The Crime of a Two-Tiered Justice System

In the context of the vapors experienced by the Beltway fainting virgins at the prospect of prosecuting torturers and murderers for, you know, torturing and murdering, Glenn Greenwald brings us an example of the kind of justice Smirky/Darth and their minions should be receiving.

Homeless man gets 15 years for stealing $100

A homeless man robbed a Louisiana bank and took a $100 bill. After feeling remorseful, he surrendered to police the next day. The judge sentenced him to 15 years in prison.

Roy Brown, 54, robbed the Capital One bank in Shreveport, Louisiana in December 2007. He approached the teller with one of his hands under his jacket and told her that it was a robbery.

The teller handed Brown three stacks of bill but he only took a single $100 bill and returned the remaining money back to her. He said that he was homeless and hungry and left the bank.

The next day he surrendered to the police voluntarily and told them that his mother didn't raise him that way.

Brown told the police he needed the money to stay at the detox center and had no other place to stay and was hungry.

In Caddo District Court, he pleaded guilty. The judge sentenced him to 15 years in prison for first degree robbery.

Fifteen years for feeling remorseful about taking a hundred-dollar bill. By that logic, 4,200-plus counts of pre-meditated murder ought to get Dubya and Dick 10 or 12 lifetimes hanging from a hook in the ceiling by their scrotums.

Greenwald goes into shameful detail about the American criminal injustice system's ludicrous over-sentencing of the powerless and its passes for the powerful. But here's the point:

Under all circumstances, arguing that high political officials should be immunized from prosecution when they commit felonies such as illegal eavesdropping and torture would be both destructive and wrong [not to mention, in the case of the latter crimes, a clear violation of a treaty which the U.S. (under Ronald Reagan) signed and thereafter ratified].

But what makes it so much worse, so much more corrupted, is the fact that this "ignore-the-past-and-forget-retribution" rationale is invoked by our media elites only for a tiny, special class of people -- our political leaders -- while the exact opposite rationale ("ignore their lame excuses, lock them up and throw away the key") is applied to everyone else. That, by definition, is what a "two-tiered system of justice" means and that, more than anything else, is what characterizes (and sustains) deeply corrupt political systems. That's the two-tiered system which, for obvious reasons, our political and media elites are now vehemently arguing must be preserved.

Read the whole thing.

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Quote of the Day

The Rude Pundit on Wednesday, at the end of a post on Cheney's "Torture? What Torture?" tour:

For so very long, torture had stayed out of the mainstream media. Once John McCain and Barack Obama declared they would both close Guantanamo, the issue was off the table for the duration of the campaign. Now that the Obama administration is coming in and members of the House and the Senate are threatening to investigate the Bush White House's actions, now that Obama had to put up or shut up on Gitmo, all of a sudden the media is treating the issue like it matters, like somewhere, hidden in a deep, dark place is this curled up, frightened little American soul and we're trying to figure out how to coax it out of the corner, wondering if we have earned the right to hold out our hands and say, "Come on out. It'll be okay."

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Sex Crimes in the White House

No, that is not a teaser headline. At HuffPo, Naomi Wolf gathers the evidence, including public confessions by the perpetrators, and makes the case.

Sex crime has a telltale signature, even when those directing the outrages are some of the most powerful men and women in the United States. How extraordinary, then, to learn that one of the perpetrators of these crimes, Condoleezza Rice, has just led the debate in a special session of the United Nations Security Council on the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.

SNIP

We now know that the torture of prisoners was the result of a policy set in the White House by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Rice -- who actually chaired the torture meetings. The Pentagon has also acknowledged that it had authorized sexualized abuse of detainees as part of interrogation practices to be performed by female operatives. And documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union have Rumsfeld, in his own words, checking in on the sexualized humiliation of prisoners.

The sexualization of torture from the top basically turned Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay into an organized sex-crime ring in which the trafficked sex slaves were US-held prisoners. Looking at the classic S and M nature of some of this torture, it is hard not to speculate that someone setting policy was aroused by all of this. And Phillipe Sands' impeccably documented Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values, now proves that sex crime was authorized and, at least one source reports, eroticized: Diane Beaver, the Staff Judge Advocate at Guantanamo who signed off on many torture techniques, told Sands about brainstorming sessions that included the use of "sexual tension," which was "culturally taboo, disrespectful, humiliating and potentially unexpected."

"These brainstorming meetings at Guantanamo produced animated discussion," writes Sands. "'Who has the glassy eyes?" Beaver asked herself as she surveyed the men around the room, thirty or more of them. She was invariably the only woman in the room, keeping control of the boys. The younger men would get excited, agitated, even: "You could almost see their dicks getting hard as they got new ideas" [reported Beaver]. A wan smile crossed Beaver's face: "And I said to myself, you know what, I don't have a dick to get hard, I can stay detached."' [Sands, p 63]

SNIP

Though we can now debate what the penalty for waterboarding should be, America as a nation, maintaining an odd silence, still cannot seem to discuss the sex crimes involved.

SNIP

Silence, and even collusion, is also typical of sex crimes within a family. Americans are behaving like a dysfunctional family by shielding sex criminals in their midst through silence.

Just as sex criminals -- and the leaders who directed the use of rape and sexual abuse as a military strategy -- were tried and sentenced after the wars in Bosnia and Sierra Leone, so Americans must hold accountable those who committed, or authorized, sex crimes in US-operated prisons. Throughout the world, this perverse and graphic criminality has added fuel to anxiety about US cultural and military power. These acts need to be called by their true names -- war crimes and sex crimes -- and people in America need to demand justice for the perpetrators and their victims. As in a family, only when people start to speak out and tell the truth about rape and sexual assault can the healing begin.

Read the whole thing, if you think you can stomach the details.

Wolf doesn't say so explicitly, but those who study the use of torture know that the real purpose of torture is the sexual satisfaction of the torturer. Military leaders have known for decades that torture is worse than useless for gathering intelligence. Torture borders on counter-productive even as punishment, in that it tends to create martyrs and increase resistance by the population at large.

No, torture of defenseless prisoners is nothing more than a way for sexual deviants and impotent perverts to get their rocks off.

