UN grills US on torture, becomes kangaroo court, Team Obama tap-dances

So much to unpack from one short news story!

First and bottom line?

We tortured people in various spots in Iraq and Afghanistan (not to mention outsourcing even more torture to the likes of Egypt under the euphemism of "extraordinary rendition"). Period, end of story.

And now the UN, which admittedly has a number of members with even looser support for civil rights than America, wants to hear more about this.

Team Obama says this all happened under the previous guy and it's all OK now. We're cool. We're down with it:

The Obama administration officials said that whatever transgressions occurred had been under the previous administration of George W. Bush, but Obama that had quickly tried to turn things around. 

"As President Obama has acknowledged, we crossed the line and we take responsibility for that," McLeod said. "The United States has taken important steps to ensure adherence to its legal obligations." 

Tom Malinowski, an assistant U.S. secretary of state, told the committee the government believes torture, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment "are forbidden in all places, at all times, with no exceptions." 

In Washington, the White House said the administration also now considers the ban against torture to apply to prisoners held by the U.S. overseas, including Guantanamo Bay. Under the Bush administration, the U.S. interpreted the U.N. Convention Against Torture to apply only within U.S. borders.

Let's unpack that.

Quickly? Until his "we tortured some folks," Dear Leader didn't even use the "T-word."

"We crossed the line." Was that like a chicken-torturer, to get to the other side of the torture road? No, we crossed the line while claiming not to cross the line. That's half the problem right there. Oh, and what would the "important steps" be, given the last graf, with my emphasis.

So, we "now" consider a ban on torture to apply abroad? What is the date of the now? Was it Jan. 20, 2009,or some time later.

At the same time, per my cracking wise about the UN, er, while the death penalty may be wrong, cruel and unusual, it's not torture. And, while Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson may have acted wrongly (or may not have acted wrongly) in fatally shooting Michael Brown, that's not torture, either.

Why do I have the feeling this is going to go beyond a rightful legal grilling into a kangaroo court? Only thing missing, even though he's not on death row with a commuted sentence, are lawyers for Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Or Tom Cruise, speaking on behalf of Scientology and claiming that psychiatry is torture.

'Days of Fire'? Peter Baker's book is barely kindling

Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House by Peter Baker

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Why do I say what I do? Veteran New York Times reporter Peter Baker has too much "mainstreamitis," too much "have-a-beer-itis," in this over-length tome.

Per the first, this book reads exactly like it was written by who it was: not "Peter Baker," but a decade-plus White House correspondent for a major mainstream paper. Take torture, for example. In the index, it links to pages that don't actually use the word, but, euphemisms or softenings.

Per the second? Baker seems to have that stereotypical "guy I'd have a beer with," as it was called in 2000 and again in 2004, man-crush on W.

As a result, other than looking at some details of how Bush wasn't totally Cheney's puppet, and even more details about how, after office, every Bush Administration official, including the Head Cheese and Darth Cheney, who has written a book, or been interviewed for a partisan one, has told at least one lie about one major interaction with other Bushies, there's not much here. On length, it could have been cut 150 pages without much loss.

I was on the 2/3 star border, but, this book is getting too much unworthy praise, so I went down rather than up.



View all my reviews

Bin Laden death and torture

Update, May 3: Unfortunately, any "debate" over Osama bin Laden's death and the value of torture has been clusterfucked by reporting by the AP and other MSM that give the appearance Khalid Sheikh Mohammed revealed the name of Osama bin Laden's courier under torture.

Rather, as Andrew Sullivan and Marcy Wheeler report, that's totally false.

Whether the reportorial problem lies more with the AP et al, or with confusing/bad early info from Team Obama, I'm not sure. But, we have this "meme" now out there which is ultimately irrelevant. — End update

So, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was a lead, if not the only one, to the lead that led to the Osama bin Laden assault that lead to his death. (And, per the NYT, which just says "Guantanamo detainees," there may have been several leads.)

The McClatchy story is right — this will reignite the debate over torture. (That said, when did McClatchy go "soft" and stop using that word?)

First, KSM could have given out inaccurate blather here just like he did with other things.

Second, at the time he named this courier, that person may not have been so close to bin Laden as he became in later years.

Third, the "right" result doesn't make a wrong action right anyway.

The larger civil liberties fallout of the hunt for bin Laden? Here is a good laundry list.

Stop the cover-up, Mr. President

The New York Times tells President Obama to come clean on “enhanced interrogation,” and not just what the Bush Administration did, but what it may be doing, or trying to do, too.

Profile: The psychologist authors of U.S. torture

The New York Times has an excellent article on career military psychologists Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, the pair who reverse-engineered Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, or SERE, eventually leading to waterboarding and other torture.

