John Yoo, Child Testicle Crusher, Ordered to Testify in Court

John Yoo, who has written legal memo stating it is legal for the president crush a child's testicles, has been ordered to testify in court regarding torture and the Jose Padilla case.

From Andrew Sullivan (via the NY Times)...

Encouraging news - and just as encouraging, the NYT's linguistic shift:

A federal judge has ruled that John Yoo, a former Bush administration lawyer who wrote crucial memorandums justifying harsh interrogation techniques, will have to answer in court to accusations that his work led to a prisoner’s being tortured and deprived of his constitutional rights.

The Bush Mob Keeps Pulling Obama Back In

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Frank Rich's column in the New York Times this morning is a must read.

To paraphrase Al Pacino in "Godfather III," just when we thought we were out, the Bush mob keeps pulling us back in. And will keep doing so. No matter how hard President Obama tries to turn the page on the previous administration, he can’t. Until there is true transparency and true accountability, revelations of that unresolved eight-year nightmare will keep raining down drip by drip, disrupting the new administration’s high ambitions. ...

There are many dots yet to be connected, and not just on torture. This Sunday, GQ magazine is posting on its Web site an article adding new details to the ample dossier on how Donald Rumsfeld’s corrupt and incompetent Defense Department cost American lives and compromised national security. ...

[Robert] Draper reports that Rumsfeld’s monomaniacal determination to protect his Pentagon turf led him to hobble and antagonize America’s most willing allies in Iraq, Britain and Australia, and even to undermine his own soldiers. But Draper’s biggest find is a collection of daily cover sheets that Rumsfeld approved for the Secretary of Defense Worldwide Intelligence Update, a highly classified digest prepared for a tiny audience, including the president, and often delivered by hand to the White House by the defense secretary himself. These cover sheets greeted Bush each day with triumphal color photos of the war headlined by biblical quotations. GQ is posting 11 of them, and they are seriously creepy. ...

I’m not a fan of Washington’s blue-ribbon commissions, where political compromises can trump the truth. But the 9/11 investigation did illuminate how, a month after Bush received an intelligence brief titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.," 3,000 Americans were slaughtered on his and Cheney’s watch. If the Obama administration really wants to move on from the dark Bush era, it will need a new commission, backed up by serious law enforcement, to shed light on where every body is buried.

Rice Questioned About Torture...by a 4th Grader

Condoleeza Rice visited an elementary school Washington DC last week, where she was asked a tough question about torture by a 4th grade student.

Then Misha Lerner, a student from Bethesda, asked: What did Rice think about the things President Obama's administration was saying about the methods the Bush administration had used to get information from detainees?

Rice took the question in stride. saying that she was reluctant to criticize Obama, then getting to the heart of the matter.

"Let me just say that President Bush was very clear that he wanted to do everything he could to protect the country. After September 11, we wanted to protect the country," she said. "But he was also very clear that we would do nothing, nothing, that was against the law or against our obligations internationally. So the president was only willing to authorize policies that were legal in order to protect the country."

She added: "I hope you understand that it was a very difficult time. We were all so terrified of another attack on the country. September 11 was the worst day of my life in government, watching 3,000 Americans die. . . . Even under those most difficult circumstances, the president was not prepared to do something illegal, and I hope people understand that we were trying to protect the country."

Related articles by Zemanta

• 4th Grader Asks Condoleezza Rice About Torture (oliverwillis.com)
• 4th grader presses Rice on waterboarding. (thinkprogress.org)

Enhanced Interrogation Techniques?

Andrew Sullivan poses an interesting about torture...

One way to look at how the Bush administration redefined torture out of existence, so that it could, er, torture human beings, is to compare their criteria for "enhanced interrogation" with those for rape. Raping someone need not leave any long-term physical scars; it certainly doesn't permanently impair any bodily organ; it has no uniquely graphic dimensions - the comic book pulling-fingernail scenarios the know-nothings in the Bush administration viewed as torture; and although it's cruel, it's hardly unusual. It happens all the time in regular prisons, although usually by other inmates as opposed to guards. It barely differs from the sexual abuse, forced nudity and psychological warfare inflicted on prisoners by Bush-Cheney in explicit terms.