Just watch Smirky's face when he's making the "ticking bomb" torture defense: the glassy eyes, the lip-licking, the flared nostrils. You just know the only way he can get it up for Laura is by pretending she's a 10-year-old Iraqi boy.

Cross-posted at Blue in the Bluegrass.

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The Wurlitzer Prize for Wingnuttery™ for the week ending April 5, 2008

In a world filled with wingnuts working overtime to achieve their unique vision for the 21st 19th 14th century, it can be difficult to single out the work of a particular frothing reactionary upon which to bestow a distinguished weekly award. But given the fact that yet another legal memo justifying torture surfaced this week, and given that document's incalculable impact on liberal democracy (not to mention its impact on our children's testicles should a wartime president ever deem it necessary) I think we can all agree:

This week belongs to Yoo.

Not you, YOO: John Yoo, sometime torture apologist and full-time torturer of the Constitution. Yes Yoo, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General whose claim to fame is having authored a dark menagerie of legalisms in the service of unfettered power. His unclassified memos are like love poems to autocracy, filled with heady superlatives like “sole” and “Unitary” and “unlimited;” buttressed by vague but poetically suggestive terms like “broad” and “grave;” and liberally doused with poetic license – like, say, substituting the phrase “national emergency” for “war” to allow the Article I powers vested only in Congress to be overridden by the Chief Executive.

Somewhere Kim Jong Il is ripping up sonnets to himself in envy.

Among the innovative conclusions reached by Yoo and his active imagination revealed in the declassified memos:

1. The Fourth Amendment does not apply to domestic military applications. So when a President wants to circumvent the inalienable rights of Americans against illegal search and seizure, all he has to do is employ the military instead of the police – you know, like all good aspiring dictators do.

2. The Due Process clause of the Fifth Amendment does not apply when a President is seeking reelection, is too un-American to abide by Constitutional checks and balances decides we're at war, metaphorical though it may be, with a few thousand guys scattered and hiding in remote areas of the world.

So according to Yoo that's all it takes for the great wartime President George W. Bush to throw swaths of the Bill of Rights out the window – the mere existence of a ragtag group whose claim to fame is having successfully purchased airline tickets after decades of skulking around travel agencies and convincing unsuspecting passengers that they were perpetrating an ordinary hijacking.

Maybe it's just me but I don't think Americans are going to be fooled by that one again. So perhaps we can start pasting those crumpled up little bits of Rights back into the Constitution, no?

One wonders had Bush been president during the height of a real existential threat like the Cold War if we would all not be in internment camps by now, segregated by party affiliation and credit rating.

In a footnote to this happy travesty of a legal opinion, Yoo notes with a sort of clinical distance that his office “recently concluded” that Fourth Amendment protections don't apply to citizens when the President is employing the military to spy on them.

As outlandish as his contorted arguments are in and of themselves, WTF is this “recently concluded” legalbabble? Was this some longtime research project of Yoo's that just happened to coincide with 9/11? Did did the supercomputer in his office finally complete its decades-long heuristic analysis of all the relevant case law after having been fed Black's Law Dictionary and transcripts from late night drunken bull sessions at the American Enterprise Institute? Did Yoo's interns finally manage to decipher those lost Sumerian tablets hidden in the secret Masonic vault beneath George Washington's cellar?

If this was an open question, why hasn't someone, ANYONE, reached this radical conclusion before? Excuse me, but was this our first war? I'm no history buff but I'm pretty sure we've been involved in at least a couple since 1776, some even boasting foreign troops on our soil, if the old man down at the feed store isn't pulling my leg. I mean, c'mon – if the Framers of the Constitution had wanted the President to have full authority to ignore laws and wage war at will on the say-so of any mewling second rate shyster, why didn't THEY just say so???

No, there wasn't any “concluding” happening behind the walls of Yoo's firm that was somehow predicated on years of exhaustive research as much as Yoo would like to paint this as some sort of legitimate enterprise. There was only a foregone conclusion that the President had unlimited power just because he said so, and a rush to work backwards from that conclusion to find some kind of bullshit argument to support it. Period.

And not “the President” or “a President” but only George W. Bush. Because if you go back into Yoo's career you'll see that he was positively pained over the undue Executive powers he felt Clinton had gathered unto himself.

Er, right.

In classic wingnut fashion Yoo keeps two sets of legal opinions depending on the party affiliation of the elected official in question. In his world there are stern daddy Republican presidents invested by their office with unlimited Executive power, able to cast aside centuries of law with merely an arch of their brow and to command vast armies at will while a fearful Congress looks on helplessly. Let's call those man/office hybrids “Presidence” (or in private, “My Caesar") .

Conversely there are weak, undeserving Democrats (let's call them “Bubba” or “Billary”) so enfeebled by the Constitution and the harsh limitations that Article II places on members of their party that they lack even the minimum power necessary to fend off nuisance lawsuits by women in curlers and housecoats phoning it in from double wide trailers.

Please dude, you're killing us. And liberal democracy.

As for Yoo's medieval views on civil liberties: if the only sacrifice this government has asked of its citizens in this “time of war” is to shop a little more and make an extra stock trade or two to throw some love to the market; if there are no tanks rolling on our soil or pitched battles on village greens or bombings in the street; then it's pretty clear to anyone with half a brain that there is no legitimate need to suppress the Bill of Rights.

There are only illegitimate, ill-advised, and potentially criminal reasons to do so. And Yoo was the architect of the legal arguments behind those reasons.


[Our apologies to Doug Feith, who managed to get his pointy head into the news this week after years of deserved ignominy but was upstaged by the more prolific Yoo (apparently he can't even succeed at failing). Sorry Doug, but you're through here. No one cares. Time to roll up a new character and get on with something else. Instead of pretending to be a bureaucrat who understands intelligence or geopolitical strategy maybe you can play a wizard this time! The loose fitting robes will allow your brain some desperately needed circulation, and in D&D when you make disastrous errors ...only your party gets killed. And only on paper. - ed.]

