Barack Obama, Torture Enabler By Ted Rall

[Demeter]

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article22390.htm


April 10, 2009 "Information Clearing House' -- America is a nation of laws--laws enforced by Spain.

John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, William Haynes and Douglas Feith wrote, authorized and promulgated the Justice Department "torture memos" that the Bush Administration used for legal cover. After World War II, German lawyers for the Ministry of Justice went to prison for similar actions...We've known about Yoo et al.'s crimes for years. Yet--unlike their victims--they're free as birds, fluttering around, writing op/ed columns...and teaching. At law school!

Obama has failed to match changes of tone with changes in substance on the issue of Bush's war crimes. "We need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards," he answered when asked whether he would investigate America's worst human rights abuses since World War II. Indeed, there's no evidence that Obama's Justice Department plans to lift a finger to hold Bush or his henchmen accountable.

"They should arrest Obama for trying to impersonate a President," one wag commented on The San Francisco Chronicle's website.

Fortunately for those who care about U.S. law, there are Spanish prosecutors willing to do their job. Baltasar Garzón, the crusading prosecutor who went after General Augusto Pinochet in the '90s, will likely subpoena the Dirty Half Dozen within the next few weeks. "It would have been impossible to structure a legal framework that supported what happened " without Gonzales and his pals," argues the criminal complaint filed in Madrid.

When the six miscreants ignore their court dates (as they surely will), Spain will issue international arrest warrants enforceable in the 25 countries that are party to European extradition treaties. All hail King Juan Carlos I!

MUCH MORE AT LINK

Ted Rall is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge. Visit his website http://www.rall.com/

[ClarkUSA]

1. Really? Is that why Pres. Obama is closing Gitmo and CIA black sites and told the world...

"The U.S. does not torture"?

[MannyGoldstein]

3. My Understanding Is That Obama Is Defending Outsourced Torture

AKA "extraordinary rendition".

Solitary confinement with no chance for judicial review of your confinement is also a form of torture that Obama apparently cherishes, e.g., discarding Habeas Corpus.

[ClarkUSA]

4. How did you reach this "understanding"? Ted Rall is not a credible source, IMO.

[MannyGoldstein]

5. The NY Times

"In little-noticed confirmation testimony recently, Obama nominees endorsed continuing the C.I.A.’s program of transferring prisoners to other countries without legal rights, and indefinitely detaining terrorism suspects without trials even if they were arrested far from a war zone.

The administration has also embraced the Bush legal team’s arguments that a lawsuit by former C.I.A. detainees should be shut down based on the “state secrets” doctrine. It has also left the door open to resuming military commission trials.

And earlier this month, after a British court cited pressure by the United States in declining to release information about the alleged torture of a detainee in American custody, the Obama administration issued a statement thanking the British government “for its continued commitment to protect sensitive national security information.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/18/us/politics/18policy.html?_r=1

No hope there.

[ClarkUSA]

6. That article has plenty of caveats to what you're implying...

I believe President Obama when he says, "The U.S. doesn't torture."

Within days of his inauguration, Mr. Obama thrilled civil liberties groups when he issued executive orders promising less secrecy, restricting C.I.A. interrogators to Army Field Manual techniques, shuttering the agency’s secret prisons, ordering the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, closed within a year and halting military commission trials.

During her confirmation hearing last week, Elena Kagan, the nominee for solicitor general, said that someone suspected of helping finance Al Qaeda should be subject to battlefield law — indefinite detention without a trial — even if he were captured in a place like the Philippines rather than in a physical battle zone.... At his hearing, Mr. Panetta said that if the approved techniques were “not sufficient” to get a detainee to divulge details he was suspected of knowing about an imminent attack, he would ask for “additional authority. To be sure, Mr. Panetta emphasized that the president could not bypass antitorture statutes, as Bush lawyers claimed. And he said that waterboarding — a technique that induces the sensation of drowning, and that the Bush administration said was lawful — is torture.

Mr. Craig noted that while Mr. Obama decided “not to change the status quo immediately,” he created a task force to study “rendition policy and what makes sense consistent with our obligation to protect the country.”

He urged patience as the administration reviewed the programs it inherited from Mr. Bush. That process began after the election, Mr. Craig said, when military and C.I.A. leaders flew to Chicago for a lengthy briefing of Mr. Obama and his national security advisers. Mr. Obama then sent his advisers to C.I.A. headquarters to “find out the best case for continuing the practices that had been employed during the Bush administration.”

Civil liberties groups praise Mr. Obama’s early executive orders on national security...Mr. Holder has also begun a review of every open Bush-era case involving state secrets... “Every president in my lifetime has invoked the state-secrets privilege,” Mr. Craig said. “The notion that invoking it in that case somehow means we are signing onto the Bush approach to the world is just an erroneous assumption.”

[MannyGoldstein]

7. "if the approved techniques were “not sufficient”..."

"if the approved techniques were “not sufficient” to get a detainee to divulge details he was suspected of knowing about an imminent attack, he would ask for “additional authority"

And what additional authority would that be? If it's not torture, then why wouldn't he already have the authority?

Why the insistence on being able to do things without judicial review, which is the hallmark of US justice?

[ClarkUSA]

8. "... to get a detainee to divulge details he was suspected of knowing about an imminent attack..."

