Top Bush Official Admits "We Tortured Qahtani"

"We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani".... His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case [for prosecution]."

In a bombshell admission on the eve of the Senate hearings on Obama Attorney General nominee, Eric Holder, the Washington Post reports (in an article by Bob Woodward) that Susan Crawford, the convening authority of military commissions at Guantanamo since February 2007, investigated and determined that U.S. forces there tortured al-Qahtani during his imprisonment. The techniques included isolation, sleep deprivation, forced nudity, use of "working dogs", and prolonged exposure to cold, among other torture techniques.

Crawford, 61, said the combination of the interrogation techniques, their duration and the impact on Qahtani's health led to her conclusion. "The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. . . . You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive. It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge" to call it torture, she said....

"I think the buck stops in the Oval Office."

Crawford also says not everyone at Guantanamo was tortured, but admits that its difficult for anyone to believe the government at this point. She lays the blame for the abuse at the feet of Rumsfeld and Bush.

Al-Qahtani became practically a household name when it was revealed that he was Detainee #063. Logs of the torture sessions were published in Time Magazine. Steven Miles wrote up al-Qahtani's case in the American Journal of Bioethics. Miles has meticulously documented the participation of doctors and other medical personnel, particularly psychologists, in the U.S. torture program. Al-Qahtani's case was a horrific exemplar of that dangerous collaboration:

In October 2002, before the time covered by the log, Army investigators found that dogs were brought to the interrogation room to growl, bark and bare their teeth at al-Qahtani. The investigators noted that a BSCT psychologist witnessed the use of the dog, Zeus, during at least one such instance, an incident deemed properly authorized to “exploit individual phobias"....

Major L. [John Leso], a psychologist who chaired the BSCT at Guantanamo, was noted to be present at the start of the interrogation log. On November 27, he suggested putting the prisoner in a swivel chair to prevent him from fixing his eyes on one spot and thereby avoiding the guards....

Many psychological “approaches” or “themes” were repetitively used. These included: “Failure/Worthless,” “Al Qaeda Falling Apart,” “Pride Down,” “Ego Down,” “Futility,” “Guilt/Sin Theme... Al-Qahtani was shown videotapes entitled “Taliban Bodies” and “Die Terrorist Die.” Some scripts aimed at his Islamic identity bore names such as “Good Muslim,” “Bad Muslim,” “Judgment Day,” “God’s Mission” and “Muslim in America"....

Although continuously monitored, interrogators repeatedly strip-searched him as a “control measure.” On at least one occasion, he was forced to stand naked with women soldiers present. Female interrogators seductively touched the prisoner under the authorized use of approaches called “Invasion of Personal Space” and “Futility"....

Some psychological routines referred to the 9/11 attacks. He was shown pictures of the attacks, and photographs of victims were affixed to his body. The interrogators held one exorcism (and threatened another) to purge evil Jinns that the disoriented, sleep deprived prisoner claimed were controlling his emotions.

As the inside word is that Obama will order Guantanamo closed, and all abusive interrogation techniques be ended, with interrogations limited only to those techniques specified in the Army Field Manual, officials associated with the Bush torture regime, both innocent and guilty (we cannot know right away who is who) are scampering for legal and moral cover.

Of course, limiting interrogation techniques to the Army's interrogation field manual leaves an open door for more abusive interrogation, as it allows the use of isolation, sleep deprivation, fear, sensory deprivation, and other techniques on those designated "unlawful enemy combatants." The U.S. may close Guantanamo, but what about the thousands of other prisoners held by the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan, prison ships, and CIA secret prisons? What will happen to them, if the AFM still allows some abusive techniques?

Much that Bush and Cheney have done has ended in failure. Guantanamo will close. The military commissions are a dead issue (for now). But not all they have done has been disassembled, and there will be much pressure on Obama to let some of the apparatus off the hook.

Right now, the biggest push among progressives, and with much popular support among the citizenry, is for investigations and prosecutions of the war criminals who are now leaving the White House. These should be supported with all our efforts. Bush and Cheney have both recently admitted to ordering torture.

Buhdydharma at Docudharma wrote the following today:

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers has just released a 487 page report (NOTE: pdf file) whose table of contents clearly spells out what must be on AG Holders agenda in both reforming the DOJ and to effectively "reclaim America's standing in the world as a nation that cherishes and protects individual freedom and basic human rights.":

Hiring and Firing of U.S. Attorneys and other Department Personnel
Selective Prosecution
Politicization of the Prosecution Function
Politicization of the Civil Rights Division and Voting Rights Enforcement
Detention
Enhanced Interrogation
Ghosting and Black Sites
Extraordinary Rendition
Warrantless Domestic Surveillance
National Security Letters (NSLs) and Exigent Letters
Use of Signing Statements
Midnight Rulemaking
The Leak of Valerie Plame Wilson's Covert CIA Identity
Improper Use of State Secrets and Other Authorities
Manipulation and Misuse of Intelligence

There is far more than probable cause to prosecute major figures of the Bush Administration, the Pentagon, and the CIA (and possibly DIA) for crimes against humanity, such as starting an aggressive war, and implementation of torture and abusive, inhumane treatment of prisoners. There is ample legal precedent to charge these individuals. If we do not do it, it should be undertaken by another willing nation.

A huge political battle will be waged over these issues in the next weeks and months. All progressives and anti-torture advocates should be ready to counter moves from the entrenched opposition centered in sections of the Pentagon and the CIA.

In the meantime, Susan Crawford has just thrown a dangerous projectile into the ranks of these criminals, and it's all the more satisfying as it comes from their own ranks. We should not expect too many more such "betrayals." The greatest danger will be thinking the closure of Guantanamo will really end things. It will only be one battle won. There will be more losses and victories before we see the end.

Update: The following was spurred by a comment by Nightprowlkitty in the comments to the Daily Kos crossposting to this article:

Torture is never legal. It is a jus cogens, a norm from which no derogation is permitted. Really these people are outside the pale, outside the law. Only the law can handle it though. But the sentences, if convicted, can be tough. Scott Horton reminded us the other day that the execution of Charles I of England, over 400 years ago, was for torture:

The charge, repeated the prosecutor, was that the executive had violated the laws of nations in that he authorized or indulged the torture and brutal mistreatment of prisoners taken in wartime. The commissioners deliberated and rendered their verdict: The charge against the defendant was sustained, the defendant was guilty as charged. And then the punishment was fixed. How does one punish an executive for violation of the laws of nations by authorizing the torture of prisoners? The verdict was that he be taken to a place of execution, where his head was to be severed from his body by an axe.

In today's column, Horton said this about Crawford's admission:

This admission is important for several reasons. First, it is an acknowledgement of criminal conduct by the administration by one of its own team. Second, Crawford very properly abandons the absurd legalisms of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel which essentially boil down to “if the president authorizes it, that means it’s legal.” Third, she has apparently evaluated “torture” on the basis of the totality of the treatment meted out by interrogators and jailers to the prisoner, not by segmenting and evaluating each individual technique applied. That is what the law requires, and what the Justice Department studiously ignores, fully aware of the inevitable conclusion to which it would lead. It adds up to another admission of high crimes. The case for criminal accountability continues to build.

More Calls for Prosecutions Over Administration Torture & War Crimes

David Swanson has an article up at Daily Kos. It summarizes the a report released by the "Steering Committee of the Justice Robert H. Jackson Conference On Planning For The Prosecution of High Level American War Criminals." The report names 30 Bush Administration officials involved in authorizing or engaging in torture, seeking to cover it up, Furthermore, according to Lawrence Velvel, chairman of the Steering Committee:

"Far from American officials and lawyers authorizing or engaging in torture because it was lawful, they authorized and engaged in it because they wanted to (and) kept their actions secret from interested officials for as long as they could lest there be strong opposition to the torture and abuse they were perpetrating," Velvel said. "They deliberately ignored repeated warnings that the torture and abuse were illegal and could lead to prosecutions, and they ignored these warnings even when they came from high level civilian and military officers"....