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Don't Resign, Elliot

Glenn Greenwald nails the ridiculousness of the hysteria over Elliot Spitzer paying for sex with consenting adults, but let me just add this:

Until this nation's president and vice-president are prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned for their admitted crimes of torture, treason and destroying the Constitution, no elected official should offer even so much as an apology - much less resignation - for any lesser crime.

And that goes for David Vitter and Larry Craig, too.

Hang in there, guys! Tell the haters that you haven't waterboarded anybody!

Cross-posted at Blue in the Bluegrass.

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At the End of the Day

No, no I didn't skip a day. You just got sucked through a black hole and your sense of time & space have been totally hosed.

• Oh, yeah, this outta end well.

To ease an application backlog, the federal government plans to issue green cards to about 47,000 immigrants before the FBI finishes a complete background check...

• Antonin Scalia, strict constitutional constructionist, and all 'round douchebag.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia rejected the notion that US courts have any control over the actions of American troops at Guantanamo Bay, argued that torture of terror detainees is not banned under the US Constitution and insisted that the high court has no obligation to act as a moral beacon for other nations.

• Hey, Glenn, save a little somethin' for after the primaries.

Democrats should be eager -- not afraid -- to have the 2008 election turn on a referendum on whether Americans want to continue paying for the indefinite occupation of Iraq, and more so, whether we will start new Americans wars -- i.e., whether they want to have the same neoconservative extremists who got us into Iraq continue to dominate America's foreign policy, as they will under President McCain. McCain's supposed great strong suit is actually his greatest vulnerability, if Democrats are willing to make that case.

• These kids today, why don't they care about politics?

Sarah Boltuck's senior year at Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda was transformed by a rejection letter -- not from a college, but from the Montgomery County Board of Elections.

It said she could not vote in the February primary because she was not yet 18. Boltuck thought differently. She fought it all the way to the state elections board and the attorney general's office, and she won.

Boltuck and her friends at Whitman are part of an age bracket unusually energized this election cycle, particularly in support of Boltuck's candidate, Democrat Barack Obama.

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Terrorism works! An American President Quaked in Fear, and Sold America's Soul

CIA Director Michael 'shame of the Air Force' Hayden admitted Tuesday the the CIA has broken federal and international laws and used torture, in the form of waterboarding, to interrogate three suspected terrorists, but he quickly added that the technique has not been used in five years.

And what reasoning does he use to justify torture?

They were a bunch of chickenshits, pissing down their legs in fear.

[Keep reading]

Torture was employed at secret CIA detention facilities (the so-called 'Black Sites') at a time when little was known about al Qaeda, and they feared more attacks like those of September 11, 2001 were imminent. He seems to waive it away with a simple "those two realities have changed."

"General Hayden's acknowledgment that the CIA subjected three detainees to waterboarding is an explicit admission of criminal activity," said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director for human Rights Watch. "Those who authorized these crimes have to be held accountable."

Hayden stressed that waterboarding hasn't been used in nearly five years, and that other so-called "enhanced" techniques had been used on "fewer than one-third" of the "fewer than 100" people the CIA has held since 9-11. He said that although the techniques went beyond what was allowed in the Army field manual, the attorney general had certified them as legal for the CIA. The use of waterboarding would require the agreement of the president and attorney general, he said.

His comments came during a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee on the risk that terrorist groups pose in which he said the U.S. faced dangers from al Qaida, groups that get money or training from terrorist organizations and what officials call "homegrown extremists" in the United States.

Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell, who also testified, said that U.S. cells hadn't been very effective so far but that they could use information on the Internet to become more deadly.

When the current occupant authorized waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques" (call them what they are: torture) he sold America's soul, and illustrated Ben Franklin's observation that those who would trade away their freedoms for a false sense of security deserve neither.

Waterboarding is torture. Period. Full stop.

It has long since been classified as such, and Congress is considering taking up legislation banning the CIA from using it. It is already prohibited under the Army Field Manual.

I am the ultimate Cold War brat. I have some pretty set-in-stone ideas and ideals. One of them is that we simply don't do things like that. There truly are prices that are simply too high to pay. Abdicating the moral high ground out of fear is one of them.

I realize full measure that "American Exceptionalism" was always a myth - but at least we used to pretend to behave in an exceptional manner.

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At the end of the day

Bush's 2008 SOTU -- Full text and his last! Woo hoo! The number of specific words referenced: 23 for "terror", "terrorist", or "terrorists", 11 for "al Qaida", 2 for "Taliban", 16 for "tax", "taxes", or "taxpayers", 9 for "economy" or "economics", and 6 for the "surge". Peruse a series of fact checks on Bush's final SOTU at TP.

FISA Showdown -- In case you missed it, check Pale Rider and Glenn Greenwald and "What's Next" from Paul Kiel. Statement from Hillary at FDL. Previous remarks from John Edwards.

Oh, you liberal! -- Demonstrating how Repubs and our SCLM have denigrated a great political word that makes me proud, the Reuters headline sums it up: "McCain, Romney lob 'liberal' smear in Florida push." Funny thing... what insult sticks to McCain is nonsensical. He's got a secret plan to get OBL? Oh?

More on the Mitt vs. McCain cage match on the eve of the Florida primary.

On the road to the WH, it's all about the delegates: "The possibility of a long-term slog is real for Democrats, given that Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama appear evenly matched... It is less certain on the Republican side, pending the outcome of the party’s primary [in Florida] on Tuesday."

Torture -- TPM headline: "Negroponte Confirms U.S. Use of Waterboarding."

Intelligence failure -- Via Laura Rozen, Milt Bearden of the Washington Independent wrote: "American intelligence has a serious problem. But it is not that the former head of the Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine services, Jose Rodriquez, allegedly destroyed, in 2005, the videotapes of the enhanced interrogations of terrorist detainees. No, the real problem is that institutional oversight of the intelligence community has failed. It is dysfunctional, perhaps irreparably so. There is no adult supervision of American intelligence or how the White House chooses to use it. " Read the whole thing.

Fix the Bankruptcy Bill! -- Emptywheel reported "good news" that senators plan to fix the "bad bill." But the "bad news is that we're not going to do anything about it until 2009."

