Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush, war criminals to be held accountable for their crimes

[LeftDemocrat]

Senate Report Blames Rumsfeld, Other Top Officials for Detainee Abuses
Senior Officials Sought Advice on "Aggressive" Interrogation Techniques

Posted December 11, 2008

The Senate Armed Services Committee has released a bipartisan report today concluding that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other top administration officials were “directly responsible” for the abuses of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and that their policies led to serious abuses elsewhere.

The report also says “the fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.” Rumsfeld is cited repeatedly for his authorization of “aggressive interrogation techniques” and was the direct cause of abusive techniques across in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Senator John McCain cited an “inexcusable link between abusive interrogation techniques used by our enemies who ignored the Geneva Conventions and interrogation policy for detainees in U.S. custody.” Senator Carl Levin expressed concern that training techniques “designed to give our troops a taste of what they might be subjected to if captured by a ruthless, lawless enemy” were being used against detainees.

http://news.antiwar.com/2008/12/11/senate-report-blames-rumsfeld-others-for-detainee-abuses/

related, from a couple of months back:

CIA officers could face trial in Britain over torture allegations

Attorney General to investigate abuse claims

By Robert Verkaik, Law Editor
Friday, 31 October 2008

Senior CIA officers could be put on trial in Britain after it emerged last night that the Attorney General is to investigate allegations that a British resident held in Guantanamo Bay was brutally tortured, after being arrested and questioned by American forces following the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington in 2001.

The Home Secretary Jacqui Smith has asked Baroness Scotland to consider bringing criminal proceedings against Americans allegedly responsible for the rendition and abuse of Binyam Mohamed, when he was held in prisons in Morocco and Afghanistan.

The development follows criticism of US prosecutors by British judges who have seen secret evidence of torture committed against Mr Mohamed, including allegations his torturers used a razor blade to repeatedly cut him.

The Attorney's investigation is expected to include allegations that MI5 colluded in Mr Mohamed's rendition. Mr Mohamed, 30, an Ethiopian national and British resident, was arrested in Pakistan in 2002, when he was questioned by an MI5 officer.

On Tuesday, Government lawyers wrote to the judges hearing Mr Mohamed's case against the UK government in the High Court.

Richard Stein, of Leigh Day, representing Mr Mohamed in the High Court proceedings, said: "Ultimately the British Government had little choice once they conceded that a case had been made that Binyam Mohamed was tortured. The Convention Against Torture imposes an obligation on signatory states to investigate torture."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/cia-officers-could-face-trial-in-britain-over-torture-allegations-980384.html

and finally, the Amnesty International condemnation of Rummy's little sadistic games:

Remedy and accountability still absent:
Mohammed Jawad subjected to cruel and inhuman treatment in Guantánamo, military judge finds
Index Number: AMR 51/109/2008
Date Published: 1 October 2008

In a ruling dated 24 September 2008, a military judge has concluded that Guantánamo detainee Mohammed Jawad was subjected in Guantánamo in May 2004 to “abusive conduct and cruel and inhuman treatment. However, the judge has provided no real remedy. Amnesty International continues to call for full and impartial investigations into the human rights violations to which Mohammed Jawad and other detainees in US custody have been subjected and for those responsible to be brought to justice.

http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/109/2008/en

[LeftDemocrat]

Glenn Greenwald editorial from Salon.com

More talk of a war crimes trial for Rumsfeld, Bush, Cheney et al.  A unanimous vote in Senate Committee (that means the vote was bi-partisan too) accuses Rumsfeld, and Bush, of murder. 

Here, Greenwald explains how the Senate Cttee is really accusing Bush, Rumsfeld, et al of suborning murder.

Senate report links Bush to detainee homicides
Monday Dec. 15, 2008

The bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report issued on Thursday -- which documents that "former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior U.S. officials share much of the blame for detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba" and "that Rumsfeld's actions were 'a direct cause of detainee abuse' at Guantanamo and 'influenced and contributed to the use of abusive techniques ... in Afghanistan and Iraq'" -- raises an obvious and glaring question:  how can it possibly be justified that the low-level Army personnel carrying out these policies at Abu Ghraib have been charged, convicted and imprisoned, while the high-level political officials and lawyers who directed and authorized these same policies remain free of any risk of prosecution?   The culpability which the Report assigns for these war crimes is vast in scope and unambiguous:

    The executive summary also traces the erosion of detainee treatment standards to a Feb,. 7, 2002, memorandum signed by President George W. Bush...

The policies which the Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously concludes were authorized by Bush, Rumsfeld and several other top Bush officials did not merely lead to "abuse" and humiliating treatment, but are directly -- and unquestionably -- responsible for numerous detainee murders.  Many of those deaths caused by abusive treatment have been formally characterized as "homicides" by autopsies performed in Iraq and Afghanistan (see these chilling compilations of autopsy findings on detainees in U.S. custody, obtained by the ACLU, which reads like a classic and compelling exhibit in a war crimes trial).

While the bulk of the attention over detainee abuse has been directed to Guantanamo, the U.S., to this day, continues to imprison -- with no charges -- thousands of Iraqi citizens.  In Iraq an Afghanistan, detainee deaths were rampant and, to this day, detainees continue to die under extremely suspicious circumstances.  Just yesterday, there was yet another death of a very young Iraqi detainee whose death was attributed to quite unlikely natural causes.

    The U.S. military says a detainee has died of an apparent heart attack while in custody at a U.S. detention facility in Baghdad....

For years, it has been common to attribute detainee deaths to "heart attacks" where the evidence makes clear that abusive interrogation techniques and other inhumane treatment -- the very policies authorized at the highest levels of the U.S. government -- were the actual proximate cause of the deaths.  This deceptive practice was documented in this fact-intensive report -- entitled:  "Medical Investigations of Homicides of Prisoners of War in Iraq and Afghanistan" -- by Steven H. Miles, Professor of Medicine and Bioethics at the University of Minnesota:

    It is probably inevitable that some prisoners who reportedly die of “natural causes” in truth died of homicide...

There are countless other episodes like this of human beings in American custody dying because of the mistreatment -- authorized by Bush, Rumsfeld and others -- to which we subjected them.  These are murders and war crimes in every sense of the word.  That the highest level Bush officials and the President himself are responsible for the policies that spawned these crimes against humanity have been long known to anyone paying minimal attention, but now we have a bipartisan Senate Report -- signed by the presidential nominee of Bush's own political party -- that directly assigns culpability for these war crimes to the President and his policies.  It's nothing less than a formal declaration from the Senate that the President and his top aides are war criminals.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/12/15/rumsfeld/index.html

In an opinion piece published in USA Today:

Blame for Abu Ghraib finally lands at the top

The military's attempt to blame a few "bad apples" for the infamous 2003 Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq always looked like a coverup, and not a very creative one. How, after all, could Abu Ghraib guards and a few low-level commanders be solely responsible for using abusive interrogation practices when similar embarrassments were popping up at prisons in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba?

But that was the story told by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and he and the Pentagon brass stuck to it for four long years after evidence mounted that they were, in fact, at fault.

Now, finally, an authoritative bipartisan report by the Senate Armed Services Committee has concluded, by a 17-0 vote, that Rumsfeld and other top Bush administration officials bear direct responsibility for the abuses that so damaged the American interests.