At the peak of their work, the pair was getting $2K/day, each from the CIA. And, doing things like chatting up and down Martin Seligman, the psychologist who discovered and researched the concept of “learned helplessness,” without telling him WHY they wanted to pick his brain.

And, given how Seligman was ripping off the Army little over a year after the NYT piece was written, with positive psychology "spirituality" being hustled as the solution to PTSD, I doubt he was as upset about learning the truth about Mitchell and Jessen as portrayed in the piece. That's if he didn't know more of the truth in the first place.

Yawn – Holder about to name CIA special prosecutor

Beyond what the LA Times notes, that, among other things, convictions will be hard to obtain, we know he’s only going after small fry anyway, so no big deal.
-END-

Holder to name BushCo special prosecutor?

Newsweek says Attorney General Eric Holder is considering appointing a special prosecutor to investigate Bush Administration torture of detainees, though Newsweek uses the euphemistic “brutal interrogation practices.” Four sources spoke on background, saying a decision one way or the other could come in a few weeks.

But, but, but…

Earlier, the story opens by noting AGs have in general stuggled to find the line between serving their country and serving their presidential bosses.

Color me skeptical, but, especially without knowing who these four sources are, it’s possible this is a deliberate leak, even as President Barack Obama himself battles Congress over a new intelligence bill’s parameters. A leak intended to be a sop to increasingly restless left-liberals and progressives, because of that, because of his expanse of “presidentialism” beyond even President Bush, and more.

(Update: Hold on, hold on indeed; evidence is mounting that Holder’s plan might be a sham and a head fake and this Newsweek story a bit of a fluff piece.)

In short, without knowing whether the four backgrounders are career civil service or political appointees, or a mix, I don’t know what angle the leak is from. And, Newsweek doesn’t enlighten us.

However, to be a bit less skeptical, it appears at least some of the four might be careerists. And, he supposedly has gotten him staff to compile a list of 10 potential nominees, five inside Justice and five outside.

So, what changed Holder’s mind, after he had seemed to let go of the idea a couple of months ago? Looking at the CIA IG’s report late last month.

And, he appears to have learned his “Marc Rich” lesson about maintaining independence from the White House, the story notes.

It’s a long, four-page story that talks about Holder’s first six months on the job in general, as well, so, give it a read.

Obama the torture-enabler continues

Glenn Greenwald has the latest details on how the Obama Administration is continuing threats to cut off U.S. intelligence sharing with the British if the U.K. legal system continues to investigate the Guantanamo Bay torture claims of Binyam Mohamed.

And, Greenwald makes clear this is not simply Team Obama repeating BushCo threats. This is all fresh and new Obama threats. To make that more clear, Greenwald has a link to a British government letter (PDF, see pages 6-9) that this is all new threats.

The Washington Times has details of the threats. It seems clear, as Glenn says, that the British government is perfectly OK with being “shackled” by an outside government, hence the lack of protests on the side of Her Majesty’s Government as led by Gordon Brown.

Again, don’t vote for Obama in 2012; vote Green.

Show us the Abu Ghraib 2.0 pix – up pressure on Obama

The American Civil Liberties Union has won all the lawsuits to get both private and official military pictures of Abu Ghraib released to the public, but at least two Senators are resisting.

Mr. Former CIA Lindsey Graham and Joementum Lieberman are urging President Barack Obama to find some way to block the release of hundreds of pictures, claiming it could infuriate Muslim opinion.

Why?

“These photographs provide visual proof that prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel was not aberrational but widespread, reaching far beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib,” said Amrit Singh, an ACLU lawyer.

Releasing them would also increase pressure on Obama to change course on “looking forward” on torture, which means that, IMO, there’s good odds Obama will try to find a way to do just what Lieberman and Graham want.

Besides, American arrests of Muslim journalists, complete with no post-release apologies, has poisoned the well plenty.

Team Obama won’t even use word ‘torture’

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs et al in Team Obama treat the very word “torture” itself like it’s political dynamite.

But yet, don’t want to prosecute, or even investigate for possible prosecution, torture, torture green-lighting, etc.

Will the real White House torture policy please stand up?

President Barack Obama is feeling more political pressure to reverse Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s pronouncements and legally investigate the BushCo enablers of torture, if not the actual doers of the deed.

But, “legal sanctions”? Is this like Bill Clinton being disbarred from practicing law before the Supreme Court? Puhleeze.

At the same time, according to Talking Points Memo, the White House has apparently walked back Rahmbo’s original comments on the issue:

(A)dministration officials said Monday that Mr. Emanuel had meant the officials who ordered the policies carried out, not the lawyers who provided the legal rationale.

I say “apparently” in light of the legal sanctions idea also mentioned in the story.

Meanwhile, from Bizarro World, Uncle Fester, aka Darth Cheney, says that if Obama’s going to release some CIA torture memos, release them all.