Death In Iraq -- Five U.S. soldiers killed in Mosul when a military convoy was "hit by a roadside bomb.... ...It was a particularly bloody day for the U.S. military in a city that has become a gathering point for the Sunni insurgency, and where Iraq's prime minister vowed to have the 'final' battle with the group al-Qaeda in Iraq." Troop deaths for January -- 36 -- up from December's 23 killed.

Pakistani Taliban -- They have "extended their reach across all seven of Pakistan's frontier tribal regions and have infiltrated Peshawar, the provincial capital, heightening U.S. concerns that an insurrection may be broadening in the nuclear-armed nation." Uh oh. McClatchy

Help Blue Girl get a new computer -- Please. And thank you!

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At the end of the day

All three Democratic presidential candidates -- Hillary, Edwards, and Obama -- support the death penalty "...as have virtually all leading Democrats running for office in the past 20 years.... Why so much longstanding support for capital punishment? It is the easiest way to combat the quadrennial charge that Democrats are 'soft on crime.' "

The NYT editorial board endorsed Hillary as their Democratic "primary choice." Is this a good thing when the Times publishes loony columnists Bill Kristol, David Brooks, and MoDo? They also endorsed McCain as their Repub "primary choice." Well, at least the NYT has Paul Krugman on board. Still...

Michigan and Florida delegates -- When the DNC objected to states moving their primary dates up, they decided to strip the states of their delegates. Edwards and Obama removed their names from the ballot in Michigan but Hillary and Kucinich did not. "Today, Hillary announced that she will demand the DNC seat Michigan's and Florida's delegates. Delegates that only she - in violation of DNC rules - competed for." Yellow Dog provided details. Via Deb-TUD, Josh Marshall had something to say about it, too.

Yesterday, Joe Conason indicated he's gotten some heat for not bashing Hillary enough. His response: "There's no taking sides" and concluded, "I perceive strengths and weaknesses in both of the leading Democrats. They're politicians and human beings, not angels or devils. I can certainly imagine voting for either of them in the general election." His favorite pick for president didn't run. Hmmm, I would guess that's Al Gore!

Mitt and McCain vie for who's the biggest tax cut whore of all! But, wait a minute... Rudy wants the coveted title.

FactCheck.org identified Repub falsehoods in last night's GOP debate in Boca Raton, FL. Mitt "misrepresented" Hillary's health care plan, plus note the Huckster's "FairTax fairy tale," "Giuliani's fables," and "McCain's tax evasion." Some are old lies, and some are new. Unsurprising, isn't it?

Atrios pointed out the Draft Bloomberg effort has recorded "a whopping 3136 signatures." At the time of this posting, the amount has catapulted to 3,375! Wheee-oooo. Are you feeling the "Mikementum"? His favorable rating is "Teh Suck".

The latest Florida poll, a national Gallup primary poll, and Mark Blumenthal discussed variations in SC polling.

Cernig at Newshogger posted an in-depth discourse on a "nuke policy blog tank." An excellent synopsis and worth the time to click the link (h/t to blogging goddess, Avedon).

Toe-tappin' Larry Craig sex sting -- "No one on the tight-lipped Senate committee will say how far along any investigation is or whether they expect it to yield any findings." CREW hasn't heard anything. Craig's lawyer remains silent. Is anything being investigated? "No one with the committee has asked to speak with anyone connected with Craig's arrest or asked for more information about it, said Patrick Hogan, a spokesman for the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport." McClatchy

Tortured silence -- Today during a press conference, AG Mike Mukasey wouldn't say if waterboarding is torture. "In a letter to Mr. Mukasey this week, all 10 Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee pressed him again for an answer to the question of whether waterboarding is torture and suggested it would be a focus of an oversight hearing next week at which the attorney general is scheduled to testify." Tomorrow's NYT

Bloody Iraq -- Today Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, said "that Iraqi reinforcements have begun moving toward the northern city of Mosul for a 'decisive' battle with the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda." Also in Mosul, "A provincial police chief was killed by a suicide bomber" on Thursday. "Duraid Kashmoula, the governor of Nineveh province, said the number of people killed in Wednesday's attack had increased from 15 to 38.... The revised death toll made Wednesday's bombing the deadliest in Iraq since mid-December. Kashmoula said 134 people had been wounded."

Pakistan -- SecDef Gates said the U.S. will send "troops to conduct joint combat operations with Pakistan's military against al-Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan's tribal areas."

Check out Corpus Juris' funny video post below. Hilarious! Our hyperbolic media stars... erupt!

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At the end of the day

FISA & telecom immunity -- We will live to fight another day. However, Claire McCaskill sold the Bill of Rights for pocket change. Expect some unpleasant repercussions come re-election time.

Democrats unite! -- Hillary: "As soon as we have a nominee, we will be strongly united because the most important thing is to put a Democrat in the White House starting in January 2009." What did Obama say? The better question is what didn't he say? Read Jane Hamsher from last night.

GOP voters don't seem too excited about the elections. For analysis and numbers, Down With Tyranny!

Dennis Kucinich gives up on the WH. "He was regularly shut out of presidential debates - even after he went to the courts to seek airtime in Las Vegas.... ...commentators have given Kucinich credit for giving a greater airing to anti-war sentiment." We still love you, Dennis!

Krugman evaluated the economic stimulus program and it's not pretty. Robert Greenstein at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities noted that "the two most targeted and economically effective measures under consideration — a temporary extension of unemployment benefits and a temporary boost in food stamp benefits — were zeroed out, apparently at the insistence of House Republican leaders."

Anti-Abortionists MIA -- Republicans say they're pro-life but they don't show up for the Big March. How convenient.

Hate crimes slimebag -- During the Jena march, a "white man accused of driving past a group of black civil rights activists with two nooses dangling from the back of his pickup truck" was indicted for "conspiring to threaten and intimidate the marchers and with having committed a federal hate crime."

