The Absurdity of Limiting the Scope of the Congressional Hearing

[ProSense]

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

The Absurdity of Limiting the Scope of the Congressional Hearing

Marty Lederman

If you're not watching the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, you ought to be. This is the first time to my knowledge that any legislators -- incuding, but not limited to, Senators Levin, Graham, McCaskill and Reed -- have really started putting together what happened in the military, have begun to express how absurd it is that high-level officials concluded that these various techniques were lawful and permissible.

The problems at GTMO, however -- and Iraq after 4/2003 -- can't really be understood without taking account of the fact that the CIA and the DOD Special Forces had previously been authorized to engage in the same sorts of abuses, and had regularly engaged in those abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan, very much to the knowledge of the interrogators and officers who later considered such things at GTMO and elsewhere. From what I've seen, the Committee is working under the assumption that it may not have any public discussions of the CIA and Special Ops, because the conduct of those agencies is "classified." But that means that they're hamstrung by having to basically begin in the middle of the story, without any of the background or context.

There is no good reason that the discussion of the CIA and Special Ops stories should not be just as public and just as detailed and probing as the discussion of the GTMO and 2003 Iraq abuses. The stories are basically the same, raising the same legal questions, much of the same cast of characters, and, for the most part, the same patterns of conduct, as to similar detainees. When will the Senate start resisting the Administration's insistence that the mere designation of something as "classified" automatically means the Senate cannot have any public deliberations about it?

Start from the beginning, presidential power: Charlie Savage: Cheney Plotted Bush’s Imperial Presidency ‘Thirty Years Ago’

[bullimiami]

1. its far past time to peel open this rotten fruit we call government.

false claims of national security and secrecy are antithetical to democracy.

open it all up.

[ProSense]

2. "open it all up." Yup. This is the stuff the media (if they cared) should be harping on

When will the Senate start resisting the Administration's insistence that the mere designation of something as "classified" automatically means the Senate cannot have any public deliberations about it?

This point was debated during the Mukasey confirmation.

[bullimiami]

3. the senate should have the same rights to see secure documents as the WH.

This executive branch treats them as an enemy rather than as part of our government.

[caffeinefwee]

4. this is the "we're not accountable" administration

4 anything

[caffeinefwee]

5. KICK

:kick: