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No Amnesty for Cheney, et al, Say Torture Opponents
WASHINGTON - Judging by the rare leaks from President-elect Barack Obama's transition team, investigations and prosecutions of high-level George W. Bush administration officials for torture and war crimes are a distant prospect. But likely or not, that won't stop pundits from debating the question of whether those officials responsible should be held accountable.
President Bush, former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and Vice-President Cheney in this file photo. Those pursued would include high-ranking administration officials such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, and former Central Intelligence Agency chief George Tenet, as well as the legal team that drummed up what is now regarded as a sloppy legal justification for torture. (File) Irrespective of whether
Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld
or others are dragged before juries, one glaring change seems
absolutely certain: Obama stands unequivocally against torture, and the
practice is likely to come to an end under his administration.
'Even though I've been disappointed in other presidents in the past, I do listen and I do believe Obama when he says we won't torture. I think that's crucial,' said Michael Ratner, the president of the Centre for Constitutional Rights.
But foreswearing controversial and harsh interrogation methods may not be enough to permanently reestablish the moral high ground that the Obama administration has promised to bring back to the U.S.'s interactions with the rest of the world.
If Obama doesn't take on torture that occurred, as opposed to simply discontinuing the practice, the door may be left open for future administrations to resurrect the harshest of interrogation techniques, said Ratner at a recent forum at Georgetown University Law School.
'If Obama really wants to make sure we don't torture, he has to launch a criminal investigation,' said Ratner, the author of 'The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution in Book.'
He said that the targets of such an investigation would be the easily identifiable 'key players' and 'principals' in the Bush administration who hatched plans to allow and legally justify harsh interrogation methods that critics allege are torture, including the controversial 'waterboarding' simulated drowning technique.
Those pursued, said Ratner, would include high-ranking administration officials such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, and former Central Intelligence Agency chief George Tenet, as well as the legal team that drummed up what is now regarded as a sloppy legal justification for torture.
Key Bush administration lawyers involved in providing legal cover to harsh practices, including the roundly criticised 'torture memo' from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), include former attorney general and earlier White House counsel Alberto Gonzales; Cheney's chief of staff and former legal counsel to the vice president's office David Addington; and the University of California, Berkeley law professor and former OLC lawyer John Yoo.
If the characters behind the questionable techniques are not held accountable for violating U.S. and international laws, said Ratner, presidents after Obama may simply say, 'well, in the name of national security I can just redo what Obama just put in place. I can go torture again.'
Ratner also spoke to the concern that, from the view of the rest of the world, 'to not do an investigation and prosecution gives the impression of impunity.'
But opposing Ratner on the dais, Stewart Taylor, Jr. argued that an investigation and prosecution were not appropriate.
'The people who are called 'war criminals by [Ratner] and others do not think they acted with impunity,' said Taylor, a Brookings Institution fellow and frequent contributor to Newsweek and the National Journal.
In the Jul. 21 edition of Newsweek, Taylor called for Bush to preemptively pardon any administration official who could be held to account for torture or war crimes. Taylor's rationale was that without fear of prosecution, a full and true account of what he called 'dark deeds' could never come to light.
Furthermore, at the Georgetown Law event Taylor said investigation and eventual prosecution would 'tear the country apart'.
That may be the thinking of Obama, who, in addition to hints he wouldn't investigate Bush administration malfeasance, declared his intention to govern as a political reconciliation president in his election victory speech.
In Grant Park in Chicago on Nov. 4, Obama rehashed a quote from slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., but instead of rhetorically bending the 'arc of history' towards 'justice', as King did, Obama called for it to be bent 'toward the hope of a better day.'
But Ratner said that the country was already divided, and that divide is exactly what a future administration could politically exploit to reinstate torture. He said that Obama must close the divide and doing so is not rehashing the past.
'You're making sure that in the future, we don't torture again,' Ratner said. 'This is not looking backwards.'
Another potential problem with investigation and prosecution, says Taylor, is that the Bush administration officials ostensibly had sought to find out whether the methods they were about to approve were justified, and, indeed, they were told they were in the legal clear.
'There is no that high ranking officials acted with criminal intent,' he said. 'They were relying in good faith on the advice of legal counsel.'
Taylor said that since the legal advice originated from the Department of Justice, it would be wrong for the same Justice Department to 'turn around' and prosecute people for actions that its previous incarnation had explicitly told were legal.
But Taylor's point misses two issues: that the crimes were allegedly given a legal green light because of collusion with the White House, and that Ratner proposes to investigate those selfsame Justice officials who were involved in giving approval.
