The insanity of John Yoo
John Yoo: sadistic or insane?
Revelations in the Justice Department’s whitewash of the torture memos offer a frightening glimpse into the mind of John Yoo, the former Justice Department lawyer who, with now judge Jay Bybee and others, gave the Bush administration a license to entertain the darkest fantasies of Dick Cheney. What Yoo believes is not just weird, or scary, or Byzantine. It’s downright un-American. Apparently, Yoo believes that as long as he says the United States is “at war” with some entity — state or non-state, and even without a Constitutional declaration of war by Congress, the president of the United States has it perfectly within his power to:
- Torture a child by having his testacles crushed in front of his parents to get them to talk;
- Order the massacre of a civilian village (meaning the My Lai massacre would have been, in Yoo’s construction, perfectly legal, had it been ordered directly by the president);
- Launch a nuclear attack without the consent of Congress;
And only God knows what else. How is this man being allowed to instruct young would-be lawyers?
Meanwhile, Newsweek’s Michael Issikoff posts about Dick Cheney’s time machine theory of torture and Jose Padilla, and the gruesome new details of Bush-Cheney-era torture contained in that DOJ whitewash report. And what’s scariest about this whole sorry spectacle, is that a majority of so-called “conservatives,” probably agree with John Yoo (so long as the president in question is a Republican.)
Related: Torture and impunity.
Shameful: Obama justice department’s epic FAIL on torture lawyers
Still licensed to practice law: John Yoo (left) and Jay Bybee, authors of the "torture memos"
Apparently, concocting memoranda that provide the fig leaf of legality for war crimes is nothing more than “poor judgment.” It pains me to say this, but shame on the Obama Justice Department. The only reason I can possibly come up with, why a senior lawyer at Justice, Assistant Deputy Attorney General David Margolis, would overrule the findings of the Office of Professional Responsibility, which would have found the three lawyers in question, sitting judge Jay Bybee and “unitary executive” inventor John Yoo guilty of professional misconduct, is that maybe the Justice Department fears that such sanction could provide fuel for the torture investigations taking place in Spain?. Who knows, but if that is the case, it wreaks of rank cowardice. Read more
Marco’s new friends (and bringing back Bush-Cheney?)
Dick Cheney made a surprise appearance at John Birch Society-sponsored CPAC conference today, so add him to the list of Marco Rubio’s newfound friends. In fact, Rubio’s fundraising fraternity, which includes Liz Cheney and Mary Matalin, his anointing by Jim DeMint, endorsements from Grover Norquist, (with whom he shares a belief in privatizing Social Security) and Karl Rove; his ties to Jeb Bush (even though apparently, like Iraq before he became president and was drafted into Jebbie’s neocon movement, George had no earthly idea who Rubio was just days ago,) and now his association with the Birchers, birthers, tea partiers and waterboarding fans at CPAC cement Rubio’s new persona: a very particular kind of right wing ideologue that the American people just ran out of Washington in 2008. Here’s Marco taking in the exultation of the torture aficionados:
Maybe it’s just me, but Rubio is looking less and less like some novel tea party confection and more like a Bush-Cheney restoration …
He’s not alone. During his CPAC speech, Romney was unabashed in his praise for the unloved former president. And with the Cheneys, Liz and Dick, being stars of the show along with Rubio, I think we’re seeing something truly remarkable: Republicans are full-on running on bringing back the Bush-Cheney era (well, at least the first term Bush-Cheney era, before Dubya came to his senses on the torture stuff …) from tax cuts for the rich, to torture, to deregulation, the whole hog. Hard to believe, but apparently true. Talk about chutzpah…?
Blair’s promise: U.K. would back U.S. in Saddam overthrow
Tony Blair reportedly promised to back George W. Bush if he decided to invade Iraq and topple Saddam Hussein … and he apparently made that promise a year before the invasion, at a time when Bush was telling the U.S. media no such decision had been made … the Times of London reports on a series of secret notes that tell the sorry tale of how Great Britain followed Bush and Cheney off a cliff. Read more
Line of the day: ‘bathtub ring’
“Did anybody expect Dick Cheney to become the bathtub ring of the Bush administration?” — Chris Matthews today on his NBC Sunday show.
