Delicious
Digg
StumbleUpon
Newsvine
Facebook
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiOne of President Bush's most shameful failings is his stubborn insistence on the right to torture terrorist suspects. While claiming the country does no such thing, he's vetoed limits on CIA interrogators and shielded his outlook with clouds of rhetoric about protecting the nation.
Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the White House team has pushed hard to expand its powers, sometimes pushing the limits of constitutional restraints and the rules of civilized nations, and the best example is the twisted logic behind allowing the rough treatment of prisoners.
This month, a fuller look at the origins of this thinking surfaced in 81-page legal opinion by the Department of Justice to the president's national security team. The document, pried loose by a lawsuit, was long known about, but its actual language lays bare the thinking that interrogators should have a free hand, in every sense of the phrase, and can't be held back by legal or treaty norms. "In wartime, it is for the president alone to decide what methods to use to best prevail against the enemy."
The opinion, written by former Justice attorney John Yoo, now a UC Berkeley law professor, was later revoked. But it put down legal markers never erased: This president seeks near imperial powers and the war's conduct demands that civil norms be tossed.
The nature of the deliberations around the Yoo paper are equally disturbing. The advice was dispensed to an ultra-select crew of administration higher-ups: Vice President Dick Cheney, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, and past CIA director George Tenet. This team had met over dozens of meetings in 2003 to produce the torture policy.
Who advocated and who dissented? Did they fully grasp the level of abuse that lay ahead such as waterboarding, the simulated drowning of suspects that dates back to Spanish Inquisition?
The no-limits stance was eventually overturned at the end of 2003 by a new crew of Justice lawyers who found the Yoo memo to be legally flawed. Military lawyers, who were left out of the White House loop, were also upset at the green light for torture.
But this is anything but a happy ending. The thinking - and the notion of unchecked power that lay behind it - powered the abuses of Abu Ghraib prison, the harsh treatment meted out in Guantanamo Bay, and the see-no-evil rendition of suspects to foreign prisons.
More details may surface in the torture memo because the lawsuit that unearthed it, brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, continues. Americans deserve to know more about what their government has been doing beyond the contours of civilized behavior, and quite possibly beyond the bounds of the law.
© 2008 San Francisco Chronicle
21 Comments so far
Show All"One of President Bush's most shameful failings is his stubborn insistence on the right to torture terrorist suspects."
Not only is torture morally and legally wrong but it is a notoriously unreliable method of getting reliable information. At some point anyone will tell the torturer what he wants to hear just to make the pain stop.
Lobo Gris
Only chickenhawks use torture as a means to try and get information.
Hoa binh
gde: Having just read this article and the comments below, I was ready to respond to Thomas Moore's assertion about Colin Powell, but you answered first. Yes, Powell was the investigative officer in the My Lai Massacre.
The man disgraced himself before the United Nations. He knows who butters his bread.
The world is watching us on this. And we are failing consistently, day by day. We are not outraged, we are not screaming, we do not care, except for a few retired old fuzzies like myself....the aarticle might have been reporting sports or movie news by its tone...
For a variety of reasons the handlers of the marionettes "Bush and Dick" have decided to admit to torturing the suspects from 911 and many many others....it is obvious that they DO NOT WISH to clarify guilt in these cases, but simply to confuse, anger, frighten, divide, destroy .....not just Iraq, but also the structure of our failing empire.....If given enough time they will eventually accompllish the dissolution of this over-powerful and arrogant nation and force us into a new reckoning with the responsibilities of peaceful coexistence in a world replete with real dangers: the Pentagon itself warned about global warming almost 4 years ago!
In the meantime try to relax and simply speak as much truth as your neighbors will allow....life is still good. Cheers. and see you in the streets!!
canuckchuck April 24th, 2008 1:52 pm:
>"rough treatment of prisoners"
>nice turn of phrase…does the writer realize that at least 108 human beings have died as >a result of this "rough >treatment"? (normally refered to as tortured to death)
Anyone know where I can find documentation for that number?
But Obama doesn't wear a lapel pin. And he has these associations with people who have said bad things about 'Murka. ARRRRRRRRRGGGGHHHH!
It's as though the stuff the Bush Administration has done in our names is happening in TV land, right after the Simpsons and 24.
