How has it ever come to this point in the United States? How could we ever see our political leaders give credence to these fascist, tyrannical concepts of government? How could we have traveled the path from being the shining example of democracy, freedom and humanitarian rights to this barely disguised clone of the USSR?

We have allowed too much polite debate. Torture is torture. Why do people allow the silly, stupid, ignorant discussion to even take place? Those who even attempt to assert that water boarding may not be torture depending on exactly how or by whom it is being done needed to be shouted down as inhuman criminals.

Yoo should be disbarred for his memo. The courts are open and functioning. There is still functioning governments at the state and local level with no indication of civil or military disorder. Yet, we hear this SHIT from Yoo about the inherent right of the president to have unfettered authority to over ride the constitutional rights and guarantees of this country?

It is time for another revolution in this country. Hopefully peaceful.

Yeah. Stuff happens. Freedom's untidy.

We elected an ignorant, incurious, arrogant, self-righteous, defiant, belligerent moron as President. The rest followed like night follows day.

Sure, John, it's hard for the grunts to avoid errors like torturing prisoners. It's especially hard for them to avoid that error when the President and his minions tell them that it's OK, and in fact they should "take the gloves off," "go to the dark side," and "soften up" their captives. Too bad for them they took that shit seriously. Who woulda thunk?

When will Mr. Yoo be forced to resign his position at Boalt Hall?

If there is a hell, Yoo will find himself in it.

... ah, but torture DOES work. The tortured will confess to anything! I think Khalid Sheikh Mohammed just confessed to kidnapping the Lindburgh baby and shooting JFK!

And it's the absolute absence of any link that is why Haynes and Rumsfeld refused to allow the Abu Ghraib investiation [to Taguba's explicit objections and complaints] to include ANY investigtaion of Military Intelligence officers and what they were doing and what they were authorized to do. It's why Miller took the equivalent of the 5th.

Right.

Fear Up Harsh - no basis in the illegal activities. Encouraging Beaver to write up that the Uniform Code of Military Justice could be abandoned and broken and violated as long as there was 'authorization' but it all had no effect.

Right now, if I was counsel for the contractor who was convicted of crimes in the torture interrogation that led to the torture death using the methods solicited by Yoo, I'd want to see that input from the Crim Division(Chertoff) that Yoo mentions, holding that criminal laws just don't apply to acts done overseas by people working for the military.

What a cesspool. Here's a thought to solve multiple issues in one fell swoop.

Let's keep our Olympic teams home, and instead send teams of current and ex Bush DOJ lawyers to represent us. They have adapted to cheerfully breath in and thrive on the worst kinds of foulness, and they are never as happy as when surrounded by abuse and corruption. After the games, we can just leave them there as a goodwill gesture for China, who can not only put them to good use, but learn from them.

This New Yorker article about the military officer who took the infamous photographs at Abu Ghraib would beg to differ that it was not military intelligence policy. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/03/24/080324fa_fact_gourevitch?currentPage=all

here are a couple of excerpts from the article:

The Abu Ghraib rules, promulgated by Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of ground forces in Iraq, elaborated on the interrogation rules for Guantánamo Bay, which had been issued by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld; they were designed to create far more license than restriction for interrogators who sought to break prisoners. The M.P.s at Abu Ghraib were enlisted as enforcers of such practices as sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation, sensory disorientation, and the imposition of physical and psychological pain. They never received a standard operating procedure to define what was required and what was allowed, but were repeatedly instructed simply to follow the guidance of Military Intelligence officers. An orthodox standard operating procedure leaves nothing to the imagination, and as Megan Ambuhl settled into her job it occurred to her that the absence of a code was the code at Abu Ghraib. “They couldn’t say that we broke the rules because there were no rules,” she said. And by taking pictures of the prisoners on the M.I. block the M.P.s demonstrated two things: that they never fully accepted what was happening as normal, and that they assumed they had nothing to hide.

By way of orientation, the soldiers of the 372nd who were assigned guard duty at the hard site were given a tour of the place. They saw the ordinary cellblocks for Iraqi criminals and the highly restricted M.I. block, where the most “high value” security detainees were held, during and pending interrogation, in single-occupancy cells. “That’s when I saw the nakedness,” Javal Davis said. “I’m like, ‘Hey, Sarge, why is everyone naked?’ You know—‘Hey, that’s the M.I. That’s what the M.I. does. That’s the M.I. thing. I don’t know.’ ‘Why do these guys have on women’s panties?’ Like—‘It’s to break them.’ ” Davis was wide-eyed. “Guys handcuffed in stress positions, in cells, no lights, no windows. Open the door, turn the light on—‘Oh my God, Allah.’ Click, turn the light off, close the door. It’s like, Whoa, what is that? What the hell is up with all this stuff? Something’s not right here.”

and:

But after four or five nights of running the M.I. block of the Abu Ghraib hard site, Davis said, “I just wanted to go home.” He felt that what he did and saw there was wrong. “But it was reaffirmed and reassured through the leadership: We’re at war. This is Military Intelligence. This is what they do. And it’s just a job,” he said. “So, over time, you become numb to it, and it’s nothing. It just became the norm. You see it—that sucks. It sucks to be him. And that’s it. You move on.”

