All other things being equal, individual CIA agents who brutalized detainees, using unapproved methods, ought to be prosecuted. If nothing else, our treaty obligations compel that. Even for a country that has rejected the idea of accountability as resoundingly as we have, it seems inconceivable to decide to prosecute nobody in the face of scores of detainee deaths. How can we know that we tortured to death numerous detainees and do nothing? If you were Eric Holder, would you want that decision attached to your name by history?Scott Horton, another extreme-left constitutional lawer, is also on the case with, "Torture Prosecution Turnaround?"
But just as was true for the Abu Ghraib abuses, many of the worst instances of detainee abuse cannot be extricated from - but rather are directly attributable to - the torture policies authorized at the highest levels of the government. To target low-level interrogators while shielding high-level policy makers would further bolster America's two-tiered system of justice, in which ordinary Americans are subjected to merciless punishment while the most powerful elites are vested with virtual immunity from the consequences of their lawbreaking.
The outcome of such prosecutions is hardly in doubt. The Center for Constitutional Rights, which released an action memo in April, "Impeach Torture Architect Bybee," has basically already convicted top-Bush administration officials. The group's report, "Commission Finds President George W. Bush and His Administration Guilty of War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity," was written by terrorist-sympathizer Michael Rattner, and was co-sponsored by the revolutionary communist organization, Not In Our Name. (But see also, Mark Danner, "The Red Cross Torture Report: What It Means.")
Emptywheel at Firedoglake see legs on this new push for investigations, going potentially to the top of the former Bush administration:
My take - one derived from some weeds - is that if Holder approves an investigation, it'll be unlikely to just take on low-level CIA interrogators.Oh boy, that's some creepy subterraneanism. But as Wizbang points out:
... consider who we're talking about. We're not, actually, talking about low level CIA interrogators. We're talking about contractors. James Mitchell, to be exact. And if James Mitchell is not the psychologist/interrogator who acknowledged he had exceeded the limits set by John Yoo's Bybee Memo, but justified it by saying he had exceeded those limits (by using way more water, for longer time, and pressing on the detainee's gut) because those things make the simulated drowning technique "for real - and ... more poignant and convincing," then it's almost certainly someone who works for James Mitchell and probably used to work for the DOD entity that administers SERE.
The entire torture prosecution meme, and the Potemkin Panetta "lying to Congress" Theatre, is all part of a two scene drama: the rehabilitation of Nancy Pelosi and the diversion of attention from a failing Obama policy in multiple areas. The torture debate was settled months ago but the egos in the Democratic Congress and a sinking Obama presidency require a new distraction now that Sarah Palin is off the front page.And Sweetness and Light, calling all of this the "Eric Holder show trials," adds that "no one has yet to enunciate a single law that was ever broken by these interrogations."
See also, Ace of Spades HQ, "Eric Holder: Hey, Let's Jail the People Who've Kept Us Safe for Eight Years."
More commentary at Memeorandum.
Photo Credit: ABC News, "Europeans Rally on May Day Amid Economic Worries" (AP/Dmitry Lovetsky).
17 comments:
I say we start waterboarding white lacrosse players. Maybe that will get the right-wing to care about torture.
Well given that most white lacrosse players are Liberal Democrats, I doubt that the right wingers will care.
This is an odd commnet. You do realize that the Liberal Democrats are the party of "the Rich", AJB.
The "right wing" are Middle Class and non union working class. Lacrosse? They would be ashamed.
But let the Democrats go so this, they will just lose more voters.
The government needs a distraction. After all, they cannot expect a major hero of the celebrity-worshiping American sheeple to kick off each week.
Something has to hold their attention in between issues of People Magazine and episodes of American Idol. Why not use this farce of a "trial?"
After all, there is a private sector to de-capitalize and nationalize, taxes to be raised, and a health care system to seize, and it just wouldn't do if the American people had too much idle time on their hands, as some of them might just happen to begin to notice what Obama & Co. are really up to.
No, that wouldn't do at all.
-Dave
Does anyone care that innocent people were literally tortured to death by the Bush administration? Are the lives of "ragheads" that worthless to you people?
"Does anyone care that innocent people were literally tortured to death by the Bush administration?"
Either prove your outrageous assertion, or else bugger off.
-Dave
AJB: As you are confused about the political composition of "The Rich", you are confused about the this "torture" business: 1) No one was tortured to death, 2) Water boarding is not torture, and 3) No of those SOB's were by any measure of the word innocent.
They would rip out your heart.
Decent Americans know that Bush did the right thing.
Here ya go, Dave.
AJB, if you really cared about torture, you'd demand that the world stand up and liberate the Sudanese, Iranians North Koreans ... and Gazans ... from their torture-reliant regimes.
Now.
Just like Mr. Bush and our brave Men and Women liberated Iraqis from their torturers in Iraq.
But you won't ... for it's all just a convenient club for you to bash a President you would disdain anyway (same goes for you, DLB ... your link to a known-biased source is hardly proof that torture was US policy).
We've seen it before.