Well, when an idiot goes “all in” at the poker table, take his money. Uncle Fester thinks, as he always has, that torture provides actionable intelligence and the rest of the memos will show that.

Releasing all memos, in context, with analysis showing just how little torture found? Done.

Meanwhile, Mike Madden offers his take on Obama’s spinning, and operatives’ greeting for him, at Langley.

And, in a related matter, Jake Tapper channels ABC reporters trying to nail down the Jell-O of White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on the Big O’s love for state secrets in court.

Meanwhile, Gibbs et al in Team Obama treat the very word “torture” itself like it’s political dynamite.

NYT – Obama needs to investigate torture

In an official editorial, the Old Gray Lady salutes President Barack Obama’s release of the four CIA torture memos last week, but says that’s not nearly enough – Obama needs to start investigating:

He has an obligation to pursue what is clear evidence of a government policy sanctioning the torture and abuse of prisoners — in violation of international law and the Constitution. …

These memos make it clear that (federal appeals judge Jay). Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution. Congress should impeach him. And if the administration will not conduct a thorough investigation of these issues, then Congress has a constitutional duty to hold the executive branch accountable. If that means putting Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales on the stand, even Dick Cheney, we are sure Americans can handle it.

After eight years without transparency or accountability, Mr. Obama promised the American people both. His decision to release these memos was another sign of his commitment to transparency. We are waiting to see an equal commitment to accountability.

Holy crap, what sort of Wheaties did the Times eat?

Obama abets torture and Congressional Dems start to follow

That’s the bottom line, from near the bottom of Mark Benjamin’s column.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, who had earlier been a big advocate of a special commission investigating torture and its advocacy, meekly issued a statement yesterday applauding Obama for releasing CIA memos while not even mentioning the idea of such a commission.

Torture? No prosecution; Domestic spy whistle-blower? …

So, President Barack Obama says we’re not going to prosecute torturers, or their enablers, but…

He can still hold an indictment over the head of Thomas Tamm, the whistle-blower on the National Security Agency’s domestic spying?

Steve Benen, neolib Obama torture cover-up apologist

I thought Washington Monthly was bad enough as a blog with Kevin Drum as a neoliberal squish.

Well, I was wrong; it’s become worse with Steve Benen as a Democratic Party hack. I’ve pretty much stopped reading, but went by there earlier today.

Proof of Benen’s hackery? This post claiming Obama hasn’t shut the door on indicting BushCo officials for torture. Even by Benen’s standards, it’s week.


Meanwhile, Sully joined him in the tank.

Andrew Sullivan agrees that President Barack Obama is right to not prosecute torturers. For a while, on a few issues, Sully could be seen as the “enemy of my enemy” type. But, remember, folks, he’s NOT a Democrat, let alone not being an independent liberal.

And, this is AFTER Sully’s earlier post, saying, “We are now Indonesia.”

Hey, Sully. Not prosecuting will lead to “Indonesia amnesia.”

Obama officially torture sellout

President Barack Obama has officially said CIA torturers will not be prosecuted.

Our hopes are in the hands of either a Green Party president in 2013 or the long arm of Spanish Judge Balthasar Garzon.

The announcement was made in conjunction with the release of four CIA memos.

And, since Obama didn’t announce any prosecution plans for the BushCo officials who gave the advice to the CIA (which wanted it, by the way, President Sellout), that torture was legal, it means the Green Party is going to get every more publicity here.

Democrats who come here from liberal blogrolls and don’t like that? Tough. Shit or get off the pot.

Sign this petition asking Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor of the torture crimes.

U.S. torturing – a ‘perpless crime’?

Ted Rall, in smacking down the reasons President Barack Obama, CIA Director Leon Panetta, et al offer for not criminally investigating BushCo torturers and their legal justifiers, says that, in a reverse of a victimless crime, Team Obama is claiming torture at Gitmo was “a perpless crime..”

If you don’t trust Obama on AIG…

You certainly shouldn’t trust him on civil liberties, presidential powers and “presidentialism,” and a whole raft of related stuff.

“Enemy combatants” are still that in everything but name.

John Yoo should be let off the hook because we allegedly didn’t know torture was wrong five years ago.

Hey, Obamiacs, when will you take him off the pedestal and your collective craniums out of your collective rectums?

Brits were torturers too?

Binyam Mohamed, the British national recently released from Gitmo, claims MI5 took its whacks at him, not just the CIA.

No wonder Gordon Brown’s government had no problems last month going along with a Team Obama request to squelch a bunch of “intelligence” information.

Brits were torturers too?

Binyam Mohamed, the British national recently released from Gitmo, claims MI5 took its whacks at him, not just the CIA.

No wonder Gordon Brown’s government had no problems last month going along with a Team Obama request to squelch a bunch of “intelligence” information.