Fighting torture could land 11 activists in the federal pen for as much as six months. The Nation

"Attacks Imperil U.S.-Backed Militias in Iraq" -- "American-backed Sunni militias who have fought Sunni extremists to a standstill in some of Iraq’s bloodiest battlegrounds are being hit with a wave of assassinations and bomb attacks, threatening a fragile linchpin of the military’s strategy to pacify the nation." Intel Dump offered further insights, particularly on the political front: "I think that Crocker and Petraeus have written off the Iraqi government at all levels as too corrupt and ineffective to be a part of the long-term counterinsurgency strategy in that country."

Afghanistan backslides -- The warlords shall rise again! See how invading Iraq diverted our forces from the right war at the wrong time?

Et tu, media? -- The honeymoon must be wearing off. Via Kevin Drum, yesterday Obama got some of the same type of media B.S. that was dumped on Hillary today. With enough time -- and it doesn't take long -- media svengalis could transform Barack into a divisive figure (jpg) like they have Clinton. This is how our morally-bankrupt press corp screws America (h/t Taylor Marsh for the jpg).

Bush legacy scrutiny -- An advocacy group "plans to spend $8.5 million" on advertising Bush's failed presidency. "Framing his legacy helps us in the '08 elections, there is no doubt about that," Woodhouse said. "But our principal mission would be defining the failures of Bush and the ideology he represents." Swopa

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Padilla is suing Yoo

...for the whopping sum of one whole dollar.

It isn't about money, it's about principle.

Jose Padilla is the American citizen who was held without charge for three years in solitary confinement in the Navy brig at Charleston, South Carolina. He was denied his Constitutional rights to legal counsel, to a speedy trial and to Habeas Corpus.

John Yoo is the former Justice Department official who wrote the legal memorandums and briefs pertaining to interrogations and the treatment of detainees. Yoo's specious legal work gave cover to the undermining of the Constitution and rationalized and justified torture; as well as indefinite detention of anyone for any reason, so long as the president declared the person in question an "enemy combatant."

In January 2006, Mr. Padilla was transfered from military custody to the criminal justice system by a terrified United States government mere steps ahead of the courts weighing in on the legality of his detention. (Timeline here)

In February 2007, Mr. Padilla filed a separate lawsuit in federal court in South Carolina against multiple administration officials and former officials, including Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft. That suit stems from his treatment while he was imprisoned without charge in the Navy brig, classified as an enemy combatant.

The suit against Yoo takes a different tack than that original suit, asserting that “[A] lawyer who gives the green light to clearly illegal conduct is an accomplice to that conduct.”

The suit against Mr. Yoo is partly based on the recent book The Terror Presidency by Jack Goldsmith, a professor at the Harvard School of Law who served in the Justice Department in 2003 and 2004. While serving at main Justice, Mr. Goldsmith disavowed some of Mr. Yoo's legal work. Specifically, in the book, he charges that two of Mr. Yoo's memorandums were “legally flawed” and “tendentious in substance and tone.”

Mr. Yoo's attorney, Eric M. George, of course issued the obligatory sneering, condescending dismissal of Mr. Padilla’s suit, calling it “a political diatribe” that “belongs, at best, in a journal, not before a federal court.”

Whatever, Mr. George. Bill your client - overbill the sonofabitch hundreds of thousands of dollars for all I care - and let's let the courts decide. I'm sure Padilla will accept the ruling. Will Yoo?

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Jose Rodriguez brings the push-back

The undoing of the criminal conspiracy that has been attempting to pass itself off as a presidency may face it's undoing because it chose the wrong guy to try to make a patsy of.

Jose Rodriguez is showing no signs of going gently into that dark night. Quite the opposite, in fact - he has not only lawyered up, he has hired Robert Bennett. Bennett is the guy you hire when you are not just going to stand your ground, but you intend to capture the other guys flag...

Just. To. Make. Your. Point.

Rodriguez is well known in the intelligence community as one of the most cautious men on the face of the earth. People who know him all state, without even an inkling of reservation, that the thought of Jose Rodriguez making a unilateral decision to destroy those tapes is simply unthinkable. It is something he would never do. Period. Not without direct orders from someone of a sufficiently higher pay grade.

This is going to reach deep into the White House. We already know that four administration attorneys were involved in discussions about what to do with the videotape evidence. Not only were White House attorneys involved, but the evidence was withheld from the 9/11 Commission, and destroyed after the Commission delivered their findings.

The House Intelligence Committee has summoned Rodriguez to appear on January 16, and Chairman Sylvestre Reyes has indicated he isn't looking for scapegoats, he is looking for the truth - and that is an indication that Reyes might offer Rodriguez the immunity he is obviously angling for in exchange for his testimony.

Larry Johnson thinks it's going to go high up the chain, too. “The CIA and Jose Rodriguez look bad, but he’s probably the least culpable person in the process. He didn’t wake up one day and decide, ‘I’m going to destroy these tapes.’ He checked with a lot of people and eventually he is going to get his say. He has been starting to get his story out and was smart to get Bennett.”

“It looks increasingly as though the decision was made by the White House,” said Johnson. He believes it is “highly likely” that Bush saw one of the videos, as he was interested in Zubaydah’s case and received frequent updates on his interrogation from George Tenet, the CIA director at the time.

It has emerged that the CIA did preserve two videotapes and an audiotape of detainee interrogations conducted by a foreign government, which may have been relevant to the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the Al-Qaeda conspirator.

The CIA told a federal judge in 2003 that no such recordings existed but has now retracted that testimony. One of the tapes could show the interrogation of Ramzi Binalshibh, a September 11 conspirator, who was allegedly handed to Jordan for questioning.

Seven years of Machiavellian machinations, hubris and arrogance driving policy, disdain for anyone deigning to question the administration, and a pervasive attitude of "it isn't treason if the president is the traitor" passed it's sell-by date a long freakin' time ago. It has even led them to try to make Jose Rodriguez their fall guy.

But Rodriguez is nobody's dupe, and too many people know him too well. Immunize him, Mr. Reyes, and let him tell all.

I imagine that prospect has a whole lot of nutsacks shriveling all over the West Wing. And that thought pleases me immensely.

[That's all, folks...]

There's more: "Jose Rodriguez brings the push-back" >>

White House attorneys were involved in discussing the CIA torture tapes

All that's missing are the inmate numbers

At least four White House attorneys were involved in discussions about the destruction of the CIA torture tapes.

