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“…torture is criminal, if it’s not justified by the OLC opinion…”

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Sheldon Whitehouse, Democratic junior senator from Rhode Island, wades thigh deep into the mighty partisan swamp of torture with back to back performances on cable, CNN followed by MSNBC, commenting on a peculiar and melodramatic revelation from Charles Duelfer, the Iraq WMD searcher. The story is told in the Daily Beast by Robert Windrem, following Duelfer’s new book, that the Office of Vice-President, that is, Darth Cheney, directed an enhanced interrogation, or waterboarding, of an Iraqi intelligence officer who may have known of links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

Criminal

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Robert Windrem’s observation on Charles Duelfer (who can certainly speak for himself when he gets to Charlie Rose for his book promotion) was yesterday’s news, and is backed up this news cycle by Scott Horton’s observations in the Beast about 9/11 investigator Robert Zelikow, and Zelikow’s questions about how the White House may have ordered the suppression of his protesting memoranda about waterboarding.  TV is just getting to it the Duelfer story and is not close to the Zelikow.  What TV has contributed is putting Sheldon Whitehouse on camera to use the word “criminal” with regard the allegations that Cheney got involved in a partisan pursuit of information on WMD that, if successful, would have strengthened the White House. I note the meaty word “criminal,” with regard conduct of Vice-President Cheney’s office and the CIA. It matches Nancy Pelosi’s use of the meaty word “misleading,” with regard the CIA and the briefings on waterboarding.

Whitehouse was not reluctant to wander into areas that throw the Obama administration, the current Congress and the media deeper into the swamp in search of criminal conduct by the previous administration.

Swamp Fever

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Criminalizing the Bush team is what this comes to, and it is a perilous course because of precedence.  More, this means both the House apparatus and the the Senate Democratic apparatus are fighting an insurgency against the Obama administration’s recent aim to bury all this in old business.  Declaring a witch hunt on both the CIA and the GOP appears ambitious.  The TPL/War Crimes Tribunal Posse are more passionate and pell-mell about this so far than the right-wing, but it is early.  My first glance tells me that Darth Cheney is the clear winner, because he will never get off TV and will sell books forever — a combination of Churchill, Nixon, Darth Vader and Beelzebub in “The Devil and Daniel Webster.”   Here we go, deep into the swamp mud with a fever.
 ”…there is some further evidence of that… “ said Sheldon Whitehouse re an enhanced interrogation of non-Al Qaeda prisoners. 
 “…. there is not a great deal of evidence that came out on our hearing about that… if that is true then it takes the application of these techniques out of the scope of the Office of Legal Counsel opinion… 


“…and that raises the prospect of there being a criminal prosecution that could justifiably emerge… 

“.. torture is criminal, if it’s not justified by the OLC opinion, if there aren’t the defenses because you have gone outside of it…” 

“…not only does it disturb me, it takes the waterboarding outside of whatever protection the Office of Legal counsel provide… if the motivation for doing this was to get political information connecting Osama Bin Laden to Saddam Hussein that wasn’t related to a direct attack on the US, then it falls directly under the cases that show that waterboarding is a crime in America and is stripped of all protection from the OLC memoranda…” 

“…this thing is just getting deep and deeper…”

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Comment by SHV | 2009-05-15 20:41:56

“.. torture is criminal, if it’s not justified by the OLC opinion, if there aren’t the defenses because you have gone outside of it…”
**********
So by that logic, German’s who persecuted Jews by keeping to the letter of the “Official Anti-Jewish Laws” were on firm legal ground for their behavior. Give me a break Sheldon, your logic sucks.

Comment by Animal Control | 2009-05-15 21:05:22

I agree. I’m not up on Third Reich history but I suspect that they also passed laws to justify their atrocities. Which is why lawyers and Judges were also tried at Nuremberg.

Comment by Animal Control | 2009-05-15 21:10:47

One more thing.

“My Lawyer said it was legal” Is not a defense in criminal proceedings.

 
 
 

Comment by SHV | 2009-05-15 21:49:13

One more thing.

“My Lawyer said it was legal” Is not a defense in criminal proceedings.
**********
The idea that legal hacks in the OLC can write legal briefs that makes illegal, legal is troubling. At least Gonzales was worried about being prosecuted under
Title 18,2241 that he put language in the 2006 MCA to retroactively re-write 2441 and give the administration immunity from prosecution for War crimes. I don’t think it will hold up but it will be up to the courts for the final answer.

