An independent report by the Constitution Project, a non-partisan Washington think tank, is the latest to confirm what is already known to the world — we ran a torture program approved by the highest levels of our government in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks. The report is an indictment not only of President Bush who is responsible for the torture program but President Obama who promised CIA officials that they would not be investigated or prosecuted for torture.
The report concluded that the Bush Administration embraced torture in an unprecedented way. While there is brutality in our history, the report determines, “there is no evidence there had ever before been the kind of considered and detailed discussions that occurred after September 11, directly involving a president and his top advisers on the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in our custody.”
Of course, the same extreme voices from the Bush Administration were quick to condemn the report like former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush, John Bolton, who called the report “completely divorced from reality.” Bolton insisted that the procedures were “lawyered, and lawyered again, and lawyered again.” That is three lawyers and would include John Yoo, Steven G. Bradbury, and Jay Bybee — three discredited lawyers who many felt should have been criminally charged or subject to disbarment. Instead, while the Justice Department rejected their legal findings as fundamentally flawed and substandard, they were not personally disciplined. Bush officials continue to cite the facially illegitimate analysis of these hand-picked lawyers as excusing them of torture.
Since the Obama Administration has shielded these officials of prosecution (prosecutions that would have been politically costly to President Obama), these officials can continue to claim that they were not responsible for torture or that torture never occurred. Indeed, Yoo is back teaching law students while Bybee is passing judgment on others as a federal judge.
We are obligated to investigate and prosecute torture under treaty and international law. President Obama simply did what countless of other leaders have done in history: rather than make the difficult decision to comply with our obligations and the rule of law, Obama insisted that such enforcement would be too costly or divisive for the nation. It is a position that will be played back over and over to this country as we call for officials in other countries to be prosecuted for torture.
Source: Washington Post
rafflaw,
“This should not be a surprise to anyone who was awake the last 10 years.”
It shouldn’t even be a surprise to someone who has been semi-conscious!
Hannah:
My, but you are a speed reader. I started reviewing the report yesterday. It is about 570 pages long. The members of the task force that prepared it have impeccable credentials. As for your references to “school yard hearsay,” I suggest that there is a huge, and growing, body of evidence readily available for those who have any serious interest in learning the truth about torture. Therefore, I do not expect to find any new revelations in the new report. But there are far too many Americans so caught up in the myth of American “exceptionalism” that they cannot bring themselves to imagine that we have not always honored the law or our ideals.
Intentional self-delusion is a form of bad faith. Those who refuse to take a hard look at themselves are no different from those who insist upon revising history in order to present slavery in more pleasant terms or to create a false image of the Founding Fathers as fundamentalist Christians.
This should not be a surprise to anyone who was awake the last 10 years. Both Bush and Cheney told us on TV that they authorized waterboarding and we have prosecuted Japanese soldiers for waterboarding and our own soldiers for waterboarding. We consider it torture domestically and internationally.
Here is a quote from my downloaded copy:
(link in comment above, bold in original)
Hannah 1, April 17, 2013 at 12:44 am
This report only makes accusations. There is no reference, facts to check, or even examples of said “torture.” Consider the source with this one as without the above its nothing more than school yard hearsay or rumored truth.
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That is not correct.
The report can be downloaded for free.
It is very comprehensive, bi-partisan, and done by a distinguished professional group of individuals (On The Recent Condemnation of Torture).
“We are obligated to investigate and prosecute torture under treaty and international law. President Obama simply did what countless of other leaders have done in history: rather than make the difficult decision to comply with our obligations and the rule of law, Obama insisted that such enforcement would be too costly or divisive for the nation. It is a position that will be played back over and over to this country as we call for officials in other countries to be prosecuted for torture.”
Indeed.
The absurdity of Obama’s policy to throw away the treaties by acting as if they do not exist was recently highlighted when Secreatary of State Kerry criticized Russians for human rights violations.
It rings hollow when we publicly act as if we are above the laws against torture by ignoring official U.S. torture while criticizing unofficial torture in other nations.
Bush administration officials should be prosecuted. Their actions were war crimes. We prosecuted many high level officials of the German Government after WWII. We also prosecuted Japanese military leaders for water boarding. There is no excuse for failing to prosecute war crimes.
Bolton is really a piece of work. When you tell a really unethical lawyer to write you a memo that will allow you to commit a war crime and he does that doesn’t absolve you from guilt. That kind if “lawyering” is a “crime”.
The fact that the author of the “torture is ok” memo is teaching in a law school is offensive.
This is déjà vue all over again…
It’s only torture when other countries do it. It’s just “enhanced interrogation” when the US does it.
This mess MUST be cleaned up. I have thought all along that no President will ever allow one a predecessor to be prosecuted, or even investigated. Too much risk of creating a precedent by which he (or she) might be investigated at some subsequent date.