Bush officials were involved in shaping or carrying out torture policies despite written and/or verbal warnings given by high government officials in the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and other agencies. Among these objectors were:

# William Howard Taft IV, the Legal Advisor to the State Department whose 40-page memo of January 11, 2002 warned Bush’s claim the Geneva Conventions were not applicable to prisoners held by the U.S. could subject Bush to prosecution for war crimes. State Department lawyer David Bowker further warned "there is no such thing" as a person that is not covered by the Geneva Conventions. # The Defense Department’s own Criminal Investigative Task Force headed by Col. Brittain Mallow warned Haynes that tactics used at Guantanamo could be illegal. His warning were ignored by Haynes, whose position was based on statements of Yoo and Chertoff. # FBI Director Robert Mueller barred FBI agents from participating in coercive CIA interrogations, "a warning-fact well known to many in the Executive," the Steering Committee Report said. Also, Marion Bowman, head of the FBI’s national security law section in Washington called lawyers in Jim Haynes’ office in the Pentagon to express his concern but said he never heard back. # David Brant, head of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service learned about the torture and abuse at Guantanamo and took the position that "it just ain’t right" and expressed his concern to Army officials in command authority over military interrogators at Guantanamo but "they did not care," the Report said. # A senior CIA intelligence analyst that visited Guantanamo in 2002 reported back that the U.S. was committing war crimes there and that one-third of the detainees had no connection to terrorism. The report alarmed Rice’s lawyer John Bellinger and National Security Council terrorism expert General John Gordon but their concerns were "flatly rejected and ignored" by Addington, Flanigan and Gonzales, as well as by Rumsfeld’s office. # Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora carried his concern over Guantanamo torture to Haynes and to Mary Walker, head of a Pentagon working group that was drafting a DOD memo based on Yoo’s work that authorized torture. Mora said what was occurring at Guantanamo was "at a minimum cruel and unusual treatment, and, at worst, torture." His warning was ignored.

Administration officials named include:

Vice President Dick Cheney and his former chief of staff and legal counsel David Addington, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and her predecessor Colin Powell, former Attorneys-General John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and his aide Alice Fisher, former deputy assistant Attorney General; and Tim Flanigan, a deputy White House attorney.

Also named are "Scooter" Libby, Douglas Feith, Stephen Cambone, former CIA Director George Tenet, Cofer Black, former Assistant Attorneys General Jay Bybee and John Yoo, Defense Department chief legal officer Jim Haynes, and General Michael Dunlavey, and Major General Geoffrey Miller, the former commander of Guantanamo prison, among others.

Besides Swanson and Vevel, members of the Steering Committee include President of the National Lawyers Guild, Marjorie Cohn, writer Elaine Scarry, Peter Weiss, the vice president of the Center For Constitutional Rights, and University of Toledo law professor Ben Davis, among others.

Meanwhile, up on Capitol Hill, Congressman Jerrold Nadler (Dem.-NY-08), Chair of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, has reintroduced a resolution in the House of Representative that calls for that body to demand that President Bush render no pre-emptive pardons of Administration officials prior to leaving office.

Even more, the resolution would put the House on record as calling for formal investigation and possible prosecution of Bush administration law-breakers:

(4) it is the sense of the House of Representatives that a special investigative commission, or a Select Committee be tasked with investigating possible illegal activities by senior officials of the administration of President George W. Bush, including, if necessary, any abuse of the President’s pardon power; and

(5) the next Attorney General of the United States appoint an independent counsel to investigate, and, where appropriate, prosecute illegal acts by senior officials of the administration of President George W. Bush.

In addition to Nadler's resolution, mcjoan at Daily Kos reports:

Judiciary Chair John Conyers, on the first day of the 111th Congress, introduced H.R. 104, a bill that, as reported by TPM, would "set up a National Commission on Presidential War Powers and Civil Liberties, with subpoena power and a reported budget of around $3 million, to investigate issues ranging from detainee treatment to waterboarding to extraordinary rendition."

The next months will see a wild fight politically over the question of investigating Bush administration war crimes. In an interview on today's ABC "This Week" with George Stephanopoulos, President-elect Barack Obama seemed to throw cold water on the idea he would support investigations or prosecutions of Bush officials on torture, leaving open only the tiniest crevice of hope that he would.

STEPHANOPOULOS: The most popular question on your own website is related to this. On change.gov it comes from Bob Fertik of New York City and he asks, "Will you appoint a special prosecutor ideally Patrick Fitzgerald to independently investigate the greatest crimes of the Bush administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping."