 

Comment by CG | 2009-05-15 21:55:29

Tracing torture’s trail with Charles Duelfer and Bob Windrem

This is getting interesting, add Zelikow to the mix, there is a lot of partisan daring going on, everyone saying release the documents…

I wonder if Cheney will ever travel abroad, say to Spain…

Comment by Mr.Murder | 2009-05-16 06:27:56

Spain, Aznar’s boy the EU energy minister was helping lie the Niger scam through.

The EU energy minister and Mike Ledeen made various appearances together all acorss that time span for right wing think tanks.

Alas, Simone!

 
 

Comment by SHV | 2009-05-15 21:59:51

“I’m not up on Third Reich history but I suspect that they also passed laws to justify their atrocities.”
**********
The Third of the twelve trial at Nuremberg was the “Judges Trial”…The defendants in this case were 16 German jurists and lawyers. Nine had been officials of the Reich Ministry of Justice, the others were prosecutors and judges of the Special Courts and People’s Courts of Nazi Germany. They were—amongst other charges—held responsible for implementing and furthering the Nazi “racial purity” program through the eugenic and racial laws.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judges%27_Trial

 

Comment by SHV | 2009-05-15 22:03:00

I wonder if Cheney will ever travel abroad, say to Spain…
*********
Cheney can be charged, tried, convicted and executed under US law. None of them “furrin” laws or trips to the Hague needed.

Comment by jwrjr | 2009-05-15 23:57:49

The ONE doesn’t want that to happen … (GACK!)

Comment by politicalidentitycrisis | 2009-05-16 00:17:00

He’s just protecting his cousin, like his auntie Tu-Tu. The law doesn’t apply to relatives of that one! Remember, Obama, Bush and Cheney share genes, apparently. Too bad Obama wasn’t related to the Clintons. We still would have never heard of Obama had that been the case. He’d have had enough common sense and good judgement not to run for President until he was ready to lead and had actually accomplished something in life!

 
 
 

Comment by Doc99 | 2009-05-15 22:10:13

HT: Instapundit- Encountering Nemesis.

The problem is that between 2003-2008 there was such hysterical antagonism to Bush that the combatants never worried about the often vicious means they used to achieve their supposedly lofty ends, and so now, finding themselves in a position of responsibility, are infuriated that anyone, well, would even conceive of playing hardball as they once did.

The striking thing about the sudden wounded-fawn Democratic syndrome is that Cheney is far milder than Gore was, that the CIA is not the firebrand Pelosi has been, and Bush has been silent about Obama in a way that even Clinton was not about Bush. If this softball stuff excites such outrage, what will happen if politics really get rough, say, as it was around 2007?

 

Comment by Lisabona | 2009-05-15 22:43:12

AS I read in the CIA memo( I think) was said that,they were able to obtain important information from the detaines, using normal procedures of interogation. But , he also mentioned, the information they received during a five months period, in the end this information, had lost some of the valuble findings. He also mentioned, using a more drastic method of interogation, backfired. Mentioning in the same time,that is very important to get information as soon as possible, because, a longer time will gave the enemy time to change things and reorganize. I’m just thinking, which metod is more efficent.( I don’t like torture and violence)

 

Comment by ghshaeha | 2009-05-15 23:50:09

Hitler’s Program Has Been Revived by the Obama Administration
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LPACTV: Repeal the HMO System NOW!

May 14, 2009 (LPAC)—What would you think about a scholarly article entitled: “What Are the Potential Cost Savings from Legalizing Physician-Assisted Suicide?” If you knew no more than the title, you might wonder if it was written by the grandaddy of British utilitarianism, Jeremy Bentham; or perhaps by LSD-pervert Aldous Huxley; or by Nazi doctor Karl Brandt.

Good guesses… but wrong.

This is the title of a 1998 paper co-authored by Ezekiel Emanuel, a leading adviser to Budget Director Peter Orszag and a member of President Obama’s elite 15-person Federal Coordinating Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research. The Council is charged by the Obama administration with preparing the list of which medical procedures will henceforth be permitted, and which not, with an eye to cutting $2 trillion from health care payments—to be handed over to the bankrupt hedge funds and banks which run the HMOs.

Brandt, Goerring, and Hitler himself have nothing on these modern Nazis. Ezekiel Emanuel’s co-author of the mentioned paper, Margaret Battin—like Emanuel, a bio-ethicist—has written other papers with sick titles like “The Least Worst Death: Selective Refusal of Treatment”; “Terminal Sedation: Pulling the Sheet Over Our Eyes”; and “Assisted Suicide: Can We Learn From Germany?” Is this any different than Hitler’s doctor Karl Brandt’s defense of euthanasia at Nuremberg: “Death can mean deliverance. Death is life—just as much as birth. It was never meant to be murder.”