Despite referring to John Yoo as a 'gonzo executive imperialist', Taylor said that 'those officials, like them or not, were honourably motivated' because they were 'desperately afraid' of another terrorist attack.
Ratner insists that the officials, part of a 'group, cabal or conspiracy', may be culpable because they were 'aiders and abetters'.
'[OLC] was not giving independent counsel,' insisted Ratner. 'They were shaping memos to fit a policy that had already been determined.'
And while Taylor was quick to point out that many U.S. administrations had been accused of war crimes by various sources, Ratner replied that it was the first time that any administration had actually 'assaulted the prohibition on torture'.
That could be one reason why, if the U.S. does not take care of its own house, Bush administration officials will likely be pursued on charges in Europe and elsewhere.
In international courts, said Ratner, those officials will not be able to hide behind the legal shields of internal government memos or executive decrees.
'They have no defence in international law,' he said. 'They're finished.'
- Posted in
78 Comments so far
Show AllIn an ideal world, that entire creepy crew would be facing justice in a Nuremberg style proceeding. Barring that, one hopes that Obama is playing rope a dope, and will prosecute these scum bags when in a position of strength.
www.wunderman-comics.com
Don't hold your breath. It appears that Mr. Obama has already been told who to appoint, what to take on and what to drop.
The only possibility of justice will be if the world, or the UN, or some body takes on the same task as the Israelis did with Nazi war criminals after WW-II to hunt them down and take them to the Hague for trial.
Now, it appears that that is a task that must be done to ferret out both our Nazis and the Israeli Nazis and remand them for trial. I don't see it happening as they apparently hold all the aces, and the kings.
>>take them to the Hague for trial<<
You do realize that the ICC has no jurisdiction over anything they did here right? The US is not a signatory and Iraq is not a signatory. The only other way to get a case before them is for the Security Council to refer it to them and the US has veto power there so that is not going to happen.
You want trials, they have to happen here for what they did, not internationally. There is no comparison legally to Nuremberg unfortunately.
Just because the US has not ratified the ICC does not mean that the ICC is unable to hear charges of kidnapping and torture of the myriad of persons who were captured and tortured outside the US.
Hang them like they hanged Saddam.
That would be very appropriate. Punishment for treason -- HANGING.
Charge admission and turn it into a fund-raiser for food banks and such.
$100. a ticket; lots of people would attend. Sell T-shirts, the whole kit and kaboodle. Turn it into a national holiday. Have a microphone to catch their last utterances. Offer prizes for guessing what that will be. Etc.
“If Obama doesn't take on torture that occurred, as opposed to simply discontinuing the practice, the door may be left open for future administrations to resurrect the harshest of interrogation techniques, said Ratner at a recent forum at Georgetown University Law School.”
Exactly, and even if Obama claims that the US “doesn’t torture”, without prosecutions of past cases where there is ample evidence of torture, why should we believe him? Bush has famously made the no torture claim as well and we know how much credibility he has.
Of course, those Americans who wanted to end torture, obviously didn’t vote for Obama in the first place, they voted for those that were clear in their intent to seek justice for Bush’s victims, so this issue may just fade into CIA black site-like obscurity.
The author uses the British spelling for what is the NYC based Center for Constitutional Rights, of which Michael Ratner is the President. There are many interviews with Michael Ratner on DemocracyNow, transcripts online: www.democracynow.org
Bend over and grab your ankles. In yoga, this position is called The Democrat. The Dems have been doing this now for over a generation and no longer seem to remember how to stand up straight like moral and courageous human beings and bring the murdering flea circus of the Bush regime to justice. This is the kind of appeasement that merits comparison to Europe in the 1930's. If you let these unprecedented Bush regime crimes go unpunished, some other killer in short pants, like George Wanker Bush, will come calling in the future. Arrest them, try them fairly, convict them and punish them (hanging, which in these cases I'm all for) and the next gaggle of street brawlers and beer hall putschers who call themselves God fearing patriots might decide to stay under their wet rocks.
"Bend over and grab your ankles. In yoga, this position is called The Democrat."
LOL! Excellent. I love it.
Dammit Mordechai, I do yoga and now all I'll be able to think about when I do that pose is, look I'm doing the The Democrat. I guess I'll have to explain my laughter to the class next time. Uttanasana will never be the same.
Sioux Rose
Me, too... the allusion will remain imprinted. What posture would be "The Cheney"?
It's a move that beginners often make: They swing around awkwardly and accidentally punch their neighbour in the face.
The degree to which we pratice and enforce legal forms of justice is the real measure of the degree to which we value justice and dignity. The degree to which "all" people are held accountable is the real measure of how we value equality and democracy. A lack of pursuit reveals the lack of values for justice and revelas a greater value for politics and favoritism which only entrenches future political corruption and social decline.
