Duo of Doom, concerned for your safety

Bill O'Reilly and Karl Rove have a lengthy discussion about how bad it will be if Obama stops using torture, wiretapping, and rendition.

Typical of FOX News's treatment of this subject, it is assumed that our 'coercive interrogation techniques' are what has saved us from another terrorist attack. Also typically, the claim is made that Obama desires to end the practice of rendition, and no distinction is made between regular rendition - taking someone in one country and moving them to another, not much objectionable about that - and the aspects of rendition Obama and many others disagree with, namely when the country they are taken to is one that is known to torture prisoners. And of course, for the trifecta, opposition to secret, illegal, warrantless wiretapping and data mining is dumbed down to mean you don't want to spy on terrorists at all.

As the icing on the idiot cake, it is hilarious when Rove criticizes Obama's pick of Panetta due to his lack of experience, considering the track record of the Bush White House he was a part of on picking qualified candidates for important jobs. Heckuva job Rove. Most of the people I have seen object to Panetta are people who likely have dirt under their nails with respect to the enhanced interrogation techniques. Seems like they are afraid of being called out for that and possibly going to jail and being subject to some enhanced sodomy techniques.

Shredding

With 9 months left of W, I'm curious when the heavy shredding will start. There's been some confirmed and unconfirmed cases already. But with all the recent revelations about the high level involvement, the Monday enhanced interrogation meetings, it must be very soon when the heavy document destruction, and e-mail mis-placing, will begin. Especially after Obama said he would investigate what was done.

More Memos

Look here to read about the latest release from the seemingly bottomless pile of DoJ OLC legal memos that attempt to justify the use of torture and narrow it's definition.

no-brainer

I had been meaning to do a post on some torture related things bust partly due to mother nature A Daily Show beat me to it (the video is below). For the first time the Bush admin publicly admitted it waterboarded some people, and may decide to do it again. There's been a little bit of a publicity blitz because if they don't convince everyone that it was legal then the US might have trouble with getting evidence allowed in the death sentence charges for evildoing. Ironically, the State Dept. sent out a memo to all embassies instructing them to compare these cases to the Nuremburg Trials, Trials where one of the main crimes the Nazis were charged with was starting war(s) of aggression. A memorable quote from the chief US prosecutor at those trials:

To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole

Dick Cheney even personally made an appearance this week in support of legalized waterboarding. You may remember him from such comments as:



This is what the guy on Fox News that is Steve Doocy had to say:



Bill O'Reilly wants to tell the candidates that waterboarding works.

Because 9/11 changed everything

Videotapes of 2002 CIA interrogations destroyed.

"CIA Director Michael Hayden said the CIA began taping the interrogations as an internal check on the program after President Bush authorized the use of harsh questioning methods. The methods included waterboarding, which simulates drowning, government officials said."

This news comes the same week the Supreme Court heard arguments about prisoners in Guantanamo's right to challenge their imprisonment, otherwise known as habeus-corpus. Most of whom have been there 6 years now.

The newly coined term unlawful enemy combatant is what the administration uses to describe the people there, it does not call them POW's since that term carries with it certain rights from the 'quaint' Geneva Conventions. Though sometimes it does compare them to POW's, arguing that in a war, POW's can be held without charges or trial until the end of hostilities. With the seemingly endless 'War on Terror' this amounts to a de-facto life sentence.

The advantage to holding them at Guantanamo is it allows the administration to claim US law does not apply since they are not on US soil, an argument refuted by the Supreme Court, much like the other prisoners at the various CIA black sites scattered around the world, and the 'extraordinary rendition' program.

After failing to convince the Supreme Court of the legality of the imprisonment system in earlier cases, the previous Republican Congress passed the Military Commissions Act to specifically take away the habeus protection, trying slowly to make the tribunal system appear legal. Some things allowed in the Combatant status review tribunals - CSRT's: secret evidence, evidence and confessions obtained through 'coercion'; not allowed: lawyers, introducing evidence for the defense.

One of the few prisoners to be charged with a crime reached a unique plea bargain, "the [US] government released Hicks on the condition that he not speak with reporters for one year, that he waive his rights to appeal or sue, and that he recant accusations of illegal treatment while in U.S. captivity."

If the one year period starts at his release, due at the end of this month, it will coincidentally end during Bush's last scheduled month in office.

Harry Reid has no testicles

Michael Muksaey was sworn in today as the next AG after winning his confirmation vote by a slim margin of 53-40. While 4 senators who publicly opposed his nomination, who are also running for president, skipped the vote, quite a few others publicly opposed it but then voted for it anyway.
A few months back, the 'conventional wisdom' was you needed 60 votes to get anything done in the senate, as some republican senators liked to say. The newspapers would say 60 votes were required for passage. Why, I wonder, were 60 votes required? If so, why was Thursday's vote passed with only 53 votes? Gee whiz this government stuff is so complicated I don't think I'll ever understand it.

A for effort

Two more senators have said they will vote for Mukasey to be AG. The reason? Because we think he is probably the best Bush will come up with. Yes we know he won't say waterboarding is torture....but what the hell he's probably the best we will get....

“Judge Mukasey is not my ideal choice,” the senator said. “However, Judge Mukasey, whose integrity and independence is respected even by those who oppose him, is far better than anyone could expect from this administration.” - Charles Schumer

Amazing how standards have dropped.

The law specifically says it is illegal, for the military.... but if the CIA or private contractors-merenaries- do it, maybe its ok. Sure we may have prosecuted it as a war crime in the past, but 9/11 changed everything so I can't say its torture for sure without further review. And I probably won't do any further review either and just hope you forget about it.

Besides, like he said in his testimony, if he admitted it was illegal people who might be using or authorizing it might get worried. ( I'll take that as code for we have people doing that as we speak)

Although they may be right...if our pres of VP has authorized what is generally seen as war crimes, it would be best not to talk about them, hence we will just change the definition and assure you we don't technically torture. Not gonna get specific bub.

“I’m not going to talk about techniques,” he said, adding, “My view is this: The American people have got to understand the program is important and the techniques used are within the law.”

well...within the law as we define it.

Then it's time for the good old standby:We have a war to fight. We can't be worried about war crimes during a time of war...As Bush said this week-

“On too many issues,” Mr. Bush said, “Congress is behaving as if America is not at war.”

I can't imagine what I would have thought if I had been able to read these things in 1999.

Will he say 'yes'?

About whether waterboarding is torture? The esteemed Pat Buchanan thinks that Congress needs to specifically define it as torture in a new law. I would be pretty curious to see the signing statement on that one. This comes as good news to me however, since I don't think Congress has ever defined my favorite game, 'potato sack dodgeball', as torture. It's where I play dodgeball with someone whos'e feet have to stay inside the sack. If they drop the potato sack then they have to go to inside the 'naked in the freezer with loud fingernails on the chalkboard looping while chained in unnatural positions' box for 5 minutes to 5 days, depending on how flagrant the violation of the bag-rule was. Sadly, I don't think Ed Grimly is as lucky with his 'black and blue with frozen bluegill' game.

If someone is waterboarded in the forest, is it torture?

After a rather uneventful first day of hearings for the Attorney General Nominee, Michael B. Mukasey (who I might start referring to as shifty bastard), the second day turned out to be a bit different. Day 1 was filled with lots of feel good folksy talk, but details were sparse. He said the first day that the president could not order torture;

“Torture is unlawful under the laws of this country,” Mr. Mukasey said. “It is not what this country is all about. It is not what this country stands for. It’s antithetical to everything this country stands for."

Bush says that the US doesn't torture. But as long as they dont die or have organ failure, it isn't torture. And those couple that did die were just accidents, and then a few suicides too. Oh yea and it's not torture if we send them to another country that will do it for us (now a major motion picture movie), kind of in the same way as it doesn't make you gay as long as your not the one doing the blowing.

So when he was asked to be more specific:

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse: “Is waterboarding constitutional?”

Mukasey: “I don’t know what is involved in the technique,” Mr. Mukasey replied. “If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional.”

Whitehouse: “is the practice of putting somebody in a reclining position, strapping them down, putting cloth over their faces and pouring water over the cloth to simulate the feeling of drowning. Is that constitutional?”

Mukasey: “If it amounts to torture, it is not constitutional.”

Seems like the trend is to avoid direct talk, and invent a new word for what we do like 'terrorist surveillance program' or 'enhanced interrogation'

Extra: a short history on waterboarding from Dick Durbin:

The United States has long taken the position that this is a war crime. In 1901, the U.S. Army Major Edwin Glenn sentenced to 10 years hard labor for water-boarding a captured insurgent in the Philippines.

U.S. military commissions after World War II prosecuted Japanese troops for engaging in water-boarding. The torture statute makes it a crime to threaten someone with imminent death. Water- boarding is a threat of imminent death.

I'm hoping that you can at least look at this one technique and say that clearly constitutes torture, it should not be the policy of the United States to engage in water-boarding, whether the detainee is military or otherwise.

MUKASEY: It is not constitutional for the United States to engage in torture in any form, be it water-boarding or anything else.

Cowboy Country

Amateurish raids by immigration, complete with cowboy hats. Shoot-em up mercenaries paid billions in Iraq. Drunken shootings by same mercenaries. Legalised torture secretly justified in secret memos. The list can go on, but I should stop here before I induce vomiting.
The first 'CEO administration' seems to be keeping with that label. Their meetings are punctual, he is 'the decider'; and instant results, lackadaiscal planning and oversight, and profit above all else rule the day. With the largest military budget in the world, we don't have an army large enough to keep the peace in Iraq without heavy reliance on mercenaries like Blackwater. Mercenaries who have conviniently been exempted from US, US military, and Iraqi law by our occupation authority in Iraq, until now. The staggering costs of our occupation are floodling into the pockets of Bush's friends and donors, who our own audits show are overcharging, and not completing work they were paid for.
Have you ever wondered what would happen if a spoiled rich kid from New England who likes to pretend he's a Texas cowboy, who failed in every business venture his daddy paid for him to try, who liked to think he was an airplane fighter but got a stateside post during Vietnam from his papa that he didn't bother showing up for, became president of the US?