This has been freaking me out for the past several years. His popularity is in the mid-twenties and this nation can't muster up the outrage to demand some kind of retribution for the damage this man has done? I miss the nineties when you had to pay attention in order to be outraged.
Don't defend Colin Powell, he covered up for torture in his second tour in Vietnam. (Check it out on Robert Parry's consortiumpress.com.) Powell had command responsibility for a campaign that caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of babies and young children in Iraq. He is a monster.
Since torture is not as effective as other interrogation methods, it is actually treason, because it deliberately refuses to collect the best intelligence.
One thing that is a very relevant point is the failure of the Democrats in general to oppose this. Leading congressional democrats were briefed early on about this and didn't raise any obstacles to this.
Impeachment was the obvious answer to a President who acts illegally, but that was firmly taken off the table by the Democrats. That equates to approval. The Congress passed laws to try to retroactively make this legal. I don't remember the Senate Dems launching any filibusters to stop that. The Dems have never made any serious effort to cut off the funding for Gitmo or the other torture centers run by the US. They've never made any serious effort to investigate or close the secret CIA prisons around the world, or to reign in the abuses that especially have occurred in Afghanistan.
I don't know if Hillary might have might have cast some symbolic vote against torture at some point, but it is very, very obvious that she has not been an active and loud opponent of this since 2001. For that matter, I don't remember Obama being exactly a leader in fighting this either.
When there are people like Wellstone in the Senate, you know where they stand and what they fight against. When Sen. Byrd is constantly trying to defend the Constitution, you know about it. With Obama and Hillary, the general silence on issues like this tells you a lot. If they were actively leading a constant fight against this, you'd know it like you know this about Wellstone and Byrd.
There's an easy counter-argument to make to this weird notion that the Pres has unlimited powers as 'commander-in-chief'.
Since at least WWII, it has been a part of the military code of conduct that a soldier is not obligated to follow an illegal order. From that it easily follows that an officer is not supposed to give an illegal order. It is easy to see that the part of the constitution that names the President as Commander-in-chief does not raise him above the law.
brissot April 24th, 2008 12:24 pm
Nice point! I agree.
Hey guys! This NOT about Hilary - don't lose the track and get off topic.
The topic is the war criminals - the question for all candidates at all levels is ' How are YOU going to enable the US to rejoin the conventions of international law and take action against those who dragged us down?/
When one looks hard at these actions, one needs to be convinced beyond doubt that 9/11 was NOT the US equivalent of the Reichstag Fire which was a planned event to allow Hitler to become a dictator.
controlled drowning
"Hillary has never criticized any of the Bush Regime's unitary executive characteristics…because she also wants to be a unitary executive if elected president."
DING! And the winner is andersdl!
"rough treatment of prisoners"
nice turn of phrase...does the writer realize that at least 108 human beings have died as a result of this "rough treatment"? (normally refered to as tortured to death)
Hillary has never criticized any of the Bush Regime's unitary executive characteristics...because she also wants to be a unitary executive if elected president.
This is the kind of thing I find most depressing about the state of our nation. And I'm not referring to the deplorable conduct of the administration. Its the mute response from the American public. I have to believe any other generation would have literally screamed its contempt for these people. Yet, other than a relatively few voices, there is general silence as witness to the evisceration of our Constitution; one of the greatest products of enlightenment thinking.
You don't know what you got til its gone ...
The shame of Bush knows few bounds.
But this may be right behind his lust for war with Iraq. And it makes sense. People like him that never risk anything are the most vitrolic during wars. Most willing to suspend conventions.
They have disgraced our country by their cowardly actions. Cowards, every one.
I think it highly unlikely that Colin Powell agreed with these policies however. I know he's no coward and he is an honorable man. But one betrayed by poltroons.
War criminals all in a row...
I just keeping thinking back to when Hillary was asked if she would rescind all of Bush's signing statements, and she immediately hedged. Gives pause to thought doesn't it?
There simply has to be a simple and universal demand for justice - by as many people as possible - for as long as possible. There is no statute of limitations on murder, and I understand that some suspects have actually died under the interrogator's hands. Now, it is obvious that the act itself would not only tolerated but in fact sanctioned by the White House and at least tolerated by high ranking members of Congress. And the obvious answer to the Impeachment question is answered . . .
"Hillary was asked if she would rescind all of Bush's signing statements, and she immediately hedged" hence cannot be trusted.... period
IMPEACH