Recall that smearing fake sexual blood on the faces of victims was regarded as brilliant interrogation by the Bushies in Gitmo - and its psychological effects were supposed to be heightened by Muslim sexual sensibilities. And male rape would be particularly effective in destroying male Muslim self-worth and psychological integrity. Rape almost perfectly fits, in other words, every criterion the Bush administration used to define "enhanced interrogation."

So ask yourself: if Abu Zubaydah had been raped 83 times, would we be talking about no legal consequences for his rapist - or the people who monitored and authorized the rape?

Why Torture Matters?

From a July 2002 memo from the military's Joint Personnel Recovery Agency...

The unintended consequence of a U.S. policy that provides for the torture of prisoners is that it could be used by our adversaries as justification for the torture of captured U.S. personnel.

Presidential Dictatorship

Earlier this week the Office of Legal Council released memos outlining policies from the Bush administration.

From Marc Ambinder...

On Monday, the Obama administration released nine previously secret legal opinions crafted by the Office of Legal Counsel to enhance the presidential powers of George W. Bush. The legal memos represent the most comprehensive demonstration yet of the sweeping definition of presidential power approved by Bush administration lawyers in the months after 9/11. They also lend added urgency to Wednesday's Senate hearing on the possible formation of a truth commission to investigate potential abuses of power in the Bush White House.

Scott Horton of Harper's writes...

It’s pretty clear that it served several purposes. Clearly it was designed to authorize sweeping warrantless surveillance by military agencies such as the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency. Using special new surveillance programs that required the collaboration of telecommunications and Internet service providers, these agencies were sweeping through the emails, IMs, faxes, and phone calls of tens of millions of Americans. Clearly such unlawful surveillance occurred. But the language of the memos suggest that much more was afoot, including the deployment of military units and military police powers on American soil. These memos suggest that John Yoo found a way to treat the Posse Comitatus Act as suspended.

These memos gave the President the ability to authorize the torture of persons held at secret overseas sites. And they dealt in great detail with the plight of Jose Padilla, an American citizen seized at O’Hare Airport. Padilla was accused of being involved in a plot to make and detonate a “dirty bomb,” but at trial it turned out that the Bush Administration had no evidence to stand behind its sensational accusations.

It is Horton's conlcusion that is most shocking...

We may not have realized it at the time, but in the period from late 2001-January 19, 2009, this country was a dictatorship. The constitutional rights we learned about in high school civics were suspended. That was thanks to secret memos crafted deep inside the Justice Department that effectively trashed the Constitution. What we know now is likely the least of it.

From Andrew Sullivan...

Jack Balkin sums up the legal and constitutional view that prevailed from 2001 to 2009:

The President, because he is President, may do whatever he thinks is necessary, even in the domestic context, if he acts for military and national security reasons in his capacity as Commander in Chief. This theory of presidential power argues, in essence, that when the President acts in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief, he may make his own rules and cannot be bound by Congressional laws to the contrary. This is a theory of presidential dictatorship.

These views are outrageous and inconsistent with basic principles of the Constitution as well as with two centuries of legal precedents.

Investigate. Expose. Prosecute.

U.S. Bound by Law to Prosecutre Torture Violations

Glenn Greenwald wrote last week that the U.S. is bound by law to prosecute torture violations...

The U.S. really has bound itself to a treaty called the Convention Against Torture, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1988 and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1994. When there are credible allegations that government officials have participated or been complicit in torture, that Convention really does compel all signatories -- in language as clear as can be devised -- to "submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution" (Art. 7(1)). And the treaty explicitly bars the standard excuses that America's political class is currently offering for refusing to investigate and prosecute: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture" and "an order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture" (Art. 2 (2-3)). By definition, then, the far less compelling excuses cited by Conason (a criminal probe would undermine bipartisanship and distract us from more important matters) are plainly barred as grounds for evading the Convention's obligations.