I do not want blood. I want justice to be done for those who have violated justice.
The degree to which we pratice and enforce legal forms of justice is the real measure of the degree to which we value justice and dignity. The degree to which "all" people are held accountable is the real measure of how we value equality and democracy. A lack of pursuit reveals the lack of values for justice and revelas a greater value for politics and favoritism which only entrenches future political corruption and social decline.
I do not want blood. I want justice to be done for those who have violated justice.
Yet another reason I think Bush & Co weren't the idiots we took them to be. They knew exactly what they wanted, and more importantly, the atmosphere in which they operated. 911, Torture, Criminal Attorney General (Gonzales), etc...they knew these were so outrageous that no one would call them on it. And they knew their so-called enemy, the Dems, were spineless. Brilliant really.
“these were so outrageous that no one would call them on it”
Hmmm…as the banks have been allowed to merge into something that is too big to fail, US government crime is too outrageeous to prosecute?
"Hmmm…as the banks have been allowed to merge into something that is too big to fail, US government crime is too outrageeous to prosecute?"
Well put Joe.
You missed my point entirely. I didn't say Bush crime is too outrageous to prosecute. I said they (BushCo) knew their crimes were so outrageous that no one (i.e. spineless Dems) would call them on it. The more outrageous a crime is, the easier it is for them to claim their Critics themselves are being outrageous.
He wasn't disagreeing with you -- it seems like this is the same logic. Lies too big to be debunked, crimes too big to prosecute, banks and corporations too rich to fail. It is like, once you get past a certain extreme, all the rules change -- suddenly, it's like you've entered this alternate universe.
He wasn't disagreeing with you -- it seems like this is the same logic. Lies too big to be debunked, crimes too big to prosecute, banks and corporations too rich to fail. It is like, once you get past a certain extreme, all the rules change -- suddenly, it's like you've entered this alternate universe.
Unfortunately, it may be difficult to prosecute them after Congress decided to legalize their practices in 2006.
I expect a future president may set up an organized crime dept( with a Secretary of Crime position, no less), netting him/herself billions of dollars over four years at the end of which they will pardon their entire criminal enterprise.
> I expect a future president may set up an organized crime dept( with a Secretary of Crime position, no less), netting him/herself billions of dollars over four years at the end of which they will pardon their entire criminal enterprise.
What makes you think that that hasn't already happened?
The only difference is that the President has to be out of office before he can collect. The pardons will come down Jan. 19th.
Um... it's called "The Congress of the United States". No tedious and cumbersome pardons necessary.
• just my 2¢
Read Marjorie Cohn on CD and on her own website.
The #1 issue should be getting Pelosi and Reid out of leadership positions and get a few people in there who will look into hearings and investigations, including 9-11. Any ideas anyone? Flood the dems with letters, the DNC? If cheney, rummy, wolfy, condi et al get away with torture, then the rest of the world will continue to view us as the torturers we are. As for bush, lock him up for being an idiot.
My idea is why not get all the progressives to vote for other candidates like Sheehan. That way they get elected and replace the current people in power.
Face it. We lost HUGE in this election and we did because most Americans do NOT believe what we do.
There is nothing we can do at this point to get them out of power because things are simply not bad enough locally or internationally to get people to move to the left far enough to get these idiots out of office.
Sioux Rose
GOOSE: I think citizens in Ohio and Florida were afraid to chance a 3rd party vote after Bush's machinations in 2000 and 2004. The threat of someone as unbalanced as McCain or someone as inexperienced and "faith based" as Palin were too much too bear. It was as if it was Obama or Godzilla. Almost grounds to pass out the cyanide pills en masse.
Setup a nation wide whistle blowers network with protection and real money.
Watch how fast and how many people step up to tell of the nation wide gang stalking surveillance groups setup all over the country to control opinion and political adversary's.
Torture/surveillance networks are nation wide cancer setup by the Bush/Cheney administration to create a stazi police state.
The right wing self righteous religious lunatic fringe have made a move to hijack the country.
Stop them now, save our Constitution, start a Nation Wide whistle blowers program to report illegal community watch torture / surveillance programs, so many will come forward that these traitors wont be able to intimidate them all.
Turn loose the ACLU and start the law suit machine.
BornFreeMen
'They have no defence in international law,' he said. 'They're finished.'
Does that apply to all those that took impeachment off the table as well?
Will Tax Exempt Christians pay for repairs and reparations?
"Taylor said investigation and eventual prosecution would 'tear the country apart'".