The panel said in a report Thursday that the guards' tactics were the byproduct of policies spawned by a 2002 memo, signed by President Bush...

No one can forget the photos revealed in 2004, showing grinning U.S. soldiers alongside a pyramid of hooded and naked Iraqi detainees and one detainee collared and leashed like a dog.

But much of the public has forgotten the aftermath, as Rumsfeld and others tried to suppress information and shift blame downward. A gaggle of low-ranking soldiers were charged, and some are serving prison terms. The most senior officer to be reprimanded was an Army Reserve brigadier general who commanded military police at Abu Ghraib. Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, whose investigation found that the abuse was "systemic and illegal," was, in his own words, "ostracized" and forced to resign. Higher-level officials got a pass.

The report carries important lessons.

It underscores that these tactics are both cruel and unproductive: The abuses, the committee found, "damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives" and "strengthened the hand of our enemies." And it places responsibility, finally and unequivocally, where it belongs.

But there is another lesson. That is the enduring power of the Big Lie — the ability of those in power to deny what is obvious, pressure anyone attempting to tell the truth and go on as if nothing happened, unless someone like the senators exposes the truth.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2008/12/blame-for-abu-g.html?csp=34

We at ImpeachOK1 have been asking the U.S. Senate to do its job for some time now.

Unfortunately, the political culture is so backward here in OK1 that the electorate returned a complicit U.S. Senator and a useless U.S Rubber-Stamp to office, instead of finding and electing the investigative politicians we need, the men of gravitas that are needed by their country to stand up for the authority of the legislative branch. 

Also, if in a 17-0 vote, Senators can agree on accusing Rumsfeld, and Bush, of murder, what's stopping them from a last-minute snap impeachment of Bush & Cheney?  In related news, Cheney has incriminated himself on the torture/murder issue, admitting that he too was culpable in this conspiracy to commit war crimes.  The impeachment would be a 1-2 punch, and the executive would be brought down to size again.

Oversight. Congress. Now.

Meanwhile, Rumsfeld is being confronted with his crimes by the Iraqis taking him to court.  He may be out of office, and disgraced for his failures, but he's not out of the hot seat.  Looks like he'll be in the hot seat at least two hundred times, defending himself against accusations, for the rest of his miserable life.

Iraqi group files 200 lawsuits against Rumsfeld, US security firms for torture
Agence France-Presse
Published: Monday December 15, 2008

AMMAN, Dec 15, 2008 (AFP) - A Jordan-based Iraqi rights group said on Monday it has filed 200 lawsuits against US former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and American security firms for their alleged role in torturing Iraqis.

Ali Qeisi, head of the group the "Society of Victims of the US Occupation in Iraq," said the cases, relating to torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners, have been recently filed in federal courts in Virginia, Michigan and Maryland.

"Around 30 lawsuits have been accepted so far," Qeisi told AFP. The others are still under consideration.

"The torture was systemic, and those responsible for it should be punished and the victims should be compensated," he said.

Qeisi said he himself was tortured by US troops in Iraq during a six-month detention, though he refused to elaborate.

Last year, French, US and German rights groups filed suits for torture against Rumsfeld, who was accused by a US bipartisan Senate report last Thursday of being to blame for abuse of detainees in US custody.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Iraqi_group_files_200_lawsuits_against_1215.html

The torture endorsed by Rumsfeld, Cheney, et al., in the White House, has been compared to the worst of Nazi techniques.

[LeftDemocrat]

Cheney admitted, this Monday, to authorizing torture.

US courts have long held that waterboarding, where water is poured into someone's nose and mouth until he nearly drowns, constitutes torture. Our federal War Crimes Act defines torture as a war crime punishable by life imprisonment or even the death penalty if the victim dies.

    Under the doctrine of command responsibility, enshrined in US law, commanders all the way up the chain of command to the commander in chief can be held liable for war crimes if they knew or should have known their subordinates would commit them and they did nothing to stop or prevent it.

    Why is Cheney so sanguine about admitting he is a war criminal?

     Lawyers who wrote the memos that purported to immunize government officials from war crimes liability include John Yoo, Jay Bybee, William Haynes, David Addington and Alberto Gonzales. There is precedent in our law for holding lawyers criminally liable for participating in a common plan to violate the law.

    Committee Chairman Senator Carl Levin told Rachel Maddow that you couldn't legalize what's illegal by having a lawyer write an opinion.

    The committee's report also found that Rumsfeld's authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques for use at Guantanamo Bay was a direct cause of detainee abuse there. Those techniques migrated to Iraq and Afghanistan, where prisoners in US custody were also tortured.

    Former Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee in June 2008 that "there are serving US flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of US combat deaths in Iraq - as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat - are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo."

http://www.truthout.org/121908J
Friday 19 December 2008
by: Marjorie Cohn, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

The Rachel Maddow interview with Senator Carl Levin:

[LeftDemocrat]

Rep. Nadler (8th Congressional District of New York)
Demands Independent Counsel to Investigate Cheney, Rumsfeld

Too bad his letter to the creature from the lagoon, Mukasey, will become a dead letter the moment it arrives at his doorstep.  Full text of Nadler's letter, below.

Honestly, Nadler, you have the power to impeach the SOBs, so why don't you impeach rather than going hat in hand to someone likes Mukasey?

Nadler Calls for Prosecution of Cheney, Rumsfeld

afterdowningstreet.org
Submitted by davidswanson
December 19, 2008

Vice President Cheney’s Remarks to ABC News Reporter Appear to Admit Criminal Activity and Senate Report Appears to Implicate Rumsfeld

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Congressman Jerrold Nadler (NY-08), Chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, today urged Attorney General Michael Mukasey to appoint an independent counsel to investigate Vice President Richard Cheney, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and other senior administration officials for violations of the law relating to the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody.

In a recent interviewed with Jonathan Karl of ABC News, Vice President Cheney said of the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, “I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared … And I supported it.”

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was subjected to waterboarding.

Congressman Nadler wrote to the Attorney General, “The Vice President’s public admission that he was ‘aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared’ is deeply disturbing. It implicates the Vice President in activity which appears to have been a direct violation of our criminal laws against the use of torture.” Congressman Nadler continued, “Waterboarding has always, except in self serving legal memos and statements by the Bush Administration, been regarded as torture. In 1948, the United States tried, convicted, and hanged Japanese generals for waterboarding Allied prisoners.”

“This shocking admission by the Vice President demands at a minimum a federal investigation and, if necessary, the pursuit of criminal charges,” said Congressman Nadler. “No one is above the law and, if the Vice President admits he broke the law, then he must be held responsible.”

Also, a newly released bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report found that “Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques for use at Guantanamo Bay was a direct cause of detainee abuse there.” “If that doesn’t demand an independent counsel, I don’t know what does,” said Congressman Nadler.

Congressman Nadler has been an active critic of executive abuses for many years. He has held numerous hearings on the Bush Administration’s violations of our civil liberties, including hearings on the issue of torture and extraordinary rendition.