This dodging is not new. After WW-II, there were no charges ever brought against Goering or any of the Luftwaffe high command for bombing civilian targets. If they had, then it would have been glaringly obvious that General Curtis LeMay and Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris should have been similarly charged. You can bet the world would have noticed the hypocrisy.
It will be a task equal to that of Hercules having to clean all that $hiit out of the Augean Stables, but it could–and should–be done.
This should be grounds for an impeachment of Judge Bybee
We may have reached a turning point of sorts finally. Even the reporters on Nice Polite Republican radio called it ‘torture’ the other day. No BS euphemisms like ‘enhanced interrogation’, none of the soft-sell lie-by-obfuscating words that were the hallmark of the government and the media since 2001.
Its too much I know to expect day of reckoning for the bastards that did this in our name but I still hope their reputations will finally receive the stain they deserve and maybe next time the citizens will demand better
If you have trouble clicking to access this report, try coping and pasting the url into your browser:
http://detaineetaskforce.org/
I found that clicking on the Url works sometimes. But copying and pasting is pretty reliable.
And you ought to read as least some of the report rather than rely on what anyone says about it.
We have former top officials that have to cancel visits to other countries, for fear of being arrested for war crimes. Obama may not want to prosecute them, but some of the rest of the world does.
We have the Government denying, then refusing to identify children at Gitmo.
And we have cases like Army specialist Alyssa Peterson, with headlines: Soldier Killed Herself After Objecting to Interrogation Techniques
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1102-05.htm
Then we have Bush leaking info about a CIA agent to punish her husband, because he didn’t go along with the lie to start the Iraq War.
We have Bush telling Rice to tell other countries he does not support torture, while he’s telling Congress that if they pass anti-torture laws, he veto them.
So when they pass them with a veto proof majority, he uses ‘signing statements’ to nullify the laws, which prompts Congress to sue Bush!!
And THEN when photos surface showing torture, he sends OUR TROOPS to prison for HIS POLICIES!!!!
If EVER anyone deserves to be tried for war crimes it’s Bush & his crew!!
Hannah, Bolton: “Bolton insisted that the procedures were “lawyered, and lawyered again, and lawyered again.”” That’s an admission, ‘we did it and the lawyers said we could’. Also, the are plenty of photos including the one that is in the upper left corner of the Professor’s posting. Just Google ” Abu Ghraib photos uncensored” or go here:
http://www.antiwar.com/news/?articleid=2444
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Also:
More evidence of torture
United States soldier Spc. Graner punching, or pretending to punch, handcuffed Iraqi prisonersAccording to Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, many more pictures and videotapes of the abuse at Abu Ghraib exist. Photos and videos were revealed by the Pentagon to lawmakers in a private viewing on May 12, 2004. Lawmakers disagreed over whether the additional photos were worse than those already released. Senator Ron Wyden said the new photos were “significantly worse than anything that I had anticipated […] Take the worst case and multiply it several times over.” Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher said the pictures were “not dramatically different”.[20] A Department of Defense official said that most of the additional photos were pornography involving only US soldiers, and that most did not show abuse of prisoners.[21]
The New York Times, on January 12, 2005, reported testimony suggesting that the following actions had taken place at Abu Ghraib:
Urinating on detainees
Jumping on detainee’s leg (a limb already wounded by gunfire) with such force that it could not heal properly afterward
Continuing by pounding detainee’s wounded leg with collapsible metal baton
Pouring phosphoric acid on detainees
Sodomization of detainees with a baton
Tying ropes to the detainees’ legs or penises and dragging them across the floor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse#Hersh.2C_New_Yorker_article
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Srsly, a torture denier? Lol, it won’t play here, troll it somewhere else.
“This report only makes accusations. There is no reference, facts to check, or even examples of said “torture.””
I think that gets it wrong. The techniques are widely acknowledged and in some cases defended.
I have just begun to look at the report:
http://detaineetaskforce.org/.
But I think the contribution of the report is to put these acknowledged practices in the context of international law rather than the bogus interpretations of Yoo, Bybee and others.
Whether some choose to remember it or not, from the end of WWII till 9/11 there was no controversy or doubt that techniques like these constitute torture.
And after 9/11 there were many who were incredulous that these techniques were official government policy.
One indication of the serious legal problems these techniques have is the battle the Bush administration waged to prevent tracing the origin of these techniques to the highest political levels.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I am sure there are many who were at Nuremberg who would love to have had Yoo and Bybee as there attorney.
“…we ran a torture program approved by the highest levels of our government in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks.”
Correction:
We run a torture program… “approved by the highest levels of our government in the aftermath of the 9-11 attacks.”
Jane, You’re right. We are a nation of laws that apply only to those without money or powerful connections.
I think the torturers should have been prosecuted. We’re a nation of laws. And we should behave as one. No matter what.
This report only makes accusations. There is no reference, facts to check, or even examples of said “torture.” Consider the source with this one as without the above its nothing more than school yard hearsay or rumored truth.