Reracked: Bush/Rumsfeld could have gotten Bin Laden in 2001
… but of course, they let him get away:
A Senate Foreign Relations Committee report issued this weekend says that al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden “was within our grasp” when he was “cornered” in the forbidding mountains of Tora Bora in December, 2001 under intense U.S. bombardment.
… The Senate report says that while bin Laden was writing his last will and testament on December 14, “Fewer than 100 American commandos were on the scene with their Afghan allies and calls for reinforcements to launch an assault were rejected.” Read more
Cheney’s dark arts
The Wapo details Dick Cheney’s vigorous defense of torture … not in his recent raft of media availabilities and speeches, but rather back in 2005, when he seemed to be scrambling to prevent Congress from either stopping, or investigating, his torture and domestic wiretapping program. According to the Post, Cheney personally led briefings of members of Congress, including John McCain:
One of the most critical Cheney-led briefings came in late October 2005, when the vice president and Porter J. Goss, then director of the CIA, read Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) into the program on the interrogation methods, according to congressional and intelligence sources.One knowledgeable official described the meeting as contentious. Cheney and Goss, with other CIA officials present, tried to persuade the former Vietnam POW to back off an anti-torture amendment that had already won the support of 90 senators.
The McCain amendment would have ended practices such as waterboarding by forbidding “cruel, degrading and inhumane” treatment of detainees. The CIA had not used waterboarding since 2003, but the White House sought to maintain the ability to employ it.
Meanwhile, the story also offers insight into why Cheney seems to believe there is exculpatory evidence inside certain CIA memos:
Lawmakers at times challenged Cheney and CIA officials about the legality of the program and pressed for specific results that would show whether the techniques worked. In response, the CIA briefers said that half of the agency’s knowledge about al-Qaeda’s plans and structure had been obtained through the interrogations.
And the other interesting point: the timing and effectiveness of Cheney’s efforts?
Cheney’s briefings on interrogations began in the winter of 2005 as the top Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence committees, Sen. John D. Rockefeller III (W.Va.) and Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), publicly advocated a full-scale investigation of the tactics used against top al-Qaeda suspects.On March 8, 2005 — two days after a detailed report in the New York Times about interrogations — Cheney gathered Rockefeller, Harman and the chairmen of the intelligence panels, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), according to current and former intelligence officials. Weeks earlier, Roberts had given public statements suggesting possible support for the investigation sought by Rockefeller. But by early March 2005, Roberts announced that he opposed a separate probe, and the matter soon died.
And last but certainly not least, there was the arrogance of the Cheney team:
Cheney’s efforts to sway Congress toward supporting waterboarding went beyond secret meetings in Washington. In July 2005, he sent David S. Addington, his chief counsel at the time, to travel with five senators — four of them opponents of the CIA interrogation methods — to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. On the trip, Sen. Graham urged Addington to put the interrogations at secret prisons and the use of military tribunals into a stronger constitutional position by pushing legislation through Congress, rather than relying on executive orders and secret rulings from Justice Department lawyers.Subsequent court rulings would challenge the legality of the system, and Justice Department lawyers were privately drafting new rules on interrogations. Addington dismissed the views of Graham, who had been a military lawyer.
“I’ve got all the authority I need right here,” Addington said, pulling from his coat a pocket-size copy of the Constitution, according to the senator, suggesting there was no doubt about the system’s legal footing.
And what’s scary, is that the neocons actually believe that.
The Wednesday funnies: The Cheney Bunch
**Bump** Dick Cheney’s newly public, chatty persona (and his daughter’s) just begs for a parody. Here it is:
The limits of Powell’s rethinking
Colin Powell is probably the most articulate current voice of the small, sane wing of the Republican Party. And he has successfully put distance between himself and the Bush administration in terms of the public’s esteem, even managing to maintain the respect of those of us who deeply disagreed with him on Iraq. But there are some things he just can’t seem to do. Involving himself in the question of torture for war is apparently one of them. From journalist Sam Husseini:
Col. Lawrence B. Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, recently wrote:
“What I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002 — well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion — its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa’ida.
But Powell isn’t ready to go there:
Sam Husseini: General, can you talk about the al-Libi case and the link between torture and the production of tortured evidence for war?
Colin Powell: I don’t have any details on the al-Libi case.
SH: Can you tell us when you learned that some of the evidence that you used in front of the UN was based on torture? When did you learn that?
CP: I don’t know that. I don’t know what information you’re referring to. So I can’t answer.
SH: Your chief of staff, Wilkerson, has written about this.
CP: So what? [inaudible]
SH: So you’d think you’d know about it.
CP: The information I presented to the UN was vetted by the CIA. Every word came from the CIA and they stood behind all that information. I don’t know that any of them believe that torture was involved. I don’t know that in fact. A lot of speculation, particularly by people who never attended any of these meetings, but I’m not aware of it.
Powell seems to be somehow at odds with himself over his involvement in the former administration’s policies: sorry he made the case for war at the U.N. without better facts, but somewhat defensive on the idea that he tried to make sure the facts were good before he made it. Perhaps the old soldier in him just can’t go where Wilkerson is able to. Maybe he really does believe that the Iraq war was the right thing to do. Or maybe he’s learning, along with the rest of us, the lengths his former colleague Dick Cheney and his band of neocons were willing to go to (including expending Powell’s reputation for their cause) in order to have their war. Either that, or he’s in deep denial.
Previous:
What Dick Cheney didn’t say
When Dick Cheney mounted his full-throated defense of the previous administration’s national security state at the curiously named American Enterprise Institute this afternoon, he made his core argument (that the Bush-Cheney torture and surveillance programs should be praised by a grateful nation, not shunned and despised by phony moralists who don’t seem to mind when Jack Bauer does it…) based on a set of facts that are no longer operative. [Illustration at left by Rex Lameray]
Cheney continued to make the case that he … I mean President Bush … did what had to be done after 9/11 in order to thwart another — imminent — attack on America. They had to waterboard the bad guys you see — and make no mistake, these weren’t balerinas they were near-drowning — because no one at the time knew when or where the next attack was coming. And it was coming. It’s always coming… a few hundred turns on the waterboard and a mock burial or two later, the attack never came. See how well that worked?
The problem is: we now have at least a strong circumstantial case suggesting that the administration escalated the waterboarding in 2002 and 2003, long after the imminence of 9/11 had passed them by, but conveniently, right around the time they were building the case for invading Iraq. They waterboarded Abu Zubaydah 83 times in 30 days in August of 2002, the same month Bush’s chief of staff, Andrew Card, formed White House Iraq Group to try and “market” the war. They waterboarded Khalid Sheik Muhammad 183 times in March 2003, the same month we invaded Iraq. And we learned on May 13 from former NBC News investigative producer Bob Windrem (who gave the bombshell story to The Daily Beast since I’m presuming the New York Times and Washington Post couldn’t be bothered…) that they even tried to get the Iraq Survey Group to waterboard an Iraqi general in April 2003 — not to thwart an “imminent” attack, but in order to produce false confessions to justify the invasion of Iraq.
But Dick Cheney didn’t mention that today, nor did he bother to defend it. He didn’t have to. The media has so thoroughly set aside the stunning revelations in the previous paragraph, that Cheney doesn’t even feel the need to bring it up. He is free to continue arguing his case on pre-May 13 thinking, and he knows he’ll get away with it. After all, who’s going to stop him … the “media?” The vast majority of the Washington press corps has long since lost interest in the subject of how, and why, we got into Iraq. And as NBC’s Mark Murray all-but admitted today, the mainstream press spends more time helping the GOP out with their media strategy than rethinking their credulous assent on the Iraq war. … The Obama administration? They’re all about “moving forward.” … Congress? Don’t make me laugh. They’re too scared of the vanishing right’s mysterious power to cow them on national security issues even to vote for the money to close Guantanamo, and they can’t even build up the spinal fluid to move forward on a truth commission. The American people??? I’m sure Dick, who was too scared to fight in Vietnam but is clearly not afraid of YOU, would simply say, “good luck with that.”
Related: The media’s collective yawn over torture for war
Cross-posted at Open Salon.
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