The full letter to the Attorney General follows:

December 19, 2008

Honorable Michael B. Mukasey
Attorney General of the United States
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530‑0001

Dear Mr. Attorney General:

I am writing to urge you to appoint an independent counsel to investigate Vice President Richard Cheney, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and other senior administration officials, for violations of the law relating to the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody, and, if appropriate, to pursue criminal charges.

As you may know, Vice President Cheney was recently interviewed by Jonathan Karl of ABC News.[1] In that interview, the Vice President engaged in the following exchange:

KARL: Did you authorize the tactics that were used against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

CHENEY: I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the agency in effect came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn't do. And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it.[2]

As we know, those interrogation techniques included so-called “waterboarding.” There is no question that waterboarding is an egregious form of torture. Waterboarding has always, except in self serving legal memos and statements by the Bush Administration, been regarded as torture. In 1948, the United States tried, convicted, and hanged Japanese generals for waterboarding Allied prisoners.

As you know, federal law makes it a crime to commit torture, or to engage in a conspiracy to commit torture.[3] The statute provides for a prison term of up to 20 years, or, if death results from the torture, a sentence of death.[4]

The Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties received compelling testimony from Malcolm Nance, a former instructor at the U.S. Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE). As part of SEER training, instructors employed “dramatic and highly kinetic coercive interrogation methods through hands-on, live demonstrations and a simulated captive environment, which inoculated our students to the experience of a high-intensity stress and duress.”[5]

Mr. Nance went on to describe one of the techniques:

Some of these coercive physical techniques have been identified in the media as enhanced interrogation techniques. The most severe of those employed by SERE was waterboarding . . . . Most media representations or recreations of the waterboarding are inaccurate, amateurish, and dangerous improvisations which do not capture the true intensity of the act. Contrary to popular opinion, it is not a simulation of drowning. It is drowning. In my case, the technique was so fast and professional that I didn’t know what was happening until the water entered my nose and throat. It then pushes down into the trachea and starts to process a respiratory degradation. It is an overwhelming experience that induces horror, triggers a frantic survival instinct. As the event unfolded, I was fully conscious of what was happening: I was being tortured.[6]

The Vice President’s public admission that he was “aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared” is deeply disturbing. It implicates the Vice President in this activity which appears to have been a direct violation of our criminal laws against the use of torture.

Similarly, a recent report issued by the Senate Armed Services Committee found that “Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques for use at Guantanamo Bay was a direct cause of detainee abuse there.”[7] Additional evidence shows that other top officials also were involved in authorizing similar activities.

In view of the fact that this policy was set and approved at the very highest level of the administration, it is impossible for the Department of Justice to investigate the matter without, at the very least, the appearance of a conflict of interest. It is important that the American people have confidence that their leaders are subject to the rule of law, and that those charged with enforcing the law do so without fear or favor. In this case, the Vice President of the United States has admitted to engaging in activities for which this nation has tried and executed individuals from other nations, most notably the major Japanese war criminals following World War II. Such a serious admission cannot go uninvestigated and, because it is the Vice President, his conduct cannot credibly be investigated and evaluated by anyone in the executive branch.

For these reasons, I urge you to appoint an independent counsel to investigate the actions of Vice President Richard Cheney, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and other senior administration officials as they relate to the torture or mistreatment of prisoners in U.S. custody.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Jerrold Nadler
Chairman
Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights,
and Civil Liberties


[1]http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=6464697&page=1 (Last visited December 17, 2008).

[2]Id.

[3]18 U.S.C. 2340A.

[4]Id.

[5]Torture and the Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment of Detainees: the Effectiveness and Consequences of ‘Enhanced’ Interrogation, Hearing before the Subcomm. on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties of the House Judiciary Committee, at 22 (Testimony of Malcolm Nance)(Nov. 8, 2007).

[6]Id.

[7] Senate Armed Services Committee Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody at xxviii, available at: http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/supporting/2008/Detainees.121108.pdf (last vistied December 19, 2008).

###

Jerrold Nadler has served in Congress since 1992. He represents New York’s 8th Congressional District, which includes parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn.

[LeftDemocrat]

The nation's newspaper of record condemns Rumsfeld, etc.

Still shy of explicitly endorsing prosecution for Cheney's involvement, the editorial board of the NYTimes does suggest that a presidential order was involved in the illegalities, suggesting that Bush too, should be prosecuted.

Editorial
The Torture Report

Published: December 17, 2008

Most Americans have long known that the horrors of Abu Ghraib were not the work of a few low-ranking sociopaths. All but President Bush’s most unquestioning supporters recognized the chain of unprincipled decisions that led to the abuse, torture and death in prisons run by the American military and intelligence services.

Now, a bipartisan report by the Senate Armed Services Committee has made what amounts to a strong case for bringing criminal charges against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld; his legal counsel, William J. Haynes; and potentially other top officials, including the former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff.

The report shows how actions by these men “led directly” to what happened at Abu Ghraib, in Afghanistan, in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in secret C.I.A. prisons.

It said these top officials, charged with defending the Constitution and America’s standing in the world, methodically introduced interrogation practices based on illegal tortures...

The officials then issued legally and morally bankrupt documents to justify their actions, starting with a presidential order saying that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to prisoners of the “war on terror” — the first time any democratic nation had unilaterally reinterpreted the conventions.

That order set the stage for the infamous redefinition of torture at the Justice Department, and then Mr. Rumsfeld’s authorization of “aggressive” interrogation methods. Some of those methods were torture by any rational definition and many of them violate laws and treaties against abusive and degrading treatment.

These top officials ignored warnings from lawyers in every branch of the armed forces that they were breaking the law...

full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/opinion/18thu1.html?_r=1

Impeach, without delay!  Indict, the moment they are stripped of office!  Full prosecution, in an open court, without delay!

[LeftDemocrat]

The Nation chimes in, calling for a Reckoning over war crimes committed in the past 8 years.

"We owe the American people a reckoning."
~Eric Holder

In the opinion of some legal scholars publishing their views last week, the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague (Europe) might be a more suitable place to try American war criminals, via their extradition, if justice cannot be done under Obama and his future Att'y Gen'l Holder.  In the article below, by "High Contracting Party," read ICC.

Will War Crimes Be Outed?
By Jeremy Brecher & Brendan Smith
December 17, 2008

As the officials of the Bush administration pack up in Washington and move into their posh suburban homes around the country, will they be able to rest easy, or will they be haunted by the fear that they will be held accountable for war crimes?

The repose of the Cheneys, Bushes, Gonzaleses and Rumsfelds may not turn out to be so undisturbed. In his notorious torture memo, Alberto Gonzales warned about "prosecutors and independent counsels" who may in the future decide to pursue "unwarranted charges" based on the US War Crimes Act's prohibition on violations of the Geneva Conventions.

charges are likely to grow only more unavoidable once the former officials of that administration have lost the authority to quash them.

In April Obama said that if elected, he would have his attorney general initiate a prompt review of Bush-era action to distinguish between possible "genuine crimes" and "really bad policies."