The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged.

Those who took part, the officials said, included Alberto R. Gonzales, who served as White House counsel until early 2005; David S. Addington, who was the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney and is now his chief of staff; John B. Bellinger III, who until January 2005 was the senior lawyer at the National Security Council; and Harriet E. Miers, who succeeded Mr. Gonzales as White House counsel.

It was previously reported that some administration officials had advised against destroying the tapes, but the emerging picture of White House involvement is more complex. In interviews, several administration and intelligence officials provided conflicting accounts as to whether anyone at the White House expressed support for the idea that the tapes should be destroyed.

One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes. The former official did not specify which White House officials took this position, but he said that some believed in 2005 that any disclosure of the tapes could have been particularly damaging after revelations a year earlier of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

[Keep reading...]

Other officials have maintained that no one at the White House made the case for destroying the case, but quickly add that no White House lawyer ever specifically advised that destroying the videos would violate the law.

The Department of Justice is (perfunctorily) mounting an internal investigation into the destruction of the tapes. Officials who spoke to the New York Times did so under conditions of anonymity because of that ongoing investigation.

Spokespersons for the president and the vice president, as well as the CIA, cited the investigation and declined to comment.

The new information was revealed on Tuesday when Federal Judge Henry Kennedy ordered the attorneys involved appear before him on Friday at 11:00 a.m. to answer questions about the destroyed videos. Kennedy was the judge that issued the order to preserve evidence, presumably that would include the tapes, as part of a lawsuit brought on behalf of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. The tapes documented the "harsh treatment" (civilized folk call it what it is: torture) of two suspected al Qaeda terrorists in CIA custody. .

New details also emerged on Tuesday about the role of Jose (I smell a fall guy here...) Rodriguez Jr., who headed the clandestine branch and has thus far been fingered as the guy who gave the burn order. The anonymous officials said that prior to Rodriguez issuing a secret cable ordering the destruction, he was advised, in writing, by two CIA lawyers, Steven Hermes and Robert Eatinger, that he indeed had the authority to order the tapes be destroyed and that no laws would be violated.

The CIA refused to allow Mr. Eatinger or Mr. Hermes to comment.

The two agency lawyers did, however, inform the top lawyer at the CIA, John A. Rizzo, about the legal advice they had given Rodriguez.

Mr. Rodriguez did not inform either Mr. Rizzo or the CIA director at that time, Porter Goss, before he issued the cable ordering the tapes be destroyed. “There was an expectation on the part of those providing legal guidance that additional bases would be touched,” said one government official with knowledge of the matter. “That didn’t happen.”

Robert Bennet, attorney for Mr. Rodriguez is adamant that his client was not a lose cannon who ordered evidence be destroyed on his whim. “He had a green light to destroy them,” Mr. Bennett insists.

The tapes were never sent back to Langley. Instead, they were kept in the safe in the bureau office in Thailand, where the interrogations took place. Senior officials in the clandestine service had been chomping at the bit to have the tapes destroyed, starting in 2003, citing concern that the budding Torquemada's on the tapes could face legal or physical jeopardy should the content of the tapes be leaked.

Prior to the revelations in the Times today, the only official previously reported to have been involved in discussions about the tapes was Harriet Meiers, who served as White House counsel after Alberto Gonzales became the Attorney General in 2005. Ms. Meiers' involvement is sketchy - some sources say she was not part of the discussions prior to 2005, but others insist she was in the loop as early as 2003.

The only thing we know for sure (besides the fact that this is the most corrupt and feckless administration in the history of the republic) is that the issue is not going away. In fact, it seems to be ramping up.

To which I say "Good! It's about damned time! Can we impeach Dick Cheney now?"

There's more: "White House attorneys were involved in discussing the CIA torture tapes" >>

The CIA torture-tape case isn't going away

In a terse, one-sentence order issued Tuesday, Federal Judge Henry H. Kennedy rejected the Justice Department's appeal to let DoJ cover up investigate the destruction of videotapes that showed the torture interrogation of terrorism suspects.

Instead of rolling over and playing dead for the DoJ, Kennedy ordered the attorneys to appear before him at 11:00 a.m. Friday. He offered no hint at what he might ask the attorneys, or why the order was issued.

Judge Kennedy is not likely to be too inclined toward sympathy for the administrations position, however - in 2005, he personally issued the order to the administration to maintain "all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay."

Five months after Kennedy's original order was issued, the CIA destroyed the videos anyway, and DoJ threw up a feeble smokescreen, asserting that the videos weren't covered, since the interrogation didn't take place at Guantanamo, but instead was conducted at a secret CIA "black site" in Thailand.

So now we have one pissed-off Federal Judge, and pressure mounting for a Special Prosecutor to look into the matter. And an issue that is not going to go away any time soon.

[That's all, folks...]

There's more: "The CIA torture-tape case isn't going away" >>

Mukasey in the Hot Seat

During his confirmation hearings last fall, new Attorney General Michael Mukasey pledged to act independently and swore that he would not hesitate to pursue investigations that might displease the Bush administration.

A month in, he is faced with calls for an investigation into the destruction of video of interrogations of terror suspects that show the men being tortured. Such an investigation would delve into the heart of darkness itself, and expose some of the most closely guarded secrets of the Bush administration, highlighting the "aggressive interrogation" favored - nay lusted after - by the small men in the administration for what it is: Torture.

Torture is a crime against humanity, under treaty as well as international statute.

Last week, Senator Dick Durbin (D - IL) officially requested the Attorney General open an investigation into the destruction of the tapes. "The CIA apparently withheld information about the existence of these videotapes from official proceedings, including the 9/11 Commission and a federal court," Durbin charged in the letter he sent to Mukasey.