This was the argument for letting Nixon walk. It is the crux of the problem, and it, instead of proving the system worked (as Gerald Ford said), proved that the system was non-functional.
Nixon set a precedent that every President who followed him (with the possible exception of Jimmy Carter) took to heart. And that is, the President is above and beyond the law. That sophistic theory encouraged future Presidents to break the law as they saw fit. Hopefully, the lawless Bush regime will be the pinnacle of the lawless executive branch. Time to re-establish the rule of law, which is to say, time to stop blatantly illegal activities. If we do not, the Constitution, as Bush is reported to have said, is just a "goddamn piece of paper". And if we do not, we tear the country apart anyway!
It is my thought that the illegal and unethical pardon of Nixon was what has torn the country apart ever since. Sometimes one must face a bitter reality that is right in front of us, before we can address it and move to correct it. If we say that tearing the country apart is too high a price to pay, we'll certainly see far worse than Bush in the future (which is to say, someone like him, but with an intellect). This is the path to totalitarianism. It is establishing the executive branch as a dictatorship.
We can "tear the country apart" now, or we can see it happen over the coming years in slow motion. Sometimes, as in a cold swimming pool, it's best to simply jump in and get it over with. That is where we stand, on the edge of a very cold pool that should be used as a giant wake-up call to the moribund "Justice" Department.
The President is a citizen, and as citizens, we are all answerable to the Constitution and the laws and principals it established so long ago. Without that amazing document, we are back to the law of the jungle, or perhaps more appropriately, the law of the King...before the Magna Carta!
Without the implicit threat of punishment for lawbreaking, the lawbreaking will certainly continue, and only get worse. Time for law and order, which typically has been a mantra of the right wing extremists...but they've only used it for political advantage, because they've never really believed in law, just what they can get away with that is expedient and easy...like throwing out jurisprudence and making the arbiter of human rights, the current Oval Office resident...as long as that person is a Republican!
>>The President is a citizen, and as citizens, we are all answerable to the Constitution and the laws and principals it established so long ago. Without that amazing document, we are back to the law of the jungle, or perhaps more appropriately, the law of the King...before the Magna Carta!<<
Good argument, good statement.
Ditto!
An amazing document, eh? Only Americans think so.
If it's so amazing, how come George so easily made himself a dictator, spied on his voters, generated two illegal wars, made the wealthy richer, ignored global warming, tortured prisoners, carried out rendition, built Gitmo and a series of concentration camps for Americans, etc.
Yeah, a really amazing document! Shame it's not worth the paper it's written on.
www.dangerouscreation.com
Sioux Rose
DAVID: With all due respect, the "amazing document" understood the potential trespasses of a dictator sort, and thus envisioned THREE CO-EQUAL branches of power. The Founders did not foresee a one such as Tom Delay who, like a hammer, held his party in line for the money, i.e. campaign funds. The Founders did not see all at once a congress that gave up any dissenting voice, a rubber stamped Supreme Court, and a press that acted as a functionary to its pay-masters. In short, the contract of shared power is what broke down, largely due to the corruption of big money overtaking just about everyone who sought a position in one of our three governing branches. Like the disease that "the love of money" qualifies as, this cancer ate away at the very crux of what made this nation's governing system unique.
James Carroll once articulated a particularly compelling essay describing America as a land that never quite attained the ideals it reached for, but essentially kept up that quest to meet its own inspiring aspirations. Unfortunately evidence over the course of the past 2 decades suggests a far more deadly fungi eating away at the higher fabric of the nation's body, assets and "soul."
I guarantee you there are all kinds of "secret" (un-Constitutional) 'executive orders' and DoJ memos granting immunity for every single member of the Cheney/Bush gang for every and any crime they may have committed, retroactive from the day they were f**king born.
As much as it sucks beyond all belief, our only choice is to accept that not-a-one will ever have to answer for their sick, twisted behavior and actions, and move on and get to work putting humpty-dumpty back together again - with a mighty focus on doing what it takes to insure said sick and twisted can never do this to us and the world again.
"The author uses the British spelling for what is the NYC based Center for Constitutional Rights..."
By the "British" spelling, I take it you mean "the spelling used in the entire English-speaking world EXCEPT for the United States of America".
That's the problem with you people - your sense of exceptionalism is so pervasive that even those who purport to be against have imbibed so much propaganda that they cannot adequately frame the extent to which the US is, and has always been, a global vampire who spouts the high-flown rhetoric of Paine and Voltaire, while its practices mirror those of Himmler and Heydrich.
And now - twenty short years after having wasted trillions of dollars fighting the chimera of World Communism - the US kleptocracy is madly swindling the futurity of the nation... just as Jefferson warned.