Obama's nominee for attorney general, Eric Holder, speaking to the American Constitution Society in June, described Bush administration actions in terms that sound a whole lot more like "genuine crimes" than like "really bad policies":

    Our government authorized the use of torture, approved of secret electronic surveillance against American citizens, secretly detained American citizens without due process of law, denied the writ of habeas corpus to hundreds of accused enemy combatants and authorized the use of procedures that violate both international law and the United States Constitution.... We owe the American people a reckoning."

A growing body of legal opinion holds that Obama will have a duty to investigate war crimes allegations and, if they are found to have merit, to prosecute the perpetrators.

In a December 3 Chicago Sun-Times op-ed, law professors Anthony D'Amato (the Leighton Professor at Northwestern University School of Law) and Jordan J. Paust (the Mike & Thersa Baker Professor at the Law Center of the University of Houston) ask whether president-elect Barack Obama will have "the duty to prosecute or extradite persons who are reasonably accused of having committed and abetted war crimes or crimes against humanity during the Bush administration's admitted 'program' of 'coercive interrogation' and secret detention that was part of a 'common, unifying' plan to deny protections under the Geneva Conventions."

They answer, "Yes."

"Under the US Constitution, the president is expressly and unavoidably bound to faithfully execute the laws." The 1949 Geneva Conventions "expressly and unavoidably requires that all parties search for perpetrators of grave breaches of the treaty" and bring them before their own courts for "effective penal sanctions" or, if they prefer, "hand such persons over for trial to another High Contracting Party."

The statement is particularly authoritative--and particularly striking--because Paust is also a former captain in the United States Army JAG Corps and member of the faculty at the Judge Advocate General's School.

Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights says that one of Barack Obama's first acts as president should be to "instruct his attorney general to appoint an independent prosecutor to initiate a criminal investigation of former Bush Administration officials who gave the green light to torture."

When both the Army JAG Corps and the human rights NGOs are agreeing, you know there's going to be a criminal investigation.  Let's hope it gets started right off the bat, with Obama's first days in office.

An Accountability Movement

Outside the Beltway, a movement to hold Bush administration officials accountable for torture and other war crimes after they leave office is gradually emerging. It received a boost when over a hundred lawyers and activists met in Andover, Massachusetts on September 20 at a conference entitled "Planning for the Prosecution of High Level American War Criminals." The conference created an ongoing committee to coordinate accountability efforts. At the close, conference convener Dean Lawrence Velvel of the Massachusetts School of Law noted more than twenty strategies and specific actions that had been proposed, ranging from the state felony prosecutions proposed by former district attroney Vincent Bugliosi to the international prosecutions pioneered by the Center for Constitutional Rights' Rumsfeld cases; and from impeaching Bush appointees like Federal Judge Jay Bybee to public shaming of torture-tainted former officials like John Yew, now a professor at the University of California Law School.

One of proposals discussed at the Andover conference was the creation of a citizens' War Crimes Documentation Center, modeled on the special office set up by the Allied governments before the end of World War II to investigate and document Nazi war crimes. Such a center could be the nexus for research, education and coordination of a wide range of civil society forces in the US and abroad that are demanding accountability. It could bring together the extensive but scattered evidence already available, to compile a narrative of what actually happened in the Bush administration. It could help or pressure Congress to conduct investigations to fill in the blanks. It could pull together high-profile coalitions to campaign around the issue of accountability for specific crimes like torture. If Obama does initiate some kind of investigating commission, such a center could provide it with information and help hold it accountable.

There are a myriad of reasons for urgently holding the Bush regime to account, ranging from preventing unchallenged executive action from setting new legal precedent to providing a compelling rationale for the immediate cessation of bombing civilians in the escalating Afghan war.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20081229/brecher_smith?rel=hp_currently

Clearly, ImpeachOK1 would be a local supporter of any such Accountability Movement, as part of the American homegrown effort to obtain justice in response to the war crimes committed.

Tulsans believe in the rule of law. 

Further reading:

Jeremy Brecher, Brendan Smith and Jill Cutler, In the Name of Democracy: American War Crimes in Iraq and Beyond (Metropolitan/Holt). Brecher is a co-founder of WarCrimesWatch.org

[LeftDemocrat]

When you look at it the way the U.S. Senate now does, the argument made previously by Elizabeth de la Vega for impeaching the whole conspiratorial cadre makes all the more sense.  Unfortunately, the U.S. House is of lesser brain and less keen to protect the U.S. Constitution, despite their collective oath to uphold it.

Here, in the article excerpted below, Worthington provides excellent analysis, and thorough grounds for, in particular, the impeachment, indictment and imprisonment of Cheney, as we at ImpeachOK1 have always thought should be a priority for the U.S. House.

December 26, 2008
The Ten Lies of Dick Cheney

by Andy Worthington

On December 11, the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a compelling report into the torture and abuse of prisoners in US custody...

Those singled out for blame include President George W. Bush (for stripping prisoners of the protections of the Geneva Conventions in February 2002, which paved the way for all the abuse that followed), former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney's former legal counsel (and now chief of staff) David Addington, former Pentagon general counsel William J. Haynes II, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers, former White House general counsel (and later US Attorney General) Alberto Gonzales, former White House deputy counsel Timothy Flanigan, former Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee, former Justice Department legal adviser John Yoo, former Guantánamo commanders Maj. Gen. Michael Dunlavey and Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, and Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the former commander of coalition forces in Iraq.

The one senior official who was not mentioned – presumably because of the talent for remaining behind the scenes that once earned him the secret service nickname "Backseat" – was Dick Cheney.

Cheney's most significant recent remark was his first admission in public that he was involved in approving the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks (who, it should be noted, claimed responsibility for the attacks before he was captured by US forces). However, the entire interview is worth looking at, as Cheney's version of the truth does not stand up to scrutiny, and features ten lies that should not be allowed to pass without further comment and analysis.

1. On the supposed legality of unauthorized wiretapping

THE LIE: Although the Bush administration secured Congressional approval for the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) in the week after the 9/11 attacks...the approval for the warrantless surveillance of communications to and from the United States that followed on September 25 was neither "legal" nor "constitutional."  Far from being "legal" and "constitutional," the secret memorandum was the first brazen attempt by the key policymakers (in the Office of the Vice President and the Pentagon) to use the AUMF as cover for an unprecedented expansion of presidential power that was intended to cut Congress, the judiciary, and all other government departments out of the loop.

2. On the definition of torture

THE LIE: The claim, "we don't do torture," which President Bush has also peddled on numerous occasions, is an outright lie. The definition of torture, as laid down in the UN Convention Against Torture, to which the US is a signatory, is "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person." However, in the summer of 2002 (obviously with Cheney's knowledge), John Yoo, with input from Addington, Gonzales and Flanigan, drafted another secret memorandum, issued on August 1 (PDF), which has become known as the "Torture Memo." This extraordinary document – one of the most legally manipulative in the whole of the "War on Terror" – attempted to claim that, for the pain inflicted to count as torture, it "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

Last summer, Yoo confirmed that Addington was responsible for another of the memo's radical claims – that, as Commander in Chief, the President could authorize torture if he felt that it was necessary – and also confirmed that a second opinion was signed off on August 1, 2002, which, unlike the first (leaked after the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004) has never been made public. An unnamed source cited by Gellman and Becker explained that this second memo contained a long list of techniques approved for use by the CIA, which included waterboarding, but apparently drew the line at threatening to bury a prisoner alive.

