NYTimes on torture : 'There Were Orders to Follow'

[spanone]

~snip~
You can often tell if someone understands how wrong their actions are by the lengths to which they go to rationalize them. It took 81 pages of twisted legal reasoning to justify President Bush’s decision to ignore federal law and international treaties and authorize the abuse and torture of prisoners.

Eighty-one spine-crawling pages in a memo that might have been unearthed from the dusty archives of some authoritarian regime and has no place in the annals of the United States. It is must reading for anyone who still doubts whether the abuse of prisoners were rogue acts rather than calculated policy.

The March 14, 2003, memo was written by John C. Yoo, then a Pentagon lawyer. He earlier helped draft a memo that redefined torture to justify repugnant, clearly illegal acts against Al Qaeda and Taliban prisoners.

The purpose of the March 14 memo was equally insidious: to make sure that the policy makers who authorized those acts, or the subordinates who carried out the orders, were not convicted of any crime. The list of laws that Mr. Yoo’s memo sought to circumvent is long: federal laws against assault, maiming, interstate stalking, war crimes and torture; international laws against torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; and the Geneva Conventions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/opinion/04fri1.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

[bobthedrummer]

1. Related thread, "In Contravention of Conventional Wisdom: CIA 'no touch' torture"

active Editorials and Other Articles thread started 1-24-2008
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x333974

[cliffordu]

2. When can we send some of these scumbags to the Hague???

[spanone]

3. tonight on keith olbermann

he had on jonathon turley, a constitutional law professor from george washington university law school, who referred to the bu$h* torture program as war crimes....

[kentuck]

4. And since when does an Deputy Assistant call the shots??

It's all John Yoo's fault??

[spanone]

5. bu$h*/cheney requested the song, and yoo played it

[Hekate]

8. Lawyers for Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush all visited Gitmo and personally witnessed...

...the torture they authorized. Bush's lawyer at the time -- Torquemada Gonzales.

Hekate

[kentuck]

6. Kick for everyone to read .

:kick:

[Hekate]

7. Rec 5 from me. Please, dear gods, why is Congress still mute?

:cry:

[walldude]

9. Yeah what's up with that?

Asleep at the wheel while everyone is bickering like 3rd graders..

[spanone]

dupe

[spanone]

12. 80% of the people think we're headed in the wrong direction....impeach impeach impeach

[Mnemosyne]

10. We've been living in the 'Twilight Zone' since 2000.

Is it ever going to end? Besides from *'s Iranian nuke plans?

Almost stunned at how deeply it all runs and how far it has gone.

Almost.

[EFerrari]

11. Kick

[Solly Mack]

13. and yet ....they are all still free to continue their carnage

Only fools and liars bought the "few bad apples" lie

[spanone]

14. the really rotten, stinking, fucked up apples are in our white house

[Solly Mack]

16. Mukasey claims what they did couldn't be prosecuted, by him, because a lawyer

said it was OK to do.

People forget that everything Hitler did was legal under German law.....because Hitler made sure it was legal under German law.

Bush has done the exact same thing.I would say he has tried to do the same thing except that Bush is getting away with it, and Congress hasn't exactly been impeding him in any way. And no one can convince me the whole of Congress was without some knowledge of what was, and still is, going on....

even as the 109th Congress was passing some truly egregious laws...they knew

[spanone]

15. the really rotten, stinking, fucked up apples are in our white house

[indepat]

17. All those who support, enable or shill for a regime who would do such as this are no better than

the architects: I've said it all along that they torture because they like it. That alone should be sobering to anyone drunk on RW ideology. :D

[otherlander]

18. If only they could have written this

before hating the Bush administration became the Fashionable Thing to Do. The NYT only goes after those who are already hated. Never takes a stand against a popular tyrant.

[annabanana]

19. k&r. . . . . . . . . n/t

[Disturbed]

21. US Corp Meida mostly ignores this.

Why?

[TheWatcher]

20. The Ghosts Of Nuremberg live on in the Land Of They Thought They Were Free.

"We were just following Orders."

[Sparkly]

22. War Crimes.

I heard someone on teevee, I think yesterday, say that Congress has been timid about holding BushCo accountable because they don't want to face up to the fact that the president committed war crimes.

But what ass-covering are they worried about for themselves, and the longer they DON'T impeach (or indict later or whatever), doesn't their need for ass-covering grow??

[annabanana]

23. morning kick. . . . . . . n/t