The next time US soldiers are paraded on 'enemy TV', do you think the US will have the world's ear when they mewl about violations of Geneva? No - the rest of the world will be thinking about the Abu Ghraib photos that WEREN'T released - of children with night-sticks jammed up their arses.
Over the next two decades the US is going to discover how ghastly life is for a fading hegemon.
Cheerio
GT
GT's Market Rant
matthew loughran
i agree with you GT. the United States continues to have the balls to tell the rest of the world that we are the greatest country in the world and we don't torture. yet later on we find out we have been lied to and this asshole administration covered up their criminal behavior. We also get to have the Justice Dept say all of this shit is legal.
There needs to be investigations and prosecutions of cheney and the other criminal scumbags.
Hey "almost preternatural numeracy, unfinished PhD":
Why don't you learn to post properly if you're so f....g smart? You're answering another poster way down below but it's impossible to figure out what you're bleating about concerning the spelling thing.
Here...let me explain how it goes. If you just want to comment on the article, you go to the bottom and post there, and it'll appear at the top...like magic.
But if you're answering somebody's post--like I'm doing right now, and like you did (NYCartist November 26th, 2008 12:47 pm)--you simply click on: Reply at the bottom of the post you want to answer.
Got it? Try it, and maybe we can have another lesson tomorrow, because I'm sure you won't get right the first time. You're not quick.
No wonder you f....k around Potash U. for 10 years and only got a BSc. (By the way, 6 billion of us have an "unfinished PhD)
You don't know the half of it man. There are way too many 'arsholes' in this cunttree who look at a world globe and don't understand what all that other shit around the US of A is even doing there. If it weren't for a few politicos here with half a brain, these red necks in the US of A would be bombing the bejesus out of every living creature that did not pledge allegiance to the flag.
1. The U.S. and its leaders are laws unto themselves.
2. He who has the most nukes makes the laws.
3. Torture is an honorable profession for primitive savages.
4. Torture has been used down through the ages even by holy God-botherers.
5. Torture and warmongering show us who and what we really are.
6. Studies have shown that most humans would torture if they got the chance!
www.dangerouscreation.com
6. Studies have shown that most humans would torture if they got the chance!
Could you provide at least one such 'study' please?
Hey, Get Real. Six makes you uncomfortable, don't it. Heh, heh, heh.
Oh yeah, Get Real. Get some sleep.
You're not a bit reluctant to reveal weirdness of personality like this...!??
What makes me uncomfortable are silly little frat-brats like you with their wise-ass little stick and run comments, and people who accept any bullshit.."Studies have shown.." to prove how awful human nature really is.
I've been around a long time and I've probably worked with the shady side of human nature more than you've read about (that's likely all you do) and you're not going to surprise me with the depth of depravity that some people (way too many, obviously) can reach. The proof is out there. But "most people"...? Gross exaggeration.
Way more than most people might think? Yes. But "most". No
No more common fratbrat bullshit argument than: "Studies have shown".
Phillip Zimbardo at Stanford in the Sixties pretty much proved it, and there were others. Even the director of the experiments got caught up in the power trip of inflicting pain on a helpless subject. It happens little by little. The people involved don't notice how far it has gone until an outsider opens their eyes.
Thank you.
"One-third of the guards were judged to have exhibited "genuine" sadistic tendencies" from the study by Zimbardo I expect you're referring to. We'll never likely agree on this, but I have exceptionally little respect for psychologists. And the reason could not be simpler: I know them and their ways very well. I studied psychology.
You don't need to research very long to come across dozens of great books that document chapter and verse the absolutely unbelievable abuses and raw stupidity of the world of psychology and psychiatry, particularly since the wild 60s.
The other point is that "Studies have shown" is likely the most abused, obviously shaky fratbrat debating point imaginable. If the poster had claimed: "Reality teaches us that more people than we might expect seem to be able to turn to incredible cruelty under certain cirumstances", I would have thought: 'Amen'. I know that; I've been on this globe over half a century and I've done work with some shady characters and tons of contact with the 'general public'.
But "studies have shown that 'most' people..." Huge exaggeration. Period.
Take any random group of 20 people (for argument's sake) and in there you will have for sure a few with deep potential for extreme nastiness of whatever kind. But most will not be able to hurt a fly. It's well known that lots of conscripted soldiers won't even shoot at anybody. They'll shoot in the air.
More people than we might think can be unbelievable cruel. But 'most'...? Still waiting for that study...
One final point. Studies by psychologists (any 'scientist, but particularly psychs) must be analysed carefully. They bullshit and find pretty much what they want. And, sensationalism sells. They are the worst.