As a result, all Cheney's talk of "careful" and "cautious" legal advice is nothing more than a failed attempt to justify redefining torture.

3. On tainted intelligence obtained through torture

THE LIE: With exquisite timing, Cheney's bombastic pronouncements about the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and its supposed value coincided with the publication, in Vanity Fair, of an article by David Rose, in which a number of senior officials from both the FBI and the CIA directly refuted Cheney's claims. A former senior CIA official, who read all the interrogation reports from KSM's torture in secret CIA custody, explained that "90 percent of it was total fucking bullshit," and a former Pentagon analyst added, "KSM produced no actionable intelligence. He was trying to tell us how stupid we were."

4. On approval for the use of torture on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

THE LIE: Cheney's explanation of how he came to "support" the CIA program that was responsible for the torture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (and numerous other "high-value detainees") suggests that he was little more than an adviser for a preconceived project. Yet again, nothing could be further from the truth.

To understand why, it is necessary to examine how the "Torture Memos" of August 2002 came about, by looking at the events of November 13, 2001, when, under the cover of his regular weekly meeting with the President, Cheney played the leading role in circulating and gaining approval for a presidential order that authorized the President to seize "terror suspects" anywhere in the world and imprison them as "enemy combatants" without charge or trial, (or, if required, to try them in Military Commissions, which were empowered to accept secret evidence and evidence obtained through torture).

Cheney told the US Chamber of Commerce that terrorists do not "deserve to be treated as prisoners of war." It took him another ten weeks to persuade the President to agree with him.  CIA representatives pressed for removing the protections of the Geneva Conventions in mid-January 2002, but it's also clear that Cheney had a similar plan in mind at least two months earlier. ... The development of the entire program, from November 13, 2001 to August 1, 2002, in which prisoners were defined as "enemy combatants," stripped of all rights so that they could be interrogated, and then set up for torture, was driven not by the CIA but by Cheney and his close advisers.

5. On the prisoners in Guantánamo

THE LIE: Cheney's description of the remaining prisoners as "the hardcore" is typical, but by no means accurate... Given that around 80 prisoners have been released since Cheney made this last pronouncement, it's clear that his talk of "hardcore" prisoners is a repeated lie, adjusted according to how many prisoners are actually held at Guantánamo.

In addition, Cheney's unsubstantiated claim about the remaining prisoners ignores the fact that, as I explained at length in The Guantánamo Files, and have repeatedly described in articles, the majority of the prisoners at Guantánamo were captured not by US forces, but by their Afghan and Pakistani allies, at a time when the US military was offering substantial bounty payments. ...   As former insider Lt. Col. Stephen Abraham has eloquently explained, the entire process was designed not to provide justice, but to defend the administration's blanket assertions that the prisoners were ostensibly "enemy combatants."

6. On the prisoners' rights

THE LIE: As far as the Supreme Court is concerned, the pretense that Guantánamo was beyond the reach of US law, and that the prisoners could be held without rights, was demolished in June 2004, when the highest court in the land ruled in Rasul v. Bush that Guantánamo was "territory over which the United States exercises exclusive jurisdiction and control," and that, because the prisoners denied that they had "engaged in or plotted acts of aggression against this country," and had "never been afforded access to any tribunal, much less charged with and convicted of wrongdoing," they had habeas corpus rights; in other words, the right to challenge the basis of their detention before an impartial judge.

The administration then persuaded Congress to remove these rights in two appalling pieces of legislation – the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 – but the Supreme Court restored their habeas corpus rights in another landmark case in June 2008, Boumediene v. Bush, and made sure that Cheney could not persuade Congress to remove them again by ruling that this time their rights were constitutional.

The prisoners have therefore had "certain legal rights" since June 2004, although it is clear that Cheney still does not regard Supreme Court rulings as having any impact on the President's whims as the Commander-in-Chief of a self-declared war without end.

7. On conditions at Guantánamo

THE LIE: It is hard to conceive of a manner in which the prisoners at Guantánamo are "well treated."  The prisoners in Guantánamo – who have never been charged with a crime, let alone convicted – are deprived of almost all "comfort items" to relieve the crushing monotony of their daily lives and the desperate uncertainty of their fate. They have, for example, never received a single visit from their loved ones, they are still hurled into isolation cells or beaten by armored response teams for the slightest infraction of the rules, and if they protest their seemingly endless imprisonment without charge or trial by embarking on hunger strikes, they are force-fed in the most brutal manner, even though force-feeding competent prisoners is illegal.

8. On the Military Commissions at Guantánamo

THE LIE: I have covered the Military Commissions in depth over the last year and a half, and at no point has it ever been demonstrated that the system dreamt up by Cheney and Addington in November 2001 is "fair and honest." Every defense attorney appointed by the government has risked his or her career by openly criticizing the system, and several prosecutors have resigned in protest at what they regarded as a rigged system, the most significant being Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor, who complained of political interference, and Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, who complained that evidence vital to the defense was routinely withheld. Both stories were covered in detail in my article, "The Dark Heart of the Guantánamo Trials."

Two prisoners who were juveniles when seized (Omar Khadr and Mohamed Jawad) have been put forward for trials, despite claims that the allegations against them are rigged. 

In the rest of the world, these commissions would be referred to as show trials.

9. On the alleged recidivism of released prisoners

THE LIE: The claim that 30 former prisoners "ended up back on the battlefield" is a staple of Pentagon propaganda, even though it has never been backed up with evidence.  The Pentagon regarded merely speaking out about Guantánamo as "returning to the battlefield." 

The true number of prisoners who have "returned to the battlefield" is certainly less than the number quoted by the Pentagon – and by Dick Cheney – although it should also be noted that, even if it were correct, a recidivism rate of 6 percent is considerably lower than in any other US prison, and indicates, of course, that a large number of those released were not terrorists or militants in the first place.

10. On the reason for invading Iraq

THE LIE: Brazen to the end, Cheney has clung to the WMD deception as though it had ever been anything other than an excuse for regime change following the illegal invasion of a sovereign country, drive by a deranged desire to gain geopolitical supremacy and establish an ill-defined facsimile of the American political and economic system in the heart of the Middle East.

No one credible agrees with Cheney's assessment of Saddam Hussein's weapons capabilities – or his intentions – and in addition, of course, Cheney has a colorful and reprehensible record of bullying the intelligence agencies into finding reasons to invade Iraq.

In sum:

Some of the cruelest manifestations of unfettered executive power and disdain for the rule of law that the United States has ever experienced.

full article and full analysis of each of the 10 lies spewing out of Cheney's mouth: http://www.antiwar.com/worthington/?articleid=13952

See related threads on this board, about unauthorized wiretapping and spying on Americans by the Bush-Cheney conspirators, about Guantanamo and torture as grounds for impeachment, or about Cheney as war criminal and general bonehead.

If you don't know what a show trial is, the U.S. with its so-called "military commissions" is in fact imitating its Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union, whose Communist Party sentenced harmless political rivals to death on trumped up charges, most notoriously, under Stalin.   Well done, Busheviks!!

[LeftDemocrat]

Yet more grounds for a war crimes tribunal, to bring BushCo to book. 