But this story just keeps getting weirder and weirder:

Justice officials refused to comment on what the new A.G. will do, but White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said that if he does open an investigation, the White House would support him. The videotapes, made in 2002, showed the questioning of two high-level Qaeda detainees, including logistics chief Abu Zubaydah, whose interrogation at a secret cell in Thailand sparked an internal battle within the U.S. intelligence community after FBI agents angrily protested the aggressive methods that were used. In addition to waterboarding, Zubaydah was subjected to sleep deprivation and bombarded with blaring rock music by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. One [FBI] agent was so offended he threatened to arrest the CIA interrogators, according to two former government officials directly familiar with the dispute. [emphasis added]

Yes. You read that right. An FBI agent was so put off by what he witnessed, he threatened to take the CIA interrogators into custody. And when an FBI agent threatens to arrest CIA agents,it is safe to say that the CIA agents have definitely crossed a bright line.

[Keep reading...]

Officials with the CIA claim that the decision was made three years ago to destroy the tapes. The "reason" the CIA gives for the destruction is laughable: The identity of the torturers interrogators might pose a security risk if the tapes were to leak.

Please.

Spare me.

The identity of the interrogators might pose an incarceration risk.

And if they were acting on orders from the White House, they would most likely say so before they went to prison for a long time for committing war crimes.

The CIA destroyed the tapes in spite of requests for records of interrogations by multiple entities, includign the Senate Intelligence Committee and the 9/11 Commission. Representative Jane Harman, then the ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee had also submitted a written directive that videos of interrogations be preserved.

Additionally, in the trial of Zacharias Moussaoui , defense attorneys requested any video of interrogations, but the CIA told a Federal judge that no videos existed. (Got Perjury? Hows about Obstruction of Justice?)

A thorough investigation into the destruction of the video tapes by the Justice Department would be undertaken with one goal: Find out who issued the orders and make that person accountable. Porter Goss was the CIA Director at the time, and thought he had an "understanding" with ops officials that the tapes would be preserved. He reportedly was extremely unhappy when he learned that the tapes had been destroyed. Meantime, Jose Rodriguez, who as head of the Clandesting Service at the time and issued the destroy order has a reputation as a "loyal subordinate" who would never have taken it upon himself to make such a decision.

Whoever ordered that the tapes be destroyed, all eyes are on Mukaey now.

There's more: "Mukasey in the Hot Seat" >>

CIA destroys possible waterboarding tapes; where was Congress? Where will Congress be?

The story about how the CIA destroyed videotapes of two al-Qaeda suspects being waterboarded is of course a huge hot potato.

There’s plenty of people commenting on the possible obstruction of justice angle.

What I want to know is, how much did Members of Congress know or not know about these tapes before they were destroyed, and what Congress is going to do now?

As for the first question:

General Hayden said in a statement that leaders of Congressional oversight committees were fully briefed on the matter, but some Congressional officials said notification to Congress had not been adequate.

OK, how sharp of a difference do we have between “fully briefed” and “not adequate,” at least for chairpersons and ranking minority members of House and Senate intelligence committees?

Related to that, how much of a public hashing out of this are we going to get?

If the two top Democrats on the committees had something close to full briefing, where were Jane Harman and Jay Rockefeller? Can’t a Democratic Congressman or Senator leak?

Well, I guess this is, what, chance No. 172 for Congress to actually grow a pair?

There's more: "CIA destroys possible waterboarding tapes; where was Congress? Where will Congress be?" >>

It's the Rule of Law, Stupid

Yeah, it’s nice to have an Attorney General who understands that forcible drowning is, you know, torture.

But it’s absolutely critical that the Attorney General understands that the president cannot just refuse to obey any laws he doesn’t like.

When the president is above the law, the U.S. Constitution is dead.

Russ Feingold gets it, and says it perfectly. And TPM catches it.

Feingold to Oppose Mukasey

Statement just released (11/4/07, 10:30 a.m.)

"I will vote against the nomination of Judge Mukasey to be the next Attorney General. This was a difficult decision, as Judge Mukasey has many impressive qualities. He is intelligent and experienced and appears to understand the need to depoliticize the Department of Justice and restore its credibility and reputation.

At this point in our history, however, the country also needs an Attorney General who will tell the President that he cannot ignore the laws passed by Congress.

Unfortunately, Judge Mukasey was unwilling to reject the extreme and dangerous theories of executive power that this administration has put forward.

The nation's top law enforcement officer must be able to stand up to a chief executive who thinks he is above the law. The rule of law is too important to our country's history and to its future to compromise on that bedrock principle."

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

There's more: "It's the Rule of Law, Stupid" >>

Torture, Schmorture

Enough with all the cowardly liberal hysteria over a little water on the face. Let's listen to a counterrorism expert whose job it is to subject U.S. soldiers to actual waterboarding in training them how to resist torture.

Waterboarding is not a simulation. Unless you have been strapped down to the board, have endured the agonizing feeling of the water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs, you will not know the meaning of the word.

Waterboarding is a controlled drowning that, in the American model, occurs under the watch of a doctor, a psychologist, an interrogator and a trained strap-in/strap-out team. It does not simulate drowning, as the lungs are actually filling with water. There is no way to simulate that. The victim is drowning. How much the victim is to drown depends on the desired result (in the form of answers to questions shouted into the victim’s face) and the obstinacy of the subject. A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience, to horrific suffocating punishment to the final death spiral.

Waterboarding is slow motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of black out and expiration –usually the person goes into hysterics on the board. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch and if it goes wrong, it can lead straight to terminal hypoxia. When done right it is controlled death. Its lack of physical scarring allows the victim to recover and be threaten with its use again and again.

There, you see? Now do you understand why Ben Chandler (DINO-KY 6) and Hillary Clinton voted to allow the U.S. to torture enemy prisoners, thus exposing U.S. soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen to torture at the hands of the enemy?

TPMmuckraker publicized the above description from a former Navy Instructor as a primer for Attorney General nominee Mike Mukasey, who claims not to know whether waterboarding is torture.

(More after the jump.)

Mukasey should listen to longtime counterterrorism expert Malcolm Nance. Nance, a veteran of counterterrorism operations in Iraq, has written a moving post for the counterinsurgency blog Small Wars Journal explaining, in more detail than anyone else has in public, what exactly waterboarding is. And Nance knows what he's talking about. As a former instructor at the Navy's training program, Nance (full disclosure, a TPMm pal) confesses that he "personally led, witnessed and supervised waterboarding of hundreds of people" -- not detainees, of course, but would-be SEALs, so they could learn how (hopefully) to resist torture. That training program, known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape (SERE), became a template for how to abuse detainees in U.S. custody.