Greenwald responds to people who say prosecuting torture violations is too politically charged...

And yet those who advocate that we refrain from criminal investigations rarely even mention our obligations under the Convention. There isn't even a pretense of an effort to reconcile what they're advocating with the treaty obligations to which Ronald Reagan bound the U.S. in 1988. Do we now just explicitly consider ourselves immune from the treaties we signed? Does our political class now officially (rather than through its actions) consider treaties to be mere suggestions that we can violate at will without even pretending to have any justifications for doing so? Most of the time, our binding treaty obligations under the Convention -- as valid and binding as every other treaty -- don't even make it into the discussion about criminal investigations of Bush officials, let alone impose any limits on what we believe we can do.

The theory of Unitary Executive and Yoo

John Yoo, the lawyer who wrote the 2003 memo authorizing torture by the United States. is speaking today at the University of Iowa to faculty of the College of Law. However, torture is just the tip of the ice berg. Yoo believes in a radical legal theory on presidential power called

Yoo was working as the deputy assisatant general in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in 2001. After the 9/11 attacks, Yoo published a memo that said the president's power is unlimited on matters related to terrorism and national security.

From How Would a Patriot Act by Glenn Greenwald (page 40)...

The bulk of the memo was devoted to an analysis of the president's powers to direct the movement of the armed forces as part of foreign wars. But Yoo contended that the president's powers were not confined only to the battlefields or wars; he emphatically argued that the president has the power to make any decisions with regard to all matters relating to defense of the country and that neither Congress, nor the courts, nor any longstanding laws can restrict or limit those decisions in any way.

Out of this theory of Unitary executive, came the disregard of the FISA law and domestic wiretapping, ignoring the Geneva Conventions and torture, and holding prisoners in legal limbo without a trial.

This should concern every American, regardless of political leanings. Now that there is a Democrat in the oval office, Yoo's radical theory is precedent.

U of Iowa Explains Yoo's Speech

The Dean of the University of Iowa College of Law sent an email out today explaining John Yoo's speech at the University on Thursday.

Dear Members of the College of Law community: Every year, the University of Iowa College of Law faculty speakers committee assembles a robust schedule of speakers to make presentations to our faculty. These presentations are for the purposes of peer-review of a scholar¹s ongoing research and are presented in faculty-only workshops that are informal and unstructured. This academic year we will be hosting 21 such presentations with presenters from such institutions as Harvard, Pennsylvania, Northwestern, and York University of Canada discussing a broad range of topics.

Our presenters also include University of Iowa law faculty members, practicing attorneys, a United States District Court Judge and a general counsel for the Department of Health and Human Services.

The complete list can be found at http://www.law.uiowa.edu/news-events/schedule2009.php.

As the schedule shows, the college invites a mix of College of Law faculty and faculty from across the country to encourage a rich and lively debate. We seek a broad range of ideological viewpoints in presenters, with the understanding that some of them might be controversial.

Such is the case with Professor John Yoo. While many people disagree with the legal views he advanced as an advisor to President George W. Bush, the College of Law is nevertheless pleased to host such a distinguished presenter. The College of Law respects the right to voice disagreement and expects that some protestors might visit while Professor Yoo is present. The College and University will take appropriate steps to ensure that the rights of all will be respected.

Professor Yoo, who teaches at the University of California Berkeley, was first scheduled to be a part of our speakers series in 2006, but his appearance had to be cancelled. He was again invited in fall of 2007 to participate in this series this week. The paper he will be presenting is entitled Globalization and Structure. As with other presenters in this series from outside the University of Iowa College of Law, Professor Yoo will be reimbursed for his travel expenses and will receive an honorarium of $250 from funds set aside for this series by the Iowa Law School Foundation. No public or tuition money will be used.