What have we become, with a sadist-in-chief instead of a commander-in-chief?

FBI E-Mail Says Bush Authorized Abuse of Iraqi Detainees
Written by Jason Leopold   
Friday, 02 January 2009 15:04

An e-mail written by a senior FBI agent in Iraq in 2004 specifically stated that President George W. Bush had signed an Executive Order approving the use of military dogs, sleep deprivation and other tactics to intimidate Iraqi detainees.

The FBI e-mail--dated May 22, 2004--followed disclosures about abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and sought guidance on whether FBI agents in Iraq were obligated to report the U.S. military’s harsh interrogation of inmates when that treatment violated FBI standards but fit within the guidelines of a presidential Executive Order.

The FBI e-mail was obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

The ACLU has called on Congress to demand that a special prosecutor be appointed to investigate whether the President and other officials broke federal and international laws, “including the War Crimes Act, the federal Anti-Torture Act, and federal assault laws.”

FBI e-mail’s reference to an Executive Order describing specific harsh interrogation techniques, allegedly approved by President Bush, appeared to contradict Gonzales’s assertions.

The article goes on to detail Alberto Gonzales's lies: http://pubrecord.org/nationworld/595-fbi-e-mail-says-bush-authorized-abuse-of-iraqi-detainees.html

Clearly the man was unfit to be Attorney General, as he sacrificed U.S. laws on the altar of his misplaced loyalty to the sadist-in-chief.

Also likely to appear in the dock, in the upcoming war crimes trial, will be John Yoo (at present enjoying an unjust sinecure as part of academia).

The issue surrounding U.S. interrogation methods and whether they amount to torture resurfaced last April when the Defense Department released an 81-page document in response to the ACLU’s FOIA lawsuit.

John Yoo, then a deputy in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, drafted the document, dated March 14, 2003

The legal opinion for military interrogators was virtually identical to an earlier memo that Yoo had written in August 2002 for CIA interrogators. Widely called the “Torture Memo,” it [ostensibly] provided CIA interrogators with the legal authority to use long-outlawed tactics.

When the U.S. joined the 1984 convention it entered an ‘understanding’ on the definition of torture, to the effect that the international definition was to be read as being consistent with the U.S. definition

However, on March 8, 2008, President Bush vetoed congressional legislation that called for a specific ban on waterboarding and other abusive interrogation techniques, including stripping prisoners naked, subjecting them to extreme cold and staging mock executions.

http://pubrecord.org/nationworld/595-fbi-e-mail-says-bush-authorized-abuse-of-iraqi-detainees.html

According to the wiki on John Yoo, which also lists the memos that will be used in the prosecution of Yoo for suborning war crimes: "Student protesters at Berkeley have demanded, to no avail, that he renounce the torture memos or resign his professorship."

"Glenn Greenwald has argued that Yoo could potentially be indicted for crimes against the laws and customs of war, the crime of torture, and/or crimes against humanity." 
See the article published online: "John Yoo's War Crimes" written by Glenn Greenwald (2008-04-02)
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/04/02/yoo/

Yoo is also among many of the Busheviks who need be wary about travelling abroad, as the long arm of the law --international law, in this case-- will likely nab him the moment he steps outside the country.  For example, Germany would not be a good place for Yoo to visit:

On 14th November 2006, invoking the principle of command responsibility, German attorney Wolfgang Kaleck filed a complaint with the German Federal Attorney General (Generalbundesanwalt) against Yoo, along with 13 others for his alleged complicity in torture and other crimes against humanity at Abu Ghraib in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Mr. Kaleck acted on behalf of 11 alleged victims of torture and other human rights abuses, as well as about 30 human rights activists and organizations. The co-plaintiffs to the war crimes prosecution included Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Martín Almada, Theo van Boven, Sister Dianna Ortiz, and Veterans for Peace.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Yoo

Yoo worked for the neo-con war criminal incubator known as the American Enterprise Institute.  Professor Yoo is also an active member of the The Federalist Society, which society apparently underwrites Yoo's cockamamy theory of an imperialist president, Nazi style.

Yoo is also behind the illegal spying of Americans (see related thread on this discussion board).

[LeftDemocrat]

As Olbermann and Turley explain in this clip, we can't get accountability in this country because Obama (for gawd only knows what reason) is protecting the former vice-president, former president, and former OLC lawyers that counseled torturing detainees.

Instead, we can look to a foreign tribunal to prosecute, it appears.

Spanish courts prosecution of Bush attorneys may be start to going after Cheney
March 31, 2009

therawstory
Turley: Spanish courts may be building case against Cheney
David Edwards and Stephen C. Webster

According to constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley, the prosecution of Bush's so-called "torture lawyers" might just give Spanish prosecutors the "low lying fruit" needed to bring a case against Vice President Cheney.

Appearing on Monday night's edition of MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, George Washington University law professor Turley said that although President Obama is "protecting" the former administration from prosecution, the Spanish investigation could serve as a point of leverage.

By targeting attorneys who wrote legal justifications for torture, said Turley, prosecutors are going "for the first line of defendants."

"And then if you have a case, you go for the higher ones," he added.

Referencing Seymor Hersh's allegation that an "executive assassination ring" reported directly to the former Vice President — and the apparent confirmation of the allegation's veracity by a former Cheney aide — Olbermann wondered, "Should the Spanish prosecutors be taking notes?"

http://impeachforpeace.org/impeach_bush_blog/?p=6011

Link includes video clip from Keith Olbermann primetime TV show.

[LeftDemocrat]

David Swanson discusses Elizabeth de la Vega, who has called for accountability for the perpetrators of war crimes, from Bush and Cheney on down.

Swanson's point:  Justice delayed is justice denied.  Public pressure is needed in the streets now in order to avoid a whitewash from feckless Dems.

Reasons Not to Delay Putting Cheney in Prison

By davidswanson - Posted on 11 May 2009



Many Americans want accountability in order to deter repetition. Narratives and victims' statements do not accomplish that.

De la Vega is a prosecutor, not a politician, not a historian, and not an activist. She believes that it is just as likely that people like Cheney will be prosecuted years from now as it is that they will be prosecuted soon. She believes it is just as likely that the whole gang will be prosecuted in one giant conspiracy case as it is that people like Bybee and Yoo will go down before Cheney and Bush are indicted. She believes, or at least considers it possible, that the U.S. Justice Department intends to enforce the law and is in fact delaying in order to acquire more evidence. She believes not only that decisions to prosecute shouldn't be based on political pressure, but that in fact they are not.

Here's de la Vega's fantasy view of Obama and Holder:

    "Notwithstanding the public statements that the president and attorney general made in connection with the release of the memos, I find cause for optimism in their actions. No smart lawyer who secretly wanted this entire issue to disappear would have released those torture memos. From a prosecutor's point of view, the release of those memos with their authors' names in full view was pretty much the same as releasing their photographs with bloody knives in hand. The president and the attorney general may not have said much, but what they did was quietly flip the switch on a searing bright light."