Nance's experience leads him to some sharp conclusions:

"Waterboarding is a torture technique. Period. There is no way to gloss over it or sugarcoat it. It has no justification outside of its limited role as a training demonstrator. Our service members have to learn that the will to survive requires them accept and understand that they may be subjected to torture, but that America is better than its enemies and it is one’s duty to trust in your nation and God, endure the hardships and return home with honor."

After the chilling description above, Nance writes:

"Call it “Chinese Water Torture,” “the Barrel,” or “the Waterfall,” it is all the same. Whether the victim is allowed to comply or not is usually left up to the interrogator. Many waterboard team members, even in training, enjoy the sadistic power of making the victim suffer and often ask questions as an after thought. These people are dangerous and predictable and when left unshackled, unsupervised or undetected they bring us the murderous abuses seen at Abu Ghraieb, Baghram and Guantanamo. No doubt, to avoid human factors like fear and guilt someone has created a one-button version that probably looks like an MRI machine with high intensity waterjets."

There have been a lot of calls in the liberal blogosphere for waterboarding apologists to undergo the procedure themselves. See if they think it's torture then.

Much as I wish Chandler, Clinton and the rest to live to deeply regret their un-American, un-Constitutional, anti-military, inhumane votes, I cannot wish waterboarding on them.

I'm a proponent of the death penalty, but after reading Nance's description, I wouldn't wish waterboarding on anyone.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

There's more: "Torture, Schmorture" >>

Tough vs. Strong

Smirky threatening air strikes against Iran.

Rudy-the-Perv singing the praises of torture.

Hillary the War Slut promising to maintain the Permanent War On A Noun.

As the tough-guy rhetoric heats up and pushes us ever closer to the brink of nuclear war, let's step back for a minute and remember that tough is the opposite of strong.

Salon commenter Taliesan put it best a few weeks ago:

Tough Vs Strong

The really strong don't just weather the storm, they build a house so they can weather it in comfort.

The tough stand out in the rain.

The really strong stop and think about their actions, and when their actions prove futile, change tactics.

The tough act first and stick to it especially when those actions prove futile.

The strong lead their countries, the tough lead their parties.

The rightwing is obsessed with being tough, and that is all you need to know about their policies on war, peace, poverty and wealth.

The leftwing would much rather be strong.

Cross-posted at BlueGrassRoots.

There's more: "Tough vs. Strong" >>

Cheney Torture Toady, And CIA Director, General Michael Hayden Puts A Horse's Head In The Bed Of The CIA Inspector General

From today's New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 11 — The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, has ordered an unusual internal inquiry into the work of the agency’s inspector general, whose aggressive investigations of the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation programs and other matters have created resentment among agency operatives.

A small team working for General Hayden is looking into the conduct of the agency’s watchdog office, which is led by Inspector General John L. Helgerson. Current and former government officials said the review had caused anxiety and anger in Mr. Helgerson’s office and aroused concern on Capitol Hill that it posed a conflict of interest.

The review is particularly focused on complaints that Mr. Helgerson’s office has not acted as a fair and impartial judge of agency operations but instead has begun a crusade against those who have participated in controversial detention programs.

Any move by the agency’s director to examine the work of the inspector general would be unusual, if not unprecedented, and would threaten to undermine the independence of the office, some current and former officials say.

Frederick P. Hitz, who served as C.I.A. inspector general from 1990 to 1998, said he had no first-hand information about current conflicts inside the agency. But Mr. Hitz said any move by the agency’s director to examine the work of the inspector general would “not be proper.

“I think it’s a terrible idea,” said Mr. Hitz, who now teaches at the University of Virginia. “Under the statute, the inspector general has the right to investigate the director. How can you do that and have the director turn around and investigate the IG?” ...

Ok, lets start off with the admission that I can actually envision a situation where CIA Director Michael Hayden's argument could have some validity. I would think covert foreign intel operations are a very difficult thing to apply standard Inspector General protocols to. But I don't see any validity whatsoever in the situation described here. In the first place, the detention and interrogation (torture) programs are not transitory spy v. spy James Bond deals. They are static programs and locations, really no different than military prisons and interrogations, or FBI work and Federal Prisons, in general character. Tailor made for an independent Inspector General. Secondly, who in the world doesn't believe that seriously malevolent and criminal activity hasn't been the rule, not the exception, in the detention and interrogation programs. The United States Supreme Court has even said so on several aspects; not to mention every monitoring body in the world.

The crux of the issue here though is, even if there was a legitimate argument (again, that just doesn't hold water here), this is an outrageously wrong, improper, unethical, immoral and illegal way to go about addressing it. There are no provisions that permit a subject agency to investigate it's own Inspector General; moreover, the very concept is completely antithetical to the nature and purpose of an IG. The Times article says it is unprecedented; that is probably an understatement. This action by Hayden, undoubtedly undertaken under the direct authority of Vice-President Dick Cheney, is malicious and beyond the pale. With no attempt to use the designated avenues of recourse provided for agencies against their IGs, it is nothing short of putting a severed horse's head in Inspector General Helgerson's bed to let him know the score. A pure attempt to chill, obstruct and threaten the IG's work at the behest and direction of the subjects being investigated.

General Michael Hayden self servingly says not to worry, this is perfectly proper and above board, “His only goal is to help this office, like any office at the agency, do its vital work even better,” For the foregoing reasons, that is a laughable pile of horse manure. One other thought; since when did the jurisdiction of the CIA get expanded to investigation of domestic governmental agencies and officers? Is that part of another secret Bush/Cheney executive order we don't know about? It seems like a new concept, and a pretty malevolent one at that. There is simply no limit to the outrageous, unprecedented and unethical extremes the Bush/Cheney Administration will go to to obstruct and avoid accountability and responsibility for their immoral and illegal conduct. It is time for this to stop.

There's more: "Cheney Torture Toady, And CIA Director, General Michael Hayden Puts A Horse's Head In The Bed Of The CIA Inspector General" >>