Reidblog [The Reid Report blog]

The Olympic flame relay descended into near-chaos for a second successive day as officials in Paris were forced to extinguish the torch three times so it could be taken aboard a bus to avoid protesters today.
Security officials extinguished the torch moving it, under police escort, aboard the bus to keep activists protesting against China's recent violent crackdown in Tibet away from it.

Despite a huge security presence in the French capital, where at least 3,000 officers were deployed, at least two activists got within little more than an arm's length of the flame before being stopped by police.

One protester threw water at the torch, but failed to extinguish it and was carried away. Five people were arrested.

Police tackled many other demonstrators to the ground and used tear gas to disperse those blocking the relay's route.

Demonstrations in Paris began only hours after the relay's procession through London had degenerated into a series of skirmishes between protesters and police.

Activists began targeting the flame before it had even left the Eiffel Tower for the planned 17-mile journey to the Charlety stadium on the edge of the city.

The scale of protests further along the route forced officials to put out the Olympic torch and take it aboard the vehicle.

Live TV footage showed the extinguished torch being put into the bus alongside tracksuit-wearing Chinese security staff.

The torch is lit from permanent flames enclosed within special lanterns carried with it. Designed to be carried on buses and planes, they are used to keep the flame intact overnight.

It was extinguished for the first time amid protests on a road alongside the River Seine, according to the Associated Press news agency. ...

Labels: China, democracy, dictatorship, Olympics, Summer Olympics

A newly disclosed Justice Department legal memorandum, written in March 2003 and authorizing the military’s use of extremely harsh interrogation techniques, offers what could be a revealing clue in an unsolved mystery: What responsibility did top Pentagon and Bush administration officials have for abuses committed by American troops at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and in Afghanistan; Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; and elsewhere?

Some legal experts and advocates said Wednesday that the document, written the month that the United States invaded Iraq, adds to evidence that the abuse of prisoners in military custody may have involved signals from higher officials and not just irresponsible actions by low-level personnel.

The opinion was written by John C. Yoo of the Office of Legal Counsel, the executive branch’s highest authority on the interpretation of the law. It told the Pentagon’s senior leadership that inflicting pain would not be considered torture unless it caused “death, organ failure or permanent damage,” and it is the most fully developed legal justification that has yet come to light for inflicting physical and mental pressure on suspects.

While resembling an August 2002 memorandum drafted largely by Mr. Yoo, the March 2003 opinion went further, arguing more explicitly that the president’s war powers could trump the law against torture, which it said could not constitutionally be enforced if it interfered with the commander in chief’s orders.

Scott L. Silliman, head of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke University and a former Air Force lawyer, said he did not believe that the 2003 memorandum directly caused mistreatment. But Mr. Silliman added, “The memo helped to build a culture that, in the absence of leadership from the highest ranks of the Pentagon, allowed the abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.”

Because opinions issued by the Office of Legal Counsel are “binding on the Defense Department,” Mr. Silliman said, Mr. Yoo’s opinion effectively sidelined military lawyers who strongly opposed harsh interrogation methods.

The document was made public on Tuesday after it was declassified in response to a request by the American Civil Liberties Union under the Freedom of Information Act.

Both the August 2002 and March 2003 memorandums were formally withdrawn by the Justice Department in 2004, after Mr. Yoo’s successors at the Office of Legal Counsel concluded that they went too far.

Jonathan Hafetz, a lawyer representing Ali al-Marri, a Qatar citizen arrested in the United States after the Sept. 11 attacks, said he believed that the March 2003 opinion explained why his client was removed from the criminal justice system and placed in a military jail in Charleston, S.C., in June 2003.

“I think they moved him to the military system to be able to use the harsh techniques blessed in the Yoo memo,” said Mr. Hafetz, of the Brennan Center for Justice.

Mr. Marri said he was subjected to cold, shackled in uncomfortable positions, deprived of sleep and otherwise mistreated.

The President has broad constitutional power to take military action in response to the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001. Congress has acknowledged this inherent executive power in both the War Powers Resolution and the Joint Resolution passed by Congress on September 14, 2001.

The President has constitutional power not only to retaliate against any person, organization, or State suspected of involvement in terrorist attacks on the United States, but also against foreign States suspected of harboring or supporting such organizations.

The President may deploy military force preemptively against terrorist organizations or the States that harbor or support them, whether or not they can be linked to the specific terrorist incidents of September 11.

Labels: dictatorship, John Yoo, torture, war on terror, worse than Watergate