Department of Justice already had those memos and has many more we haven't seen and much other evidence besides. They have the evidence they are supposedly waiting for in de la Vega's account, which confuses public desires for yet more evidence with the same desire by prosecutors. At the same time, de la Vega believes that announcing an investigation would be a public relations stunt, that a serious prosecution should proceed quietly. She misses the Obama-Reid-Leahy-Democratic strategy entirely, which explains the stunt of releasing the latest handful of memos without requiring that we set aside every word that has come out of their mouths.

The president and leading Democrats want to expose the evidence as campaign ads against Republicans. They want criminal activities to become Republican behavior that is remedied not by enforcing laws but by electing Democrats. They want President Obama and all future presidents to maintain the powers of detention, rendition, and torture, and the power to make law by decree, with Americans voting for the party that will abuse those powers less. They want to make Republicans look awful and then be seen as befriending the Republicans nonetheless.

Reid does not want to talk about Democrats' complicity in the Bush-Cheney crimes or the criminal activities of the Clinton or Obama years, which is why he favors closed-door "investigations."

Well, then, perhaps de la Vega is onto something. Perhaps we should all hush up about enforcing the laws, let the Democrats expose more evidence believing it's just campaign ads, and then spring into action with prosecutions. Here's what's wrong with this: First, we have more than enough evidence to put many members of the Bush-Cheney administration away for many crimes. The more we threaten action, the more Cheney goes on television and confesses. A special prosecutor who actually tried to investigate would acquire a great deal of additional evidence.

Second, while a well-trained lawyer like de la Vega who believes in the rule of law finds it hard to resist delaying in hopes of gaining even more evidence, Reid is exactly right that it will be easier to claim that the crimes are behind us and not worth dredging up, the more time goes by.

Delaying means taking a tremendous risk. The window through which public pressure can force prosecutions is open now, but too many advocates are counseling delay. In the case of human rights groups calling for panels and commissions, this is mostly a function of top-down organizations taking their direction from the Democratic party. But that party's strategy is to delay until it becomes more difficult to mobilize public demand for action.

Third, there is a real problem with statutes of limitations. While de la Vega helpfully points out that if certain arguments can be won, some crimes can be prosecuted for longer than is often believed, she says nothing about most of the crimes of Bush and Cheney, the spying, the election fraud, the Hatch Act violations, the misspending of funds, the domestic propaganda, etc., etc. Only if a prosecutor can be persuaded to take on a larger conspiracy rather than a single crime, can an argument be made for starting the clock at a later point in time.

Why shouldn't our strategy be intense public pressure through the media, direct nonviolent action, and election challenges all aimed at forcing the appointment of a special prosecutor immediately, followed by further escalated pressure to demand swift prosecutions?

Missing from de la Vega's [assessment] is the need to restore power to Congress and strip it from the president. Congress will have to be pushed, kicking and screaming, into reclaiming power. It does not want it. The most likely breakthroughs include impeachments, starting with Jay Bybee (an impeachment hearing and trial also being an ideal tool for exposing information to the public), and re-issuing and enforcing subpeonas. We could force passage of the State Secrets Protection Act, of the Lee-Wexler bill to create a select committee, and of the Baldwin resolution on executive branch accountability. But all of these things would become easier with prosecutions underway. Congressman Jerrold Nadler says impeaching Bybee will wait for a decision on prosecutions.

If public pressure intensifies, we can compel, prosecutions, commissions, panels, public apologies, and a full restoration of both the rule of law and representation of the public through a legislature that makes public and enforceable laws. Justice delayed is likely to be justice denied entirely.

http://www.davidswanson.org/node/1792

[LeftDemocrat]

I'm watching Cheney tie his own noose.   With pressure having previously been on six lawyers from the Bush administration, it is now revealed that they were doing the bidding fo the former VP.   Remember that pap about Abu Ghraib having been "a few bad apples"?  The rot started at the top.

Cheney Led Briefings of Lawmakers To Propound "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" (Torture)

By Paul Kane and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Former vice president Richard B. Cheney personally oversaw at least four briefings with senior members of Congress about the controversial interrogation program, part of a secretive and forceful defense he mounted throughout 2005 in an effort to maintain support for the harsh techniques used on detainees.

The Cheney-led briefings came at some of the most critical moments for the program, as congressional oversight committees were threatening to investigate or even terminate the techniques, according to lawmakers, congressional officials, and current and former intelligence officials.

Cheney's role in helping handle intelligence issues in the Bush administration -- particularly his advocacy for the use of aggressive methods and warrantless wiretapping against alleged terrorists -- has been well documented. But his hands-on role in defending the interrogation program to lawmakers has not been previously publicized.

The CIA made no mention of his role in documents delivered to Capitol Hill last month that listed every lawmaker who had been briefed on "enhanced interrogation techniques" since 2002. For meetings that were overseen by Cheney, the agency told the intelligence committees that information about who oversaw those briefings was "not available."

The revelations do not shed light on whether top Democrats, as Republicans contend, were aware that waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning, was being used on terrorism suspects as early as the fall of 2002. That discussion has dominated Capitol Hill since last month, when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who was not present at any of the briefings that included Cheney, accused the agency of intentionally misleading her in a 2002 briefing about the use of waterboarding.

An official who witnessed one of Cheney's briefing sessions with lawmakers said the vice president's presence appeared calculated to give additional heft to the CIA's case for maintaining the program. Cheney left it to the professional briefers to outline the interrogation practices, while he mounted an impassioned defense of the program.

The CIA declined to comment on why Cheney's presence in some meetings was left out of the records.  For all but seven of the 40 meetings listed, however, the documents outlined which agency led the briefing and which provided support. And on at least five occasions, they spelled out that then-CIA Director Michael V. Hayden led the classified meetings.

Several members of Congress who took part in the Cheney meetings declined to comment on them, citing secrecy concerns. But there was little doubt that he was leading the charge on the issue.

"His office was ground zero. It was his office you dealt with at the end of the day," recalled Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), who jousted with Cheney over the system of interrogations.

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.

In the meetings with lawmakers, Cheney was adamant that the enhanced interrogations were needed to preserve national security, according to two participants. He advocated briefing more lawmakers about the program, against the wishes of National Security Council officials who sought to inform only the top members of the intelligence committees.

On Nov. 2, 2005, The Washington Post published a detailed account of the CIA's secret overseas prison system.

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.

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.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/02/AR2009060203999_pf.html

Prepare to see Cheney, Addington, and Goss all in the docket, at the coming war crimes trial.

[LeftDemocrat]

After a hiatus of almost 3 years, I'm happy to revive this thread on using the law to hold Rumsfeld accountable for his crimes.  While we at ImpeachOK1 have been thwarted by the Obama administration in our desire to see a war crimes investigation and prosecution of Rumsfeld, we are nonetheless gratified to see, instead of the much-needed criminal investigation, at least there is a civil suit being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of Rumsfeld's victims. 

This state believes in victims' rights, doesn't it?

Mother of tortured U.S. citizen appeals case to Supreme Court
By Eric W. Dolan
Monday, April 23, 2012 17:19 EDT

Topics: former defense secretary donald rumsfeld ♦ Jose Padilla ♦ supreme court
 

On Monday, the mother of a U.S. citizen who was allegedly tortured at a naval base in Charleston asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate a lawsuit against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other government officials on behalf of her son.

