DebateGate

It is not as Plane suggests, that Bill Clinton and every other president was torturing like crazy for a long time.
No. There was a definite change in policy when Juniorbush mongered his wars. Here is the article printed in the Miami Herald and other McClatchy newspapers.


Policy objectives trumped law on detainee treatment
A team of five government attorneys reinterpreted or tossed out the U.S. and international laws that would have afforded detainees legal protections.
Posted on Wed, Jun. 18, 2008

BY TOM LASSETER
tlasseter@mcclatchydc.com

WASHINGTON --
The framework under which detainees were imprisoned for years without charges at Guant?namo and in many cases abused in Afghanistan wasn't the product of American military policy or the fault of a few rogue soldiers.

It was largely the work of five White House, Pentagon and Justice Department lawyers who, following the orders of President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, reinterpreted or tossed out the U.S. and international laws that govern the treatment of prisoners in wartime, according to former U.S. defense and Bush administration officials.

The Supreme Court now has struck down many of their legal interpretations. It ruled last Thursday that preventing detainees from challenging their detention in federal courts was unconstitutional.

The quintet of lawyers, who called themselves the ''War Council,'' drafted legal opinions that circumvented the military's code of justice, the federal court system and America's international treaties in order to avoid a scenario in which anyone -- from soldiers on the ground to the president -- could be held accountable for activities that at other times have been considered war crimes.

Sen. Carl Levin, who's leading an investigation into the origins of the harsh interrogation techniques, said at a hearing Tuesday that the abuse wasn't the result of ''a few bad apples'' within the military, as the White House has claimed.

''The truth is that senior officials in the United States government sought information on aggressive techniques, twisted the law to create the appearance of their legality and authorized their use against detainees,'' said Levin, a Michigan Democrat.

Neither the White House nor the Department of Defense has taken responsibility, and the U.S. military's top uniformed leadership remained silent in public while its legal code was being discarded. It was left to lawyers in the military's legal system, the Judge Advocate General's Corps, to defend the rule of law. They never had a chance.

Only one of the five War Council lawyers remains in office: David Addington, the brilliant but abrasive longtime legal advisor and now chief of staff to Cheney. His primary motive, according to several former administration and defense officials, was to push for an expansion of presidential power that Congress or the courts couldn't check.

Alberto Gonzales, first the White House counsel and then the attorney general, resigned last August amid allegations of perjury related to congressional hearings about the firings of U.S. attorneys.

The Defense Department in February abruptly announced the resignation of William J. Haynes II, the former Pentagon general counsel, amid sharp public criticism by military lawyers that he failed to ensure a just system of detainee trials at Guant?namo.

Even some conservatives have condemned former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo for what many called sloppy legal work in drafting key memorandums about detention policy. He's now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

The last, least known member of the group, Timothy E. Flanigan, a former deputy to Gonzales in the White House, withdrew his nomination to be deputy attorney general in 2005 amid mounting questions in the Senate about his role in drafting the administration's legal definition of torture and other issues.

All five refused to answer questions from McClatchy for this report. Only Flanigan gave a reason, saying that he doesn't discuss past clients, in this case the U.S. government. Yoo previously has denied any connection between his work and detainee abuse.

The quintet did more than condone harsh treatment, however. It created an environment in which it was nearly impossible to prosecute soldiers or officials for alleged crimes committed in U.S. detention facilities.

The Bush administration pursued a strategy from the beginning to exempt American soldiers and operatives from legal repercussions for their actions, said Nigel Rodley, a British lawyer and professor who was the United Nations' special rapporteur on torture from 1993 to 2001.

The United States said it was continuing to follow the rule of law, but at the same time it sidestepped any international treaties that could create problems for soldiers or officials, said Rodley, a member of the U.N. Human Rights Committee.

The legal architecture, he said, hinged on the notion that, ``The treaties that were relevant to U.S. criminal law were not relevant. That was the trick.''

The administration, in other words, set out to circumvent any law that might have restricted Bush's detainee and interrogation programs.

MEMOS PAVED WAY

A handful of legal opinions opened the way to the abuses documented in McClatchy's investigation. Among them:

? In a Jan. 9, 2002, memorandum for Haynes, co-author Yoo opined that basic Geneva Convention protections known as Common Article Three forbidding humiliating and degrading treatment and torture of prisoners didn't apply to alleged al Qaeda or Taliban detainees -- the entire incoming population of detainees in Afghanistan and Guant?namo.

? In a memorandum to Bush dated Jan. 25, 2002, Gonzales said that rescinding detainees' Geneva protections ``substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act.''