And don’t forget that, among the means identified at Nuremberg as causing the “murder and ill-treatment of Civilian Populations” was the “inadequate provision of surgical and medical services” — exactly the policies being imposed on the U.S. today by Summers, Geithner, Orszag, and their British masters.

As Lyndon LaRouche stated unequivocally yesterday: “The Hitler program has been revived by the Obama administration.”

“This is straight Nazi stuff,” LaRouche elaborated. “It’s not a quibble; it’s not an interpretation. This is a direct copy of the philosophy of the Nazis. You cannot duck that issue. This is Nazi stuff. And it’s explicit. We know all this stuff from Hermann Goering and so forth in the 1920s, and after that with their international connections, like certain Wall Street firms. We have been warned, and we act accordingly. People who condone this are criminals, because they either knew, or should have known, what they are doing. They either knew, or should have known.”

LaRouche continued: “Please be careful: don’t accept an invitation to sleep at the White House! It might be a longer sleep than you expected…. Every time the question comes up, we should say: ‘This is the tradition of the Fuehrer’s program being maintained. You should be grateful to your insightful President, who has helped to bring this forward. And he’s going to relieve some of the strains of the world by eliminating excess population.’ We keep wondering where we heard that before!”

LaRouche emphasized that the entire HMO system has to be immediately eliminated. “Repeal the HMO’s, period. Because only if you repeal it, do you open the gates for the easy route to the necessary reforms. After you get the HMO’s repealed, after that, then you go with the other programs for rebuilding health care in the U.S., but not before.”

“Don’t accept any discussion or dialogue on Social Security and such issues,” LaRouche advised. “First we have to reduce the costly mismanagement of health care by these insurance companies, by eliminating the HMOs. This will eliminate the biggest factor of waste in the health care system.

“The HMOs just took over and replaced Hill-Burton. There’s no way of compromising on that; you have to be absolutely ruthless. The HMO is a parasite; there’s no question about it. This is all criminal, and we have to deal with it as a crime.

“The point is people get hesitant, and they say: ‘In the meantime, what are we going to do?’ In the meantime? There is no meantime! Either we get these guys out now, or there’s no chance: mass death occurs. That’s what happened with Hitler. There were Jewish communities that also said: ‘Look, don’t fight it, it will go away.’ It’s the same thing today.”

As for the Nazi behavioral economists, LaRouche said, “these guys have to go. Because either these guys are going to go, or the President is going to go. And the President has to think through that choice. Because the American people are not going to put up with this crap. And these guys are going to find that the American people are going to say to the President: ‘You get rid of those guys, or we get rid of you.’ “

 

Comment by Doc99 | 2009-05-16 08:04:02

“I think there are probably very few people in this room or in America who would say that torture should never, ever be used, particularly if thousands of lives are at stake.”

“It’s easy to sit back in the armchair and say that torture can never be used,” he added. “But when you’re in the foxhole, it’s a very different deal.”

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-NY 2004

Link.

Comment by jwrjr | 2009-05-16 11:07:24

Reply to Schumer – You can speak for yourself, but don’t pretend to speak for me.

Comment by Animal Control | 2009-05-16 12:34:23

 
 
 

Comment by Lisabona | 2009-05-16 23:24:44

AS I said, I hate war, violence, torture. One thing is clear for me, if this is the only way to save Americans life,my daughter life, my son, my husband,my father’s life, I think, like me,many Americans , will choose to save the life of their loved once. Specially, remembering Somalia, Islamic insurgents,blindfolded and beheaded Americans, Etiopia, and those who were helped by our Country, and, they still hate America, no matter how much we help anybody in need.

Comment by Elliott | 2009-05-17 00:59:23

With all due respect, torture does not garner information but rather elicits confessions of the false variety. The tortured will say anything that the torturer wants to make it stop. It is used to get people to admit to being witches, heretics, traitors and Al Qaeda bombers working for Saddam. Torture takes time as they have to do it over and over to get them to say what they want them to say. Also we had intelligence on 9/11 and our leaders ignored it. They did not like the accurate intelligence but did like the false stuff to create a casus belli for war.

 
 

Comment by stodgie | 2009-05-18 00:18:52

yawn, whenever i hear faux self righteousness like with this whitehorse guy, the red flags start flying. it must be ever so nice to be so outraged and committed. only problem is the dims are part of the problem and whoever falls for their false flags has been HAD!

 

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