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DOJ: Torture Is Legal With "Good Faith"
From the AP:
The Justice Department in 2002 told the CIA that its interrogators would be safe from prosecution for violations of anti-torture laws if they believed "in good faith" that harsh techniques used to break the will of prisoners, including waterboarding, would not cause "prolonged mental harm."The newly released but heavily censored memo approved the CIA's harsh interrogation techniques method by method, but warned that if the circumstances changed, interrogators could be running afoul of anti-torture laws.
The Aug. 1, 2002 memo signed by then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee was issued the same day he wrote a memo for then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales defining torture as only those "extreme acts" that cