Below is my column today in USA Today on the closure of the final torture investigation by the Obama Administration. Notably, in light of the rift with civil libertarians and his move to the right on national security matters, Obama is not running on civil liberties in this election or claiming to be champion for such rights. Likewise, liberal newspapers and commentators have criticized the Obama Administration and the Democratic Party for rolling back on strong language in the prior 2008 platform to civil liberties in the Democratic platform. The downgrading of civil liberties by the Democratic Party leaves civil libertarians without even a pretense of a party or candidate championing the cause in this election. In a prior column one year ago, I complained that President Obama had not just killed certain civil liberties but killed the civil liberties movement in the United States. That appears reflected in the tepid response to these issues in the party platform. Of course, while party platforms can be dismissed as meaningless statements, the final closure of the last torture investigations without a single criminal charge promises to have a more lasting impact on the law and our record on civil liberties and human rights. Here is today’s column:
Let it not be said that President Obama does not keep his promises.
As he prepared to accept his nomination for re-election last week, the president made good on a promise he made at the beginning of his term: No CIA officers will be prosecuted for torture. Attorney General Eric Holder quietly announced before the convention that the last two torture investigations would close (like all the prior investigations) without any charge. As a virtual afterthought, the Justice Department added that it would not address the “propriety of the examined conduct.” The “impropriety” involved two suspects who died under torture by CIA officials.
For those still infatuated with Obama, the announcement was the final triumph of “hope” over experience. Since Obama ran on a civil liberties platform, many expected an independent torture investigation as soon as he took office. After all, waterboarding is one of the oldest forms of torture, pre-dating the Spanish Inquisition (when it was called tortura del agua). It has long been defined as torture by both U.S. and international law, and by Obama himself. Torture, in turn, has long been defined as a war crime, and the United States is under treaty obligation to investigate and prosecute such crimes.
However, such a principle did not make for good politics. Accordingly, as soon as he was elected, Obama set out to dampen talk of prosecution. Various intelligence officials and politicians went public with accounts of the Obama administration making promises to protect Bush officials and CIA employees from prosecution.
‘Order is an order’
Though the White House denied the stories, Obama later gave his controversial speech at the CIA headquarters and did precisely that. In the speech, he effectively embraced the defense of befehl ist befehl (“an order is an order”) and, in so doing, eviscerated one of the most important of the Nuremburg principles. Obama assured the CIA that employees would not be prosecuted for carrying out orders by superiors. This was later affirmed by Holder’s Justice Department, which decided that employees carrying out torture were protected because they followed orders. The administration then decided that those who gave the orders were protected because they secured facially flawed legal opinions from the Justice Department. Finally, the Justice Department decided not to charge its own lawyers who gave those opinions because they were their . . . well . . . opinions.
This, of course, still left two inconvenient corpses in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2002, Gul Rahman was grabbed in Pakistan while seeing a doctor who is the son-in-law of an Afghanistan warlord. He was taken by the CIA to the infamous Salt Pit, a former brick factory north of Kabul. He was beaten by guards, stripped and shackled to a cement wall in near freezing temperatures. He froze to death overnight. The CIA officer in charge of the prison who ordered the lethal abuse has been promoted, according to the Associated Press and The Washington Post.
The second torture case was that of Manadel al-Jamadi, who died in 2003 in Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib prison. Al-Jamadi’s face was featured in pictures with smiling U.S. troops posed with his dead body — giving the thumbs up sign. A CIA official had interrogated al-Jamadi by suspending him from a barred window by his wrists, which were bound behind his back. The CIA interrogator, Mark Swanner, continued to demand answers even when al-Jamadi stopped responding. Swanner accused him of “playing possum” and ordered him to be repositioned for more interrogation, according to a New Yorker account. The guards finally convinced Swanner that the man was deceased. Al-Jamadi’s death was officially ruled a homicide.
CIA promotions
Not only have people like the commandant at the Salt Pit been promoted, but various CIA officials associated with the abuse of detainees have also been promoted under President Obama. Likewise, the lawyers responsible for those now rejected legal opinions have been promoted. One of the most notorious, Jay Bybee, was even given a lifetime appointment as a federal judge in California.
We have gone from prosecuting torture as a war crime after World War II to treating allegations of torture as a “question of propriety” under Obama. Hundreds of officials, including President Bush, were involved. People died in interrogation. High-ranking CIA officials admitted that they destroyed evidence of torture to keep it from being used in any later prosecutions. Yet, after a years-long investigation, not a single CIA official will be charged with a single crime connected to the program. Not even a misdemeanor or a single bar referral for an attorney. Well, no one except former CIA official John Kiriakou, who is awaiting trial on criminal charges for disclosing information on the torture.
After World War II, political philosopher Hannah Arendt coined the phrase “the banality of evil” to describe those who committed war crimes. The Obama administration now can add the “impropriety of torture” to our lexicon. The image of a man beaten, stripped and frozen to death in a CIA prison is not nearly as unnerving as a nation that stood by and did nothing about it. We have become a nation of dull-eyed pedestrians watching as our leaders strip away the very things that distinguish us from our enemies. With our principles gone, we are left with only politics and, of course, our sense of propriety.
Jonathan Turley, the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, is a member of USA TODAY’s Board of Contributors.
USA TODAY September 11, 2012
nick,
You old goat! 😉 (the goat/ram is the symbol for Capricorn)
http://bossip.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/capricorn-2.jpg
You Don’t Have a Right
1, September 11, 2012 at 10:29 am
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hey rightless….whose pocket are you picking whilst fomenting such disease with your own personal hit list? Darren is apparently not intelligent enuff to know who the big bad is? (while you whisper poison in his ear…….)
Yes SWM, You’re a marvelous, patient, and empathetic teacher. An apology would have been forthcoming from someone who has honor.
Blouise, The capricorn has replied.
nick,
but sometimes it’s just a typo 😉
nick spinelli
1, September 11, 2012 at 11:41 am
I do respect all of you that have held Obama to task for this. Hopefully, you do understand you’re a distinct minority.
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That is the truth (distinct minority).
In 2009 some 52 percent of people say torture could be sometimes justified to obtain information about terrorist activities from suspects, an increase from 38 percent in 2005 when the AP last asked the question.
In other words, the number of people who approved of some form of torture rose 14% from 2005 to 2009.
The latest poll I could find was a CBS poll on torture in Nov. 2011 where the number who approved had fallen to 45% but an additional 15% are depends/unsure … so little movement overall.
nick, Well, now you know it is a code word.
So, like shano, you’re calling me a liar. I’ve sworn I didn’t know that was a buzzword. I know people who eat, drink, and sleep politics can’t understand everyone is not like them. I follow politics but it does not consume me, I have a life. You know SWM, I’ve found over the years people who can’t accept someone is truly honorable is because honor is a foreign concept to them. They have no frame of reference.
Last January, when a number of white conservatives used words like “arrogant” and “cocky” to refer to President Obama’s State of the Union speech, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann asserted that they really meant Obama was an “uppity” black man: “When racist white guys get together and they don’t want to be caught using any of the popular epithets in use every day in this country about black people – and there’s a chance one of them, or worse still a white guy who doesn’t get it might wander in and hear the conversation, when there’s a risk even in saying ‘uppity’ or ‘forgetting his place,’ the racist white guys revert to euphemisms and code words. And among the code words that they think they’re getting away with are ‘cocky,’ ‘flippant,’ ‘punk,’ and especially ‘arrogant.’”
Read more: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/brad-wilmouth/2010/12/10/olbermann-slammed-racist-conservatives-calling-obama-arrogant-hails-n#ixzz26B2PraSK
Tony C. 1, September 11, 2012 at 10:21 am
@Frankly: The point of voting Green, or showing up to vote but not casting a ballot for President at all, is not to absolve you of guilt.
The point of voting for somebody that cannot win is to send a message to BOTH parties that the actions of the party in power can cost them an election.
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Exactly.
If you continue to vote for them (R or D) you just encourage them to continue with what they have been doing.
If you stay home. Who cares? The only votes that could are those cast, not those that aren’t. (And I’m not sure the votes cast care properly counted but that’s a different topic.)
Votes for another party, now that’s a protest and is watched.
Jill Stein is running for the Green Party. She is being carefully “ignored”. No chance of getting into the debates where a lot of people go to make up their minds. Her ads for cable tv are being refused.
They do pay attention to the other parties so if you want to effect change, vote for someone other than a D or an R. If enough people do, they will start asking why.
This is a good idea for local and state elections as well. For local elections you might actually be able to get someone other than a D or an R elected. For state elections you might get their attention enough that they will ask why.
If you don’t vote for what you want, you’ll never get it.
“Meet John Kiriakou, CIA Torture Whistleblower”
“For this and other whistleblowing activities, Kiriakou became the sixth whistleblower to be indicted by the Obama administration under the Espionage Act – more than all previous presidential administrations combined.”
http://www.whistleblower.org/blog/42-2012/2227-september-enews-meet-john-kiriakou-cia-torture-whistleblower
nick, Kind of like the democrat party….. Some slip up and forget they are no longer in Fox nation.
Darren,
Tread carefully…. You’ll read things and not have a clue why someone posted what they did…. There are ardent Obama supporter and you will be castrated for hinting anything negative about Obama….. Then there’s the other side that is antiobama and you’ll be castigated for saying anything positive about Obama….
I have enjoyed the dialogue…. I did not see you play the race card….. But it will be imputed to you from now on….. Why? Because you have an opinion and write what you think…..
Bruce,
If you have evidence that war crimes, torture, led to useful intelligence, let’s hear it. No one else is aware of it. Did you water-board someone, to get this info?
Pakistan protected bin Laden while ‘we’ were stupidly tearing up Iraq and Afghanistan. I don’t see any “intelligence” at all, sir.
I do respect all of you that have held Obama to task for this. Hopefully, you do understand you’re a distinct minority.
Darren, I’ve been here a month or so. I read all the comments and have never picked up a hint of racism. You touched the third rail and you will be gang banged for it. One of the things I admire about Obama is he has NEVER used the race card. Unfortunately, many of his supporters love to shoot from the hip w/ it. You have my sympathy and support.
The following bears repeating:
“The image of a man beaten, stripped and frozen to death in a CIA prison is not nearly as unnerving as a nation that stood by and did nothing about it. We have become a nation of dull-eyed pedestrians watching as our leaders strip away the very things that distinguish us from our enemies. With our principles gone, we are left with only politics and, of course, our sense of propriety.” -Jonathan Turley
@rafflaw: Seriously, is avoiding polarization more important than the law and the Constitution?
One of Obama’s choices would have been to simply pardon all those accused of torture, with the same rhetoric of wanting to put an ugly chapter behind us, move forward instead of backward, etc. Pardons are within his Constitutional power and do not require any justification whatsoever.
The only reason I can fathom for not doing that is if he, personally, wants the power to do the same. Pardons may be distasteful but they are Constitutional; redefining the law and the meaning of “torture” is only necessary if Obama wants to continue the practice.
I think there are many people that live in Chicago. I think Obama was a senator from Illinois and claimed Chicago as his home! I think that someone here has made reference on this blog to having lived in Chicago. Oh, we’re playing the “V” card?
Darren, as I warned you the neighborhood bullies are coming out to play, you’ll be for dinner.
It is telling that the first response of Obama supporters is about whether one should vote for him or let the “evil Romney” get in instead. The issue at hand is that Obama has absolutely failed to uphold his oath of office or the rule of law, something that most Obama supporters objected to when Bush did it. In fact, many people on this blog called for impeachment because of torture and the dismemberment of the rule of law.
What has happened in this nation when so few people are able to simply state that torture is a heinous crime, that no matter the cost, it should be prosecuted? Where are the strong voices who called for impeachment over it?
How did that become impossible to say?
SwM,
Everybody picked up on that. 😉