Hmm, what about the memos Rumsfeld signed himself advocating torture?

That seems to undermine Yoo's argument somewhat.

Woo is not to blame. We will ALWAYS have folks who are hired because they will do as they are hired for. Bush was looking for folks to do his bidding, not folks who had an actually free will conscience. He got one...er.. several dozen.

Want someone to blame? How about US! We continue to bvote criminals into office... people whose sole job is to promote themselves and keep themselves on top by supporting the status quo.

We are not losing our democracy because of Bush. He can be reigned in... by the folks we elected to reign him in. Those folks, though, have no intention on promoting just causes, such as our Constitution... they most likely even have no idea what it actually says. What they are concerned with is who will support them, who they can connect with, who will make sure they stay in power... their PARTY (if they do as they are told, of course).

"We the People" only come up when the actual voting starts, and they know too well that we do not pay attention, we do not see the news... we are pretty much limited to name recognition and sound bites.

So... in the end, it is US. We will continue, as most of these blogs suggest, to vote back in those same criminal enterprises as we have in the past... expecting them to act differently... after we have just voted them back in for doing what we are "unhappy" with. Our votes speak with forked tongues, folks... IMHO

“While each case of abuse is regrettable,” Mr. Yoo wrote, “it is not possible for a large organization charged with protecting the national security, under extraordinary pressure, to perform its mission error-free.”

He almost has a point here. If only there were some mechanism by which a separate organization could review the work of the first, to provide a check on it, as it were. Since they'd be judging the claims of the first organization, we could call them judges.

Read the US Constitution. Nothing in that document allows the President to assume any power that is not specifically listed in the Constitution. The only power that is mentioned as being an exception to the limitations in the Constitution is the suspension of habeus corpus, and that is a power given to the Congress, not the President, and it is limited to use during times of insurrection and rioting in this country.

John Yoo is an idiot or a poseur, demonstrably incompetent in matters of constitutional law. He reported to his superior idiot or poseur, who reported to the Idiot or Poseur in Chief. And, those idiots and poseurs were in position to do all of this because too many of our voters demonstrated that they are fellow idiots back in 2000 and especially back in 2004. (With a needed assist from the US Supreme Idiots in 2000)

JMOHR - since when has this country been the shinning example of democracy, freedom, and humanatarian rights?

Our military totured prisoners in Vietnam - waterboarding among other things.

Read "Soldier" by ret. Lt. Col. Anthony Herbert. He got drummed out of the Army for trying to uphold humantarian rights through the Geneva Convention and report war crimes.

There was probably torture going on during the revolutionary war. Certainly there were humanatarian abuses and violations going on in the colonies before we were our own country and certainly afterward - slavery and genocide.

What's going on now may only be an escalation of what has always occurred or maybe it is just more blantantly and openly being executed.

Whatever the case, this is all chilling, sobering, and not the least bit frightening in its obviousness - as if they think that it is no longer necessary to keep any of this under wraps. Whatever it is, it certainly is not new.

Was it Truman who said the only thing new is the history he didn't know.

The only way to put an end to this way of going about the world is to punish severely at least some of the higher-ups involved - both politicos and military types. Even then we might be naive to think that would put an end to this darkness. In all likelihood this kind of behavior would simply recess back into the shadows where it sems to thrive with the bottom feeders and the rest of the dregs of "humanity."

It is an outrage to humanity that someone who is either one of the architects of torture or at least a prime enabler would be rewarded with a job at an institution of higher "learning and scholarship(?)."

We, as a culture, have always been unable to attain the ideals this country was founded on as they have remained completely above us and out of our reach. The first step toward trying to reach those ideals is to admit to our failings and stop with the illusions of what we think we are and see clearly what we have always been.

"We elected an ignorant, incurious, arrogant, self-righteous, defiant, belligerent moron as President. The rest followed like night follows day."

Well.... One was appointed. Either way, we now spell it "Amerika".

America had better be bringing war crimes next year after the Pardoner In Chief can no longer protect them.

There can be no healing otherwise.

