Proof that Michael Hayden and Michael Mukasey are depraved: condoning torture

[ProSense]

The President Ties His Own Hands on Terror

The point of interrogation is intelligence, not confession

By MICHAEL HAYDEN and MICHAEL B. MUKASEY

The Obama administration has declassified and released opinions of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) given in 2005 and earlier that analyze the legality of interrogation techniques authorized for use by the CIA. Those techniques were applied only when expressly permitted by the director, and are described in these opinions in detail, along with their limits and the safeguards applied to them.

The release of these opinions was unnecessary as a legal matter, and is unsound as a matter of policy. Its effect will be to invite the kind of institutional timidity and fear of recrimination that weakened intelligence gathering in the past, and that we came sorely to regret on Sept. 11, 2001.

<...>

Soon after he was sworn in, President Barack Obama signed an executive order that suspended use of these techniques and confined not only the military but all U.S. agencies -- including the CIA -- to the interrogation limits set in the Army Field Manual. This suspension was accompanied by a commitment to further study the interrogation program, and government personnel were cautioned that they could no longer rely on earlier opinions of the OLC.

<...>

The techniques themselves were used selectively against only a small number of hard-core prisoners who successfully resisted other forms of interrogation, and then only with the explicit authorization of the director of the CIA. Of the thousands of unlawful combatants captured by the U.S., fewer than 100 were detained and questioned in the CIA program. Of those, fewer than one-third were subjected to any of the techniques discussed in these opinions. As already disclosed by Director Hayden, as late as 2006, even with the growing success of other intelligence tools, fully half of the government's knowledge about the structure and activities of al Qaeda came from those interrogations.

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[atreides1]

1. And guess what?

Mukasey now sits on the Council of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, talk about irony.

Both of these useless fucks are only trying to cover their own asses, especially now that it's common knowledge that both condone the use of torture as an intelligence gathering tool.

[Supersedeas]

3. Mukasey made his position clear, by withholding the DOJ report, and this statement:

“Today, many of the senior government lawyers who provided legal advice supporting the nation’s most important counterterrorism policies have been subjected to relentless public criticism. In some corners, one even hears suggestions—suggestions that are made in a manner that is almost breathtakingly casual—that some of these lawyers should be subject to civil or criminal liability for the advice they gave. The rhetoric of these discussions is hostile and unforgiving.

“The difficulty and novelty of the legal questions these lawyers confronted is scarcely mentioned; indeed, the vast majority of the criticism is unaccompanied by any serious legal analysis. In addition, it is rarely acknowledged that those public servants were often working in an atmosphere of almost unimaginable pressure, without the academic luxury of endless time for debate. Equally ignored is the fact that, by all accounts I have seen or heard, including but not limited to Jack Goldsmith’s book , those lawyers reached their conclusions in good faith based upon their best judgments of what the law required.”

See:
http://www.newsreview.com/reno/content?oid=925298

Mukasey makes this prenounciation by avoiding the strong and documented opposition to the Memos by the Pentagon. From the link above and recall the testimony to Congress from Military Lawyers earlier this year.

The memo enraged Pentagon officials—who felt it would sanction the same kind of abuse of U.S. military servicemembers—and (after it became publicly known) embarrassed leaders of the legal community.

[Supersedeas]

2. consider too Mukasey's withholding a report into the legal collusion of OLC lawyers:

http://www.pubrecord.org/torture/687-doj-report-on-yoobybee-torture-memos-damning.html

[saiyanppl]

4. they are sick

[LynnTheDem]

5. "We only tortured a "small number" of people, so that's ok!1!"

No, actually, it isn't ok. It puts the USA on the very same level as the nation of Saddam Hussein, of Pinochet...and every other nation whose leader authorized torture.


Period.

[Spazito]

6. Wow, these two, among others I am sure, really don't "get" it....

They, in their delusion, still believe they have credibility with the American public, that the public will still buy into the same old rhetoric of "we did this to keep you safe" fear mongering.

This also smells of desperation, imo, the kind of desperation that takes place when one feels their own arse threatened with possible prosecution.

These two freaks came into the Admin after the fact so can't be held responsible in the way Gonzales et al can, and I believe, will be but they CAN be held responsible for allowing it to continue when it was in their purview to stop it.