Doing so, Gonzales wrote, also would create a solid defense against prosecutors or independent counsels who may in the future ''decide to pursue unwarranted charges based on Section 2441,'' the U.S. War Crimes Act, which prohibits violations of the Geneva Conventions. Gonzales added that by withholding Geneva protections and prisoner-of-war status, Bush could avoid case-by-case reviews of detainees' status.

? On Feb. 7, 2002, Bush issued a memorandum declaring that alleged al Qaeda or Taliban members wouldn't be considered prisoners of war and, further, that they wouldn't be granted protection under Common Article Three.

Most nations accept Article Three, common to all four Geneva Conventions, as customary law setting the minimum standard for conduct in any conflict, whether internal or international.

? An Aug. 1, 2002, memorandum that Gonzales requested from the Justice Department defined torture as ''injury such as death, organ failure or serious impairment of body functions,'' a high bar for ruling interrogation techniques or detainee treatment illegal.

The five lawyers on the War Council met every few weeks behind closed doors in Gonzales' or Haynes' office to plot legal strategy, according to Jack Goldsmith, a former senior Justice Department lawyer.

Several other former U.S. officials confirmed that the group was the driving force for White House policy on detainees.

Fears of future prosecution motivated many officials in the administration, Goldsmith wrote in his book The Terror Presidency, published last year. The five lawyers saw legal opinions drafted by Yoo and others in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel as a shield, Goldsmith wrote, that would make it hard to convict someone of acting on legal advice from the premier legal office in the administration.

''In my two years in the government, I witnessed top officials and bureaucrats in the White House and throughout the administration openly worrying that investigators acting with the benefit of hindsight in a different political environment would impose criminal penalties on heat-of-battle judgment calls,'' wrote Goldsmith, who declined interview requests.

As the head of the Office of Legal Council from the fall of 2003 to the summer of 2004, Goldsmith reversed the August 2002 and March 2003 opinions.

LAWYERS CONCERNED

The military's lawyers were among those who were most concerned about what the new policies would mean for soldiers in the field.

Though not well-known to the public, the Judge Advocate General's corps prides itself on defending the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the military's law book, which demands strict discipline and moral behavior in wartime. The legal officers are fond of saying that military commanders can depend on two people for honest advice: their chaplains and their JAG lawyers.

The military legal community complained, to little avail, that the new policies were replacing decades of U.S. military policy on handling detainees.

When they protested, the War Council shut them out.

''We were absolutely marginalized,'' said Donald J. Guter, a rear admiral who served as the Navy's judge advocate general from 2000 to 2002. ``I think it was intentional, because so many military JAGs spoke up about the rule of law.''

Thomas Romig, a major general who was the Army's judge advocate general from 2001 to 2005, agreed that the JAGs were pushed to the side: ''It was a disaster,'' he said.

 

06/17/2008
OOPS NATION

A Superpower of Lazy Slobs

NEW YORK--Tens of thousands of innocent detainees have passed through Guant?namo, Bagram, Abu Ghraib, Diego Garcia and other U.S. torture facilities. Thousands remain "disappeared," possibly murdered. Some may be on one of the Navy vessels recently revealed to have been repurposed as prison ships. Dozens have been beaten to death or killed by willful medical neglect.

For seven years, the Bush Administration, the Democratic Congress and its media allies have denied "unlawful enemy combatants" (or, as Dick Cheney called them, "the worst of the worst" terrorists) the right to habeas corpus, the centuries-old right of persons arrested by the police to face their accusers and the evidence against them in a court of law.

Thanks to a 5-4 decision by the Supreme Court, America's latest flirtation with fascism is coming to an end. Parts of the infamous Military Commissions Act of 2006 that eliminated habeas corpus have been declared unconstitutional. Prisoners at Guant?namo and possibly other American gulags, will now be allowed to demand their day in court. Since the government doesn't have evidence against them, legal experts say, most if not all of "the worst of the worst" will ultimately walk free. "Liberty and security can be reconciled," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority.

In short: Oops.
In December 2001, Kurnaz was a 19-year-old German Muslim studying in Pakistan. He was pulled off a bus by Pakistani security services, who delivered him to the CIA for a $3,000 bounty. He was flown to Guant?namo concentration camp, where he received what The Village Voice's Nat Hentoff calls "the standard treatment: beatings, sleep deprivation, and special month-long spells of solitary confinement in a sealed cell without ventilation."

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He went on hunger strike, and Kurnaz's tormentors apparently worried he might starve to death. After 20 days "they gagged me and shoved a tube up my nose, stopping several times because the tube filled with blood," Kurnaz remembers.

What did this "worst of the worst" do to deserve such treatment? Nothing. But don't take my word for it. Six months into his ordeal, the U.S. military determined, there was "no definite link or evidence of detainee having an association with Al Qaeda or making any specific threat toward the U.S."