Carolyn Jones
Dean
University of Iowa College of Law

Carin Crain
Associate Dean for Student Affairs
University of Iowa College of Law

John Yoo Speaking at U of Iowa on Thursday

John Yoo, the lawyer who wrote the 2003 memo authorizing torture by the United States, is speaking at the University of Iowa on Thursday.

The speech will be held at the Boyd Law Building at 11:30 on Thursday and is private gathering with Yoo and UI Law faculty. There has been no disclosure by the University on the how much Yoo is being paid to speak.

The memo written by Yoo narrowly defined torture to only include pain inflicted that could cause serious injury or death. That means waterboarding, long-term stress positions, denial of sleep, slipping needles underneath fingernails, electric shocks, and more don't count as torture.

Yoo even claimed it is legal to crush a child's testicles if the President thinks he needs to do that.

The Argument to Leave Guantanamo Open

Matthew Yglesisas outlines the arguments made to keep Guantanamo open...

The basic conservative position, as I understand it, is that the very same federal officials who can’t be trusted to prevent a breakout from a military prison in Kansas can be trusted to administer a system of indefinite detention and kangaroo courts fairly. Other arguments I’ve heard people make, apparently with a straight face:

• The fact that the Bush administration has let dangerous terrorists go free means Obama should keep innocent people detained.
• The fact that the Bush administration screwed up the paperwork on detainees shows that there was more wisdom to Bush’s policies than Obama acknowledged on the campaign trail.
• Obama’s promise of change was empty and hypocritical because it will take time to implement his executive orders.
• The “Guantanamo” issue is primarily about the physical location of the facility rather than the legal status or treatment of the detainees.
• Since many liberals live in San Francisco, anyone who thinks it would be ill-advised to transfer prisoners to a museum in the San Francisco Bay that hasn’t been a prison for decades is a hypocrite.

There’s some really out of this world stuff.

Feingold on Obama's Executive Order to Close Guantanamo and Ban Torture

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) has been an outspoken critic of the abuses of the law by the Bush administration. Yesterday, Feingold wrote at the Huffington Post about Barack Obama's executive order to close Guantanamo and ban torture...

Just hours after his historic inauguration, President Obama has made history again, by signing executive orders that undo, with the stroke of a pen, some of the Bush Administration's worst mistakes. President Obama is off to a great start on restoring the rule of law, and he's giving the country the fresh start we desperately need after the last eight years.

President Obama has rejected the policies of the last administration, both in his words and in his actions. In short order, he has signed orders to close Guantanamo, suspend the military commission system, subject all interrogations to the guidelines in the Army Field Manual, end long-term CIA detentions, require humane treatment of detainees consistent with the Geneva Conventions, and guarantee the International Committee of the Red Cross access to all prisoners held by the U.S. government, and announced a return to the presumption of FOIA disclosure under the Clinton administration. That is a breathtaking list, and the beginning of change that is long overdue.

The new President's quick actions to end both excessive secrecy and flawed detention and interrogation policies are very encouraging. I have long opposed the Bush administration's policies in these areas. As chair of the Senate's Constitution Subcommittee, I held a hearing shining a light on the secret laws that last administration created - keeping OLC opinions under lock and key, for instance - and called for a major overhaul of these policies. I also held a hearing in September 2008 on restoring the rule of law, at which John Podesta and others testified about what changes should be made by a new administration. In December, I wrote then President-elect Obama urging him to take these and other vital steps to restore the rule of law. I applaud his quick action on these issues. It's a great sign of his commitment to working on the other issues that still need to be addressed, from the separation of powers to domestic surveillance and privacy.

Guantanamo Going Out of Business

Obama is keeping his campaign promise to shut down the military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

From Political Wire...

An executive order to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay is expected during President Obama's first week on the job -- and possibly on his first day, the AP reports.

"Obama's order will direct his administration to figure out what to do with the estimated 250 al-Qaida and Taliban suspects and potential witnesses who are being held at Guantanamo."

America is a Liberal Country

Now that the Republican convention is over it is worth noting that Americans hold liberal positions on a wide variety of issues.

