]

12. Video TORTURE EDITION: WH Press Briefing, October 4 2007

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x59861

[defendandprotect]

13. Notice they didn't try to deny this today -- yeah . . . they sent two women out to spin it --

but not really to deny.

Perino looked like she was being made to swallow something really bad --

maybe waking up to the price of prostituting herself to a gangster administration -- ???


PS: Aren't the "gates" sounding so weak in comparison to what's actually happening?
Like Gonzo-gate or Torture-gate -- Gitmo-gate ...
not working --

I think we need a new category --

HELP . . . ????

[defendandprotect]

14. This is the stink from the top ...and I think we're going to find out much worse done ---

to great numbers of people --

And, how could anyone now suggest that these little games were invented out of the imaginations of soldiers at Abu Ghraib -- "aberrrations" -- !!!!

Impeachment and World Court -- PLEASE . . .