OBAMA: We're still evaluating how we're going to approach the whole issue of interrogations, detentions, and so forth. And obviously we're going to be looking at past practices and I don't believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards. And part of my job is to make sure that for example at the CIA, you've got extraordinarily talented people who are working very hard to keep Americans safe. I don't want them to suddenly feel like they've got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders and lawyering (ph).

STEPHANOPOULOS: So, no 9/11 commission with Independence subpoena power?

OBAMA: We have not made final decisions, but my instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that moving forward we are doing the right thing. That doesn't mean that if somebody has blatantly broken the law, that they are above the law. But my orientation's going to be to move forward.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So, let me just press that one more time. You're not ruling out prosecution, but will you tell your Justice Department to investigate these cases and follow the evidence wherever it leads?

OBAMA: What I -- I think my general view when it comes to my attorney general is he is the people's lawyer. Eric Holder's been nominated. His job is to uphold the Constitution and look after the interests of the American people, not to be swayed by my day-to-day politics. So, ultimately, he's going to be making some calls, but my general belief is that when it comes to national security, what we have to focus on is getting things right in the future, as opposed looking at what we got wrong in the past.

Stephanopoulos discussed the now popular theme of replacing CIA torture techniques with the procedures outlined in the Army Field Manual. Elsewhere, I have argued that the AFM is not a decent replacement, and contains within it a sophisticated program of psychological torture that only eschews the worst of the known interrogation techniques (waterboarding, sexual humiliation, stress positions, etc.). Here's the relevant exchange:

OBAMA: ...Vice President Cheney I think continues to defend what he calls extraordinary measures or procedures when it comes to interrogations and from my view waterboarding is torture. I have said that under my administration we will not torture.

STEPHANOPOULOS: How about them taking that to the next step. Right now the CIA has a special program, would you require that that program -- basically every government interrogation program be under the same standard, be in accordance with the army field manual?

OBAMA: My general view is that our United States military is under fire and has huge stakes in getting good intelligence. And if our top army commanders feel comfortable with interrogation techniques that are squarely within the boundaries of rule of law, our constitution and international standards, then those are things that we should be able to (INAUDIBLE)

The country is rightly preoccupied with the terrible economic crisis and massive growing unemployment. Much of the political class is preoccupied with the criminal assault of U.S. forces on the population of Gaza, in the name of subduing Hamas. It seems entirely possible that sufficient public will to investigate and prosecute Bush and company will not materialize. That would be a horrible mistake. As Lawrence Vevel put it:

"If Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and others are not prosecuted," Velvel said, "the future could be threatened by additional examples of Executive lawlessness by leaders who need fear no personal consequences for their actions, including more illegal wars such as Iraq."

On the Siberian Railroad

No, I'm not actually taking the Trans-Siberian Railway (maybe someday), but I am going to take a few days off from blogging. It's hard to break away, especially when it seems so much is going on.

There's John Conyer's continued refusal to support any attempt of impeachment of Bush, even as he allows Kucinich a committee hearing to "discuss" it.

There's Jane Mayer's interview at NPR's Fresh Air, where she repeats the "false confessions" mythology about the creation of U.S. torture that I addressed last week in my review of a Scott Shane story at the New York Times. Despite that, the rest of the interview is quite interesting.

There was my exchange with Sen. Levin over at firedoglake, where he addressed my insistence that the timeline on the SERE torture issue be moved back to Dec. 2001. The relevant documents were still "classified", and he seemed lackadaisical about getting them unclassified. But you read the exchange (they are in the comments section of the "liveblog") and see what you think. He certainly saw the issue I raised important enough to respond to.

For those looking for the latest in the fight against torture, you can go and check out the good folks at NeverInOurNames.com, who have started up blogging again after an absence of some months.

See you soon.

Congress Pushing Back Against Bush Plans to Attack Iran

David Swanson at AfterDowningStreet.org has posted a letter from House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers to President Bush. Dated last Thursday, Conyers threatens to bring impeachment charges against Bush if he unilaterally attacks Iran, without bringing the issue before Congress for approval. Swanson notes, "Please call your Congress Member at 202-224-3121 and Email them and ask them to co-sign" Conyers's letter.

To date, I don't know how many new signatories the letter has received. Unless this strategy has the full backing of the Democratic majority and Congressional leadership, I don't know how effective it will be. A new war -- or rather the expansion of Bush's imperialistic, falsely-named "war on terror" -- in the Middle East would be a catastrophe not just for this country, but for countless millions across the world, and devastatingly murderous for who knows how many hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of innocent Iranians.

I heartily endorse David Swanson's request to email or phone your congressman/congresswoman and tell them to sign on to the letter to Bush. Here's the text of Rep. Conyer's letter:

May 8, 2008
The Honorable George W. Bush
President of the United States
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear Mr. President:

We are writing to register our strong opposition to possible unilateral, preemptive military action against other nations by the Executive Branch without Congressional authorization. As you know, Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution grants Congress the power "to declare war," to lay and collect taxes to "provide for the common defense" and general welfare of the United States, to "raise and support armies," to "provide and maintain a navy," to "make rules for the regulation for the land and naval forces," to "provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions," to "provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia," and to "make all laws necessary and proper for carrying into execution ... all ... powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States." Congress is also given exclusive power over the purse. The Constitution says, "No money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in consequence of appropriations made by law."

By contrast, the sole war powers granted to the Executive Branch through the President can be found in Article II, Section, which states, "The President shall be the Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into actual Service of the United States." Nothing in the history of the "Commander-in-Chief" clause suggests that the authors of the provision intended it to grant the Executive Branch the authority to engage U.S. forces in military action whenever and wherever it sees fit without any prior authorization from Congress.

In our view, the founders of our country intended this power to allow the President to repel sudden attacks and immediate threats, not to unilaterally launch, without congressional approval, preemptive military actions against foreign countries. As former Republican Representative Mickey Edwards recently wrote, "[t]he decision to go to war ... is the single most difficult choice any public official can be called upon to make. That is precisely why the nation’s Founders, aware of the deadly wars of Europe, deliberately withheld from the executive branch the power to engage in war unless such action was expressly approved by the people themselves, through their representatives in Congress."

Members of Congress, including the signatories of this letter, have previously expressed concern about this issue. On April 25, 2006, sixty-two Members of Congress joined in a bipartisan letter that called on you to seek congressional approval before making any preemptive military strikes against Iran. Fifty-seven Members of Congress have co-sponsored H. Con. Res. 33, which expresses the sense of Congress that the President should not initiate military action against Iran without first obtaining authorization from Congress.

Our concerns in this area have been heightened by more recent events. The resignation in mid-March of Admiral William J. "Fox" Fallon from the head of U.S. Central Command, which was reportedly linked to a magazine article that portrayed him as the only person who might stop your Administration from waging preemptive war against Iran, has renewed widespread concerns that your Administration is unilaterally planning for military action against that country. This is despite the fact that the December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003, a stark reversal of previous Administration assessments.

As we and others have continued to review troubling legal memoranda and other materials from your Administration asserting the power of the President to take unilateral action, moreover, our concerns have increased still further. For example, although federal law is clear that proceeding under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) "shall be the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance" can be conducted within the U.S. for foreign intelligence purposes, 18 U.S.C. 2511(2)(f), the Justice Department has asserted that the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping in violation of FISA is "supported by the President’s well-recognized inherent constitutional authority as Commander in Chief and sole organ for the Nation in foreign affairs". As one legal expert has explained, your Administration’s "preventive paradigm" has asserted "unchecked unilateral power" by the Executive Branch and violated "universal prohibitions on torture, disappearance, and the like."

Late last year, Senator Joseph Biden stated unequivocally that "the president has no authority to unilaterally attack Iran, and if he does, as Foreign Relations Committee chairman, I will move to impeach" the president.

We agree with Senator Biden, and it is our view that if you do not obtain the constitutionally required congressional authorization before launching preemptive military strikes against Iran or any other nation, impeachment proceedings should be pursued. Because of these concerns, we request the opportunity to meet with you as soon as possible to discuss these matters. As we have recently marked the fifth year since the invasion of Iraq, and the grim milestone of 4,000 U.S. deaths in Iraq, your Administration should not unilaterally involve this country in yet another military conflict that promises high costs to American blood and treasure.

Sincerely,
The Honorable John Conyers
Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee

National Lawyers Guild: Fire Yoo & Try for War Crimes

The National Lawyers Guild has issued a press release calling for University of California at Berkeley's Boalt Hall law school to fire Professor John Yoo. The NLG calls for the rescission of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 provisions that allow immunity and the prosecution of Yoo as a war criminal. Meanwhile, yesterday, Judiciary Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) threatened to subpoena John Yoo to testify about the memo at a May 6 hearing of the House Judiciary Committee.

The declassification and release of Yoo's memorandum to William Haynes, General Counsel of the Department of Defense, written in March 2003, has caused a firestorm in the press. Yoo's memo is the smoking gun for those looking for evidence of how the Bush Administration flouted basic human rights law, the UN Convention Against Torture, and the U.S. War Crimes Act to initiate a campaign of torture against detainees swept up in the aggressive U.S. military and covert campaigns that followed 9/11.

The NLG nicely summarizes much of what is outrageous about Yoo's memo. But as an excellent article in the current Vanity Fair, Philippe Sands' "The Green Light," explains, the torture began before Yoo's memo was even written.

Starting in late 2002 a detainee bearing the number 063 was tortured over a period of more than seven weeks....

The Bush administration has always taken refuge behind a “trickle up” explanation: that is, the decision was generated by military commanders and interrogators on the ground. This explanation is false. The origins lie in actions taken at the very highest levels of the administration—by some of the most senior personal advisers to the president, the vice president, and the secretary of defense. At the heart of the matter stand several political appointees—lawyers—who, it can be argued, broke their ethical codes of conduct and took themselves into a zone of international criminality, where formal investigation is now a very real option.

Yoo's memo sought to give the legal justification to the worst kind of physical and psychological torture. The NLG memo and the press have not fully plumbed the significance of what doors were opened by Bush and his co-conspirators. Jeff Stein, at Congressional Quarterly, tied the Yoo memo to an increase of drug use on detainees. The use of drugs -- from marijuana to LSD to PCP to sodium amytal -- in interrogations was a hallmark of the CIA's MKULTRA research program in the 1950s-1960s.

There can be little doubt now that the government has used drugs on terrorist suspects that are designed to weaken their resistance to interrogation. All that’s missing is the syringes and videotapes.

Another window opened on the practice last week with the declassification of John Yoo’s instantly infamous 2003 memo approving harsh interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects.

Yoo advised top Bush administration officials that interrogators could employ mind-altering drugs if they did not produce “an extreme effect” calculated to “cause a profound disruption of the senses or personality.”

Yoo had first rationalized the use of drugs in a 2002 memo for top Bush administration officials....

“The new Yoo memo, along with other White House legal memoranda, shows clearly that the policy foundation for the use of interrogational drugs was being laid,” says Stephen Miles, a University of Minnesota bioethicist and author of “Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror".... “The use of these drugs was anticipated and discussed in the memos of January and February 2002 by DoD, DoJ, and White House counsel using the same language and rationale. The executive branch memos laid a comprehensive and reiterated policy foundation for the use of interrogational drugs.”

Stein also cites the CIA/Rand Corp./American Psychological Workshop in 2003 that looked at use of "pharmacological agents" on interrogation subjects as part of an attack on prisoner attempts at deception. The full story on this "workshop", which also included work on sensory overload mechanisms to "overwhelm the senses" of detainees, was first broken by me last year.

The heat is on the administration on torture yet again. But I warn all my readers that NONE of the crimes of the Bush Administration have yet met any legal consequences. The relevant governing bodies seem to have no stomach for actually prosecuting any top war criminals, much less taking Bush, Cheney, and their mob on politically. The news media of record, the New York Times, the Washington Post, etc., bluster about the outrages, but have yet to call for any prosecution or impeachment. It seems likely that little of consequence will come from the latest expose over Yoo's 2003 memo. One can't help but feel that in America the government can declare they will pull the fingernails out of your children, and there still will be no action taken.

Is it fear? Is it laziness? What is it?

The following is the text of the NLG release, signed by Marjorie Cohn, NLG President, and Heidi Boghosian, NLG Executive Director. I've added bold emphases for editorial effect.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 9, 2008

Contact: Marjorie Cohn, NLG President, marjorie@tjsl.edu; 619-374-6923
Heidi Boghosian, NLG Executive Director, director@nlg.org; 212-679-5100, x11

NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD CALLS ON BOALT HALL TO DISMISS LAW PROFESSOR JOHN YOO, WHOSE TORTURE MEMOS LED TO COMMISSION OF WAR CRIMES

New York. In a memorandum written the same month George W. Bush invaded Iraq, Boalt Hall law professor John Yoo said the Department of Justice would construe US criminal laws not to apply to the President's detention and interrogation of enemy combatants. According to Yoo, the federal statutes against torture, assault, maiming and stalking do not apply to the military in the conduct of the war.

The federal maiming statute, for example, makes it a crime for someone "with the intent to torture, maim, or disfigure" to "cut, bite, or slit the nose, ear or lip, or cut out or disable the tongue, or put out or destroy an eye, or cut off or disable a limb or any member of another person." It further prohibits individuals from "throwing or pouring upon another person any scalding water, corrosive acid, or caustic substance" with like intent.

Yoo also narrowed the definition of torture so the victim must experience intense pain or suffering equivalent to pain associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure or permanent damage resulting in loss of significant body functions will likely result; Yoo's definition contravenes the definition in the Convention Against Torture, a treaty the US has ratified which is thus part of the US law under the Constitution's Supremacy Clause. Yoo said self-defense or necessity could be used as a defense to war crimes prosecutions for torture, notwithstanding the Torture Convention's absolute prohibition against torture in all circumstances, even in wartime. This memo and another Yoo wrote with Jay Bybee in August 2002 provided the basis for the Administration's torture of prisoners.

"John Yoo's complicity in establishing the policy that led to the torture of prisoners constitutes a war crime under the US War Crimes Act," said National Lawyers Guild President Marjorie Cohn.

Congress should repeal the provision of the Military Commissions Act that would give Yoo immunity from prosecution for torture committed from September 11, 2001 to December 30, 2005. John Yoo should be disbarred and he should not be retained as a professor of law at one of the country's premier law schools. John Yoo should be dismissed from Boalt Hall and tried as a war criminal.

The National Lawyers Guild was founded in 1937 as an alternative to the American Bar Association, which did not admit people of color, the National Lawyers Guild is the oldest and largest public interest/human rights bar organization in the United States. Its headquarters are in New York and it has chapters in every state.

Cross-posted at American Torture and Daily Kos

Conyers Raps New AG on CIA Tapes Investigation

Before everybody praises Michael "Is Waterboarding Torture?" Mukasey, Bush's new Attorney General, for appointing U.S. Prosecutor John Durham as head of a Justice Department criminal investigation into the CIA videotape destruction scandal, consider these succinct comments from an old Washington hand, Congressman John Conyers (remarks in bold are my emphases):

While I certainly agree that these matters warrant an immediate criminal investigation, it is disappointing that the Attorney General has stepped outside the Justice Department’s own regulations and declined to appoint a more independent special counsel in this matter. Because of this action, the Congress and the American people will be denied –- as they were in the Valerie Plame matter –- any final report on the investigation.

Equally disappointing is the limited scope of this investigation, which appears limited to the destruction of two tapes. The government needs to scrutinize what other evidence may have been destroyed beyond the two tapes, as well as the underlying allegations of misconduct associated with the interrogations.

The Justice Department’s record over the past seven years of sweeping the administration’s misconduct under the rug has left the American public with little confidence in the Administration’s ability to investigate itself. Nothing less than a special counsel with a full investigative mandate will meet the tests of independence, transparency and completeness. Appointment of a special counsel will allow our nation to begin to restore our credibility and moral standing on these issues.

So Durham is supposed to have cornered the mob, and have jailed some Connecticut pols... This is starting to smell like the Fitzgerald prosecution, with its Dudley Do-Right prosecutor, the limited scope of investigation, and likely many months before anything ever comes out about the destruction of evidence and obstruction of justice.

I agree with Congressman Conyers that a special prosecutor is needed in this case. But Rep. Conyers... really... wouldn't impeachment be a more direct way to "restore our credibility and moral standing on these issues"? And who could do more about that than... YOU!