A recent Gallup poll shows...

Americans are pro-choice (67 percent)

Americans support the Geneva Conventions with regards to torture (57 percent)

Americans don't want the government snooping in their bank and internet records (67 percent)

Americans support protecting the environment at the expense of economic growth (55 percent)

Americans believe that global warming is happening (86 percent)

Americans believe that it's the government's responsibility to provide health care (69 percent)

Americans support the decriminalization of marijuana (55 percent) and support the legalization of medical marijuana (78 percent)

Americans are opposed to attacking Iran (68 percent, according to a CNN Poll)

Americans support labor unions (60 percent)

Americans want government funding of embryonic stem cell research (56 percent)

Americans believe rich people and corporations aren't paying enough taxes (66 and 71 percent respectively)

Jane Mayer Author of "The Dark Side" on Letterman

More on the Red Cross Saying Bush Committed War Crimes

A follow up from my post yesterday...



Crooks and Liars make an excellent point that this isn't some partisan smear job by some crazy leftist group, this is the Red Cross that is saying our president committed war crimes.

It’s something that has certainly been spoken of within the liberal blogosphere. I’ve seen the random bumpersticker or freeway blogger suggest it as well, but it is no longer something that can be written off as a partisan or extremist view. As Countdown guest host Rachel Maddow and George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley discuss on Friday, the International Committee of the Red Cross sent a report last year to the CIA saying that the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo was unquestionably torture and the Bush administration officials that approved the treatment are war criminals.

Torture is a War Crime

According to the Red Cross that makes Bush a war criminal.

From Andrew Sullivan...

"Categorically" Torture

That's the Red Cross' analysis of what Bush and Cheney sanctioned in Gitmo, according to Jane Mayer's new book. I've read some summaries of the book's key points but haven't gotten a hold of the galleys yet. But suffice to say: it's as bad as we feared:

The book says Abu Zubaydah told the Red Cross that he had been waterboarded at least 10 times in a single week and as many as three times in a day.

The book also reports that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, told the Red Cross that he had been kept naked for more than a month and claimed that he had been “kept alternately in suffocating heat and in a painfully cold room.”

The report says the prisoners considered the “most excruciating” of the methods being shackled to the ceiling and being forced to stand for as long as eight hours. Eleven of the 14 prisoners reported prolonged sleep deprivation, the book says, including “bright lights and eardrum-shattering sounds 24 hours a day.”

This is what we know from the history of torture. Some of the least superficially awful techniques - such as the Gestapo-perfected "stress positions" and "hypothermia" - can actually be the worst in terms of suffering. There is no doubt at this point that the president of the United States is a war criminal. The only question is whether he will ever be brought to justice.

Guilty of War Crimes

Olbermann on reports that top level officials including Cheney, Ashcroft, Rice, and Tenet approved "enhanced interrogation techniques."



More from the Washington Post...

President Bush says he was aware that his top aides met in the White House basement to micromanage the application of waterboarding and other widely-condemned interrogation techniques. And he says it was no big deal.

"I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved," Bush told ABC News' Martha Raddatz on Friday. "I don't know what's new about that; I'm not so sure what's so startling about that."

Only the fact that torture is against the law.

If you consider what the government did to be torture, which is a crime according to U.S. and international law, Bush's statement shifts his role from being an accessory after the fact to being part of a conspiracy to commit.

It's Legal for the President to Crush Your Child's Testicles, Seriously It Is

Last week, John Yoo's 2003 torture memo was released by the Justice Department. The memo was written to justify the President's power to torture without regard to any laws or treaties and has been the Bush administration's policy ever since.

In this clip, Yoo says that it is legal to crush your child's testicles if the President thinks he needs to do that.



Glenn Greenwald has more on the Yoo memo.

Not-so-Good Company

From Andrew Sullivan...

George W. Bush vetoes a bill in order to keep using torture techniques perfected by the Nazis and deployed by the Khmer Rouge.