Jose Padilla, a convicted terrorist, had sued Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials over his alleged torture at the naval base, but a district court judge granted Rumsfeld immunity and dismissed the case, Padilla v. Rumsfeld. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld the dismissal in January.

“If the appeals court’s ruling is allowed to stand, government officials will have a blank check to commit any abuse in the name of national security, even the brutal torture of an American citizen in an American prison,” said Ben Wizner, the ACLU attorney who argued the case before the Fourth Circuit. “It is precisely the role of the courts to ensure that allegations of grave misconduct by Executive Branch officials receive fair adjudication. That vital role does not evaporate simply because those officials insist that their actions are too sensitive for judicial review.”

Padilla was arrested as an “enemy combatant” in May of 2002 after returning to the U.S. from Egypt. He was detained at a U.S. navy prison in South Carolina for nearly four years without charge.

According to his defense team, while in military custody Padilla was subjected to sleep deprivation, threats of execution, exposure to noxious fumes and extreme temperatures, physical abuse, and was forced stand in uncomfortable positions for extended periods of time.

“Tell me where in the Constitution it says that torturing Americans is acceptable,” Estela Lebron, Padilla’s mother, said. “You don’t even treat an animal the way my son was treated. If they can do this to Jose, they can do it to anyone. I’m going to continue fighting until justice has been done for my son.”

Padilla was later transferred to the civilian justice system, where he was sentenced to 17 years in jail in 2007 for aiding a U.S.-based al Qaeda cell.

The charges said the al Qaeda cell had conspired to murder and kidnap people in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia and other countries from 1993 to 2001.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/04/23/mother-of-tortured-u-s-citizen-appeals-case-to-supreme-court/

Echoes of the days of slavery in "Amurica" when slave-owning sadists with power of life and death over their chattel could whip their slaves with impunity.

The impunity was declared unconstitutional by Amendment.  Hopefully the U.S. Supreme Court Justices will find for the victim.

This civil suit is a far cry from the war crimes prosecution that's needed, but it could be an important step in the right direction.

[LeftDemocrat]

Meanwhile, an update on civil suit against Yoo.

No good news to report.

Court Dismisses Torture Memo Suit Against John Yoo

A federal appeals court has dismissed a lawsuit seeking to hold former Bush administration lawyer John Yoo accountable for authoring the "torture memos" that permitted harsh abuses on detainees. The former so-called "enemy combatant" Jose Padilla had sued Yoo for devising the legal justification for his imprisonment and torture. Padilla was jailed for 43 months without charge in a Navy brig in South Carolina and is now serving a 17-year sentence. In its ruling, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Yoo is immune because U.S. torture laws were unclear when the memos were produced. A similar lawsuit filed by Padilla against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was thrown out last year.[/size]

http://www.democracynow.org/2012/5/3/headlines#539

[LeftDemocrat]

update on yet another civil suit against Rumsfeld:

Appeals court rejects US interpreter’s lawsuit against Rumsfeld over unlawful imprisonment in Iraq


By Associated Press,

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Friday rejected a lawsuit by an American civilian translator (sic) who says he was thrown in prison in Iraq for nine months without explanation by U.S. officials.

The translator (recte, interpreter), whose real name does not appear in the lawsuit, is trying to hold former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld personally liable for the translator’s alleged mistreatment while he was detained at the U.S. military’s Camp Cropper.

The appeals court recognized that the translator is a contractor and not an actual member of the military, but said special factors nonetheless apply.

“Allowing such an action would hinder our troops from acting decisively in our nation’s interest for fear of judicial review of every detention and interrogation,” said Sentelle.

The appeals court reversed a federal judge, who ruled that the translator’s allegations are enough to enable the case to proceed against Rumsfeld.

In his lawsuit filed in 2008, the man says he was preparing to depart Iraq on annual leave when U.S. officials took him into custody.

The translator said he was exposed to intolerable cold and continuous artificial light, extended solitary confinement without any reading material, blasting by loud heavy metal and country music and blindfolding and hooding.

The imprisonment probably stemmed from the U.S. government not wanting a civilian translator going to the United States on leave and possibly talking about the secret relationship between the American military and Abu Risha, said Mike Kanovitz, one of the translator’s attorneys.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/appeals-court-rejects-us-contractors-lawsuit-against-rumsfeld-over-imprisonment-in-iraq/2012/06/15/gJQAh1UTfV_story.html

The Appeals Court apparently does not care to see that justice is done, or even that justice is seen to be done.  Instead, the Appeals Court is willing to subordinate justice to national security interests, otherwise known as fascism or imperialism in the Middle East.  So much for an independent judiciary.

(As an aside, Associated Press apparently can't keep straight the difference between a translator and an interpreter.  The man in question is clearly an interpreter, yet AP repeatedly refers to him as a translator.)

[LeftDemocrat]

By means of a Freedom of Information Act request, information has been released confirming Cheney is a liar.  In a war crimes tribunal, this would be evidence submitted for the prosecution, as part of an indictment for waging an illegal war of aggression (unjustified war of choice) in Iraq.

Declassified CIA Docs: Cheney is a Flagrant Liar
John Glaser, June 19, 2012

The National Security Archive has obtained through a FOIA request newly released CIA documents pertaining to 9/11.

Dick Cheney in particular, actively promoted the falsehood that Saddam Hussein was somehow tied to al-Qaeda and the attacks of September 11th. It was a deliberate propaganda campaign to help rally Americans to support a war on Iraq that had already been decided upon [by the Bush cabal].

One of these just-released CIA documents reveal that one day before Cheney’s appearance on Meet the Press, the CIA confirmed in a briefing that was sent to the White House Situation Room that “11 September 2001 hijacker Mohamed Atta did not travel to the Czech Republic on 31 May 2000.” [Nonetheless], on December 9, 2001, Dick Cheney went on Meet the Press and, when asked by Tim Russert whether “Iraq was involved in September 11,” mentioned a “report that’s been pretty well confirmed, that [9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.”  Two years later, on September 14, 2003, in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, Cheney appeared once again on Meet the Press [and said:] "With respect to 9/11, of course, we’ve had the story that’s been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack, but we’ve never been able to develop anymore of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it."   In fact, it had been completely discredited [by the United States' own CIA] two years earlier, one day prior to Cheney’s first television utterance of it.

It was actually well known at that point, in the government and the press, that an Iraq-Qaeda connection didn’t exist and the Atta visit in Prague was fabricated. As Paul Pillar, former CIA analyst and National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia, wrote in his recent book: “The supposed alliance between Saddam’s regime and al-Qa’ida clearly did not drive the Bush administration’s decision to launch the war [in Iraq] because the Bush-Cheney administration was receiving no indications that any such alliance existed,” adding that “this fact did not stop the administration from nonetheless promoting publicly the notion of such an alliance.”

    "By August 2003, the most intensive selling of the war, ... was due to innuendo such as the vice president’s repeated references to a phantom meeting in Prague between an Iraqi and 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta. It was due mostly to the administration’s rhetorical drumbeat that repeatedly mentioned Iraq, 9/11, and “war on terror” in the same breath."

In sum, Cheney stands convicted, at this point, of knowingly lying the country into war.

And now, when will the prosecution do something about it?