The U.S. government knew Kurnaz was innocent. Yet they held on to him another three and a half years.

Oops.

It would be comforting if the torture of innocent men sold by self-interested bounty hunters were an aberration. It wasn't. A McClatchy Newspapers analysis confirms the horrifying results of a Seton Hall University study. "Only eight percent of Guant?namo detainees were captured by U.S. forces," reports McClatchy. "86 percent were turned over to the U.S. by Pakistan or by the Northern Alliance," a coalition of Afghan warlords. "The bounty hunters were often the source of allegations."

Right-wingers say security matters can only be entrusted to the military. "The courts," writes Richard Samp of the pro-government Washington Legal Foundation in USA Today, "simply lack the expertise and resources to justify second-guessing military experts on such issues." Maybe. But the military is run by liars.

"The McClatchy investigation found that top Bush Administration officials knew within months of opening the Guant?namo detention center that many prisoners weren't 'the worst of the worst.' From the moment that Guant?namo opened in early 2002, former Secretary of the Army Thomas White said, it was obvious that at least one-third of the population didn't belong there."

At least six died at Gitmo. (The Pentagon characterized a spate of suicides as clever acts of "asymmetrical warfare.")

Oops.

Deranged leaders who carry out horrific acts of mass murder and oppression with the consent of the people are hardly new to American history, reminds Allen Weinstein, Archivist of the United States. "Begin with the Salem witchcraft trials of the 1690s," he told a commencement ceremony at Southern Methodist University. "Move forward to the Alien and Sedition Acts of the early Republic, and from there to the suspension of habeas corpus during the Civil War. Turn then to the arbitrary political arrests of the First and Second World Wars, the many abuses of the Cold War McCarthy era, and from there the civil liberties climate in our time."

So many oopsies! But those are temporary excesses, Weinstein reassures. "Self-corrective forces at work in American society"--lefties, liberals, a single swing vote on the U.S. Supreme Court--always pull us back before we careen off the brink. Disaster is avoided.

Which would be fine if it weren't for the problem that: (1) one of these days, Justice Kennedy won't be around to restore the rule of law. The other problem being (2): a lot of "witches" get drowned during our periodic episodes of madness.

No one was ever held accountable for blacklisting actors or massacring Native Americans. Such tacit endorsement of villainy sets the stage for the next outrage committed during a future "temporary madness" driven by national security worries. Apologies are rare. Penance is scarce and stingy. The government stole the homes and businesses of Japanese-Americans and shipped them to concentration camps during World War II; decades passed before Congress cut them checks for a measly $10,000.

We think we Americans are good people who do bad things when we're not on top of our game. "Self-corrective forces," we pat ourselves on our collective backsides, always kick in before we go too far.

But that's not really how it is.

Some Americans are good. Other Americans are bad. And the good ones are often lazy, willing to let the bad ones get their way.
==============
Ted Rall

http://www.thefunnystuff.net/viewmovie.php?id=529

This was a very good adaptation of the novel of the same name. It is mostly spoken in Dari, which is the Afghani dialect of Farsi (Persian). It focuses on the relationship between two young boys, one a wealthy Pashtoon and the other the son of the Pashtoon family's Hazara servant. It is about racism (if we assume that pashtoons and Harazas are members of different races), and the trials of the Pashtoon boy's coming of age as a refugee in San Francisco, where his formerly important father has to support himself and his son by clerking in a 7-11 and selling junk in a flea market.

It was filmed in Western China, in a place that greatly resembles Kabul and the Khyber Pass area. The scenery, the wardrobe, and the portrayal of Afghani life and customs seem authentic and fascinating.

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/ea0b05d406

I have consistently failed in my attempts to score the Woot! Bag O' Crap, which has included some really nice items. I have ordered, out of frustration, the Yugster Surprise Bundle, which is $15 postpaid and is said to include three different items.

I am hoping that none of them are sandals or action figures (I would find a poseable Daddy Roth Ratt Fink action figure, I suppose, but I don't think such an entity exists.

I shall inform you when my bundle arrives, so as to let you know.
I never buy lottery tickets, so I can justify a total flop that way. Plus, perhaps it will be something I can use as a gift.

Has anyone ever ordered or had any experience with either the surprise bundle or the bag o' crap?

I have a variety of commercial VCR tapes, dating back ages. For easy storage, access, and durability, I would like to make these into DVDs, with the options of scene selection and so forth. I know I need a DVD recorder, some software and some device to deal with the Macrovision on the cables linking the VCR player with the DVD recorder. I am not planning to sell anything or share it, I just want to ensure that I can watch a film I own without having to splice or reconnect tapes, which is a bore and a nuisance.

I would appreciate recommendations of specific brands.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efjcrbNcW6s

The Mercator projection is highly inaccurate.