"So much for the Constitution..."

[FourScore]

This article sums it all up...This article is so well written, I wish I could post the whole thing!

The torture memos
By Eric Mink
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
04/09/2008

"Just when I thought I was out . . . they pull me back in."

— Michael Corleone, "The Godfather Part III"



I'd have been happy to never write another column about torture, either because our country's leaders truly had repudiated it or because the U.S. officials who embraced the concept and rationalized its use were doing hard time for war crimes.

But on April Fool's Day last week, the release of a previously classified Justice Department legal memo offered yet more evidence of how the Bush administration has gone about perverting the law to allow, in this latest example, military interrogators to torture and abuse prisoners. The March 14, 2003, document also included ways for interrogators and their superiors in the chain of command to escape legal responsibility for such conduct, assuming anyone ever had the nerve to try to hold them accountable.
Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.

In many ways, not surprisingly, the newly surfaced memo from 2003 echoes the infamous torture memo of Aug. 1, 2002. Both memos addressed the interrogation of prisoners, although the 2003 document was limited to military interrogators. Although the older document carried the signature of assistant attorney general Jay Bybee, both were written by John Yoo, an assistant to Bybee in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. Yoo had help from David Addington, who then was Vice President Dick Cheney's counsel, fixer and enforcer and now is Cheney's chief of staff (and still fixer and enforcer).

In their appalling essence, both memos claim that the law says the president is above the law when he says he's acting as commander in chief of the armed forces. Thus, U.S. criminal statutes addressing everything from war crimes to assault are null and void if the president says so. Treaties signed by U.S. presidents and ratified by U.S. congresses are suspended or canceled if the president says so. And anything may be done to prisoners that the president authorizes: If the president says we're at war and if he says it's OK, it can't be illegal.

But just in case some future prosecutor doesn't get the message, both memos provided excuses for interrogators and their military and civilian superiors. These amount to variations of "I was just following orders," self-defense (of the nation) or necessity (to prevent a greater evil).

In both memos, Yoo twisted the English language to produce a definition of torture so limited that interrogators would be able to do almost anything and not have to call it torture. This proved so abhorrent that both memos eventually were discredited, withdrawn and superceded. The 2002 memo, however, was in force for more than a year; the other for some nine months.

It's also worth noting that since those memos were withdrawn and superceded, new senior lawyers in the OLC produced at least two more memos addressing the treatment and interrogation of prisoners. Those legal opinions have yet to see the light of day.

Another disturbing detail lurking in the tiny print of the memo released last week is Footnote 10 on page 8: ". . . our Office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment has no application to domestic military operations" (italics in original). It then refers to an earlier legal opinion titled "Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States."

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the security of people "in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures." To make a search or seizure reasonable generally requires the government to persuade a judge that there are very good reasons to issue a warrant allowing it.

Yet this footnote refers to a specific legal opinion produced by and for the Bush administration that claims to override the Constitution itself.

This takes us, of course, to the electronic spying programs being conducted in America by the Pentagon's National Security Agency — and perhaps other arms of the government — without the warrants required by the Fourth Amendment.

Almost everything the Bush administration has claimed about these programs has proved untrue. They began, for example, before 9/11, not after, according to stories in National Journal and The New York Times. Last month, reporting in The Wall Street Journal confirmed that the spying has involved not just phone calls and e-mails between the United States and countries abroad but also communications and data records confined entirely to this country. Nor has the mission been limited to gathering intelligence related to terrorism; it has included routine law enforcement investigations as well.

So much for the Constitution...

MORE:

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/columnists.nsf/ericmink/story/C4B83BE4E4401B6486257425007FF3CB?OpenDocument

[FourScore]

1. kick

[electropop]

2. I was talking with co-workers just now, both from other countries,

countries snotty Americans might call "3rd world." Both are about ready to go home, because this country is so backward. America: It's the new Third World.

[samsingh]

3. it was shredded when bush stole 2000