Context is important. To leave out the end of Panetta's comment is dishonest, given the uniquely urgent circumstances he's describing.

And what additional authority would that be? If it's not torture, then why wouldn't he already have the authority?

To be sure, Mr. Panetta emphasized that the president could not bypass antitorture statutes, as Bush lawyers claimed. And he said that waterboarding — a technique that induces the sensation of drowning, and that the Bush administration said was lawful — is torture.

Why the insistence on being able to do things without judicial review, which is the hallmark of US justice?

Mr. Craig noted that while Mr. Obama decided “not to change the status quo immediately,” he created a task force to study “rendition policy and what makes sense consistent with our obligation to protect the country.”

He urged patience as the administration reviewed the programs it inherited from Mr. Bush. That process began after the election, Mr. Craig said, when military and C.I.A. leaders flew to Chicago for a lengthy briefing of Mr. Obama and his national security advisers. Mr. Obama then sent his advisers to C.I.A. headquarters to “find out the best case for continuing the practices that had been employed during the Bush administration.”

Civil liberties groups praise Mr. Obama’s early executive orders on national security...Mr. Holder has also begun a review of every open Bush-era case involving state secrets... “Every president in my lifetime has invoked the state-secrets privilege,” Mr. Craig said. “The notion that invoking it in that case somehow means we are signing onto the Bush approach to the world is just an erroneous assumption.”

[MannyGoldstein]

11. Same Argument Used By the Bush Administration

Who also claimed what they were doing was not torture. So... what would these "special techniques" be, and why doesn't he have the authority to do them now?

Extra-judicial incarceration and punishment are always a bad idea - they violate a very fundamental principle. Obama has not (to my knowledge) commited himself to this important principle - he seems to be defending the repeal of this principle.

[ClarkUSA]

14. Really? BushCo banned waterboarding as torture, as the Obama administration has? I had no idea.

[MannyGoldstein]

15. You're Being Silly Now, Of Course

They claimed that what they were doing was not torture.

This is why we have an independent judiciary, something which many of us are fond of. The judiciary decides on whether things are being done legally. Why duck judicial review? Despite your protestations, I think you know why.

[ClarkUSA]

16. I was responding to your "silly" attempts to equate Team O's attitude towards torture w/ BushCo's.

This is why we have an independent judiciary, something which many of us are fond of. The judiciary decides on whether things
are being done legally. Why duck judicial review? Despite your protestations, I think you know why.

See reply #6 and reply #8. Lather, rinse, repeat.

[Demeter]

9. You BELIEVE?

What is this, a religion? Faith-based government?

I look at what the magician's hand is doing, and pay no attention to the patter he says to distract and deflect oversight.

And I look at the facts. And the critiques. And the leaks, and the legislation and the other contraindications that say that there is something very wrong going on, right now, and I want it STOPPED!

[ClarkUSA]

10. Yes, I do, after reviewing all the actions that he has taken so far; see reply #6 and #8 for details

I am beyond overheated rhetoric such as yours. I look at the unvarnished facts and avoid critiques by shit-stirring flamethrowers
who have little credibility with anyone beyond the Perpetual Poutrage Police.

[Demeter]

12. There's a Sucker Born Every Minute

erroneously attributed to PT Barnum.

Have lots of fun splashing the Nile.

[ClarkUSA]

13. Do you have anything to add to the discussion besides childish ad hominem attacks?

You're entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts. Here are some facts by a credible source:

To be sure, Mr. Panetta emphasized that the president could not bypass antitorture statutes, as Bush lawyers claimed. And he said that waterboarding — a technique that induces the sensation of drowning, and that the Bush administration said was lawful — is torture.

Mr. Craig noted that while Mr. Obama decided “not to change the status quo immediately,” he created a task force to study “rendition policy and what makes sense consistent with our obligation to protect the country.”

He urged patience as the administration reviewed the programs it inherited from Mr. Bush. That process began after the election, Mr. Craig said, when military and C.I.A. leaders flew to Chicago for a lengthy briefing of Mr. Obama and his national security advisers. Mr. Obama then sent his advisers to C.I.A. headquarters to “find out the best case for continuing the practices that had been employed during the Bush administration.”

Civil liberties groups praise Mr. Obama’s early executive orders on national security...Mr. Holder has also begun a review of every open Bush-era case involving state secrets... “Every president in my lifetime has invoked the state-secrets privilege,” Mr. Craig said. “The notion that invoking it in that case somehow means we are signing onto the Bush approach to the world is just an erroneous assumption.”

[soryang]

18. Holder is pushing state secrets beyond a John Yoo wet dream

Just read the line of cases where he is following a scorched earth policy with Judge Vaughn Walker in Re: NSA Communications Records Litigation.

[90-percent]

2. Don't single out Barack

If these criminals aren't held to account in a court of law for their crimes, then;

"We're all torturers now!"*

I'm an American that is proud my tax dollars go to extraordinary renditions, kidnappings, torturing people to death, stripping other humans of all basic humans rights, and all the other stuff usually reserved for totalitarian third world dictator/sadists.

All 300,000,000 of us are part of this legacy of torture, now!

Thank you, Barack!

-90% jimmy

* paraphrasing Chris Matthews 2003 War Run Up. "We're all Neocons now!"

[pat_k]

17. "America is a nation of laws--laws enforced by Spain" -- Priceless! n/t