If Obama is elected, he will face the biggest challenge of his career on day one: what to do with the pond scum that began to disassemble the federal government in 2000, and have pretty well wrecked it since.

War crimes tribunals are the only response. We cannot pardon our way out of this.

Pax,
M.

Miller, a former paratrooper with a mild Texas drawl, arrived in Baghdad from Cuba on Aug. 31 at the head of a team "experienced in strategic interrogation," according to the Taguba report. Their aim was "to review current Iraqi theater ability to rapidly exploit internees for actionable intelligence," Taguba wrote."We're enormously proud of what we have done at Guantanamo to be able to set that kind of environment where we were focused on getting the maximum amount of intelligence," Miller said last week in Baghdad, after he returned to Iraq having been named to supervise the country's military prison system. "We were bringing expertise into the theater. We made a number of recommendations, the vast majority of which were implemented following the visit."

Washington Post
May 10, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A13065-2004May9?language=printer

The documents presented in "Administration of Torture" include many details that warrant public attention and further inquiry. Documents presented in the book show, for example . . . that some of the Abu Ghraib photos showed prisoners being subjected to the very same interrogation methods that Rumsfeld had endorsed for use at Guantánamo; that the plan of Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller to "Gitmoize" Abu Ghraib was endorsed by senior Defense Department officials . . .

American Civil Liberties Union
October 22, 2007
http://www.aclu.org/about/staff/32297prs20071022.html

There is no smoking gun only if you don't want there to be a smoking gun.

I doubt John Yoo and other torture apologists ever consider whether Saddam Hussein's people were out of control. Perhaps he had nothing to do with the torture and "rape rooms", etc. and it was just a few bad apples.

Frivolous legal argument would attach counsel to the underlying unlawful conduct.

In December 1937 the Japanese Army entered the city of Nanjing. Six weeks later when the "fighting" was over in the city upwards of 300,000 men, women, and children had been butchered by the Japanese Army led by Prince Asaka, uncle in law to Hirohito, who claimed after the war that he never received any complaints about the conduct of his troops and that as far as he knew no massacre took place. He was never prosecuted for war crimes and lived until the ripe old age of 93.

Just this past December (2007) declassified documents from the US Government estimate that in the area surrounding Nanjing an additional 500,000 civilians were killed by the Japanese Army.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contest_to_kill_100_people_using_a_sword

Curiously in August 1937 Emperor Showa (Hirohito) signed an edict stating that the Japanese Army would no longer treat Chinese prisoners as "prisoners of War" and that the constraints of international law would be ignored in the treatment of all prisoners. This attitude from the top also led to the Bataan Death March.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/3083-Zero-Punctuation-Army-of-Two

John Yoo should be disbarred everywhere he's authorized to practice law -- and prohited getting a law-practice license everywhere else.

That would effectively eliminate him as a "professor" at any law school, as one must be a licensed lawyer, at minimum, in order to teach law. (In fact, one must be a lawyer to work in a university law library as a librarian.)

I won't predict, but I'd be surprised if the ABA doesn't act on the evidence in that memo: Yoo is a pseudo-intellectual at best, and a sociopath at worst. Correction: at worst, both.

We must get these war criminals to the Hague to restore honor & dignity to these United States . We must make sure that this is a general election issue. If we can hang war criminal /torturer around the neck of McShame maybe we can send these war criminals to the Hague in 2009 - We need to have Obama & Clinton on the record promising a thorough investigation of all of this fascist enterprise aka GWB 43 . We need to enlist & fully support former General Tagube to finish his final report on Abu Gharib .
And Ewad you are right our history is replete with failures to live up to the true ideals of our Nation . But it is also a history of our doing some good in our world - we did after all have a Civil War to abolish slavery-and defeat the Axis Powers . And even now we are striving to act upon our better judgements & "our better angels - "
We can do better & we will -
Mary 2002 - we will yet see justice ,and thank you for your passionate and thoughtful posts.

"k1maynes" suggested that I repeat my post from an earlier thread so here goes;

I attended a forum in New York about the Abu Garab scandal. One of the speakers was the female General in charge of the entire prison system in Iraq after the invasion. She said that upon her inspection of one of the interrogation facilities she saw a memo outlining the "enhanced" interogation techniques and in the margin was a handwritten note that read "Make sure this happens" signed with the initials of Donald Rumsfeld.

For those intersetd the forum was "The 2005-2006 International Commission of Inquiry On Crimes Against Humanity Committed By The Bush Administration Of The United Sates." January 20-22, 2006. www.bushcommission.org commission@nion.us 212-941-8086.

The event was videotaped and the US general is Brig. General Janis Karpinski.

Good luck to US all.