Whatever else one may say about President Bush he took the high road about not taking vindictive investigations of the Clinton administration. If President Obama does not do the same, I think the successor administration will not take the high road. The President seems to have a much lower opinion of the Rule of Law when it goes against him than President Bush. A bull market for lawyers perhaps, but investigations of the previous administration to settle scores are not good for the country.
From President Obama‘s home turf: Domestic Torturer Indicted
I suppose I am a minority of one on this subject
BTW, I might point out the obvious error in this: See also, Ace of Spades HQ, "Eric Holder: Hey, Let's Jail the People Who've Kept Us Safe for Eight Years."
Eight years would take us back to July 12, 2001.
OK, kept us safe except for that one day in September and the anthrax attacks and the folks in New Orleans and the 4000+ sent to Iraq over red herring WMDs.
Bush/Cheney used 9/11 politically in a way that cynical doesn't begin to describe. Oh, but they kept us safe, as if no further attacks were the result of their actions. Clinton kept us safe after the attack on the Trade Towers in March 1992, as well, by that logic.
Sorry, I didn't realize that Time magazine was part of the liberal media. I guess that's anything not owned by Rupert Murdoch.
Eight years would take us back to July 12, 2001.
OK, kept us safe except for that one day in September and the anthrax attacks and the folks in New Orleans and the 4000+ sent to Iraq over red herring WMDs.
Ever heard of "rounding", DLB?
As for Katrina ... the responsibility for their safety was theirs, and their local leaders (remember those school buses stranded in the water?). Next door, Mississippi handled things just fine.
As for Iraq, ever read the Duelfer Report regarding Saddam's deceptions, directed to the world about his alleged possession of WMDs ... or of the plans to restart development efforts once the UN/US heat was off? Not to mention that he was a big supporter of terrorism ... and while his ties to al Quada were tenuous, they weren't the only "outsourcible" threat to peace out there.
Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney used 911 as an example of what we would get if we continued in the 10 Sept 2001 thinking their political opponents would have us continue in.
Clinton? After the August 1993 WTC bombing you refer to, we also had the Khobar Towers bombing, the two African embassy bombings, and the attack on the USS Cole ... along with the Waco debacle, the OKC bombing, and the Columbine massacre.
But keep straining those gnats, DLB.
You can always tell when the leftists, Obama and the Dems are sinking and in trouble. Out comes the desire to blame Bush and company.
Interesting that you see the apologist for the Obama leftist cabal out trying to dissemble. NOTE: One wonders whether XDLB has realized why he is an X, but that would be more reflection than he has the capability to put forth.
Rich, you ask me if I've ever heard of rounding and then accuse me of straining gnats. Anyway, I believe we are both wrong on the date of the first WTC bombing.
And thanks for pointing out why this President Whomever kept us safe BS is so stupid. You bring up Columbine, I can bring up the Washington snipers. Bush didn't keep us safe from them and they were right in his neighborhood. You bring up McVeigh which begs the question, is it alright to conduct surveillance on right wing extremists, then? Koresh was a pedophile who was making young girls his "wives." Is that religious freedom you can believe in?
The other attacks were outside the US and I've noticed that all the people who make the Bush kept us safe line only count the "homeland."
And Dennis, try a little harder.
Anytime some lib/lefty starts sissy-whining about waterboarding, I remind them of the left's silence with regard to the beheading of journalists, or the many other atrocities that islamists have committed. They would do this to someone like AJB without the slightest consideration for his agonizing over gitmo detainees. If you're an infidel, you're not human.
Yup, do a post on the Democrat's insane insistence on show trails and it brings out the kooks in your comments.
During the Cold War we had to put up with a species of liberal that became known as the "Anti-anticommunist."
They weren't communists themselves, and if you beat them up about it would eventually admit that yes, ok, communists were bad.
But they saved their real venom for the anticommunists; anyone who made it their mission to rid the world of communism.
Thus they spent the 1980s attacking Ronald Reagan and the emerging democracy in El Salvador, instead of the Soviet Union and their Sandanista outpost in Nicaragua.
Our current war on the jihadists will be no different.
AJB,
Your original comment said innocent "people," which implies the plural, yet you were only able to produce a 2005 story about one person published in Time Magazine, which is essentially nothing more than a propaganda rag for the DNC.
It also isn't helping your case that the person charged with an alleged "crime" was "the team leader...court-martialed but found innocent of abuse and other charges."
I also cannot help but notice that this entire story is based on the usual anonymous sources the SCM* always seems to come up with, particularly when it comes to bashing Messers. Bush and Cheney.
Looks like another Haditha Marines story to me.
As to the concept that there is such a thing as "innocent" Muslims in this war, I will believe that when I see millions of the members of this so-called peaceful "religion" taking to the streets in protest the next time one of their "peaceful, misunderstood" brethren straps a bomb to a 10yo child and detonates it in the middle of a marketplace.
Until I see that, they are all complacent, and therefore guilty as home-brewed sin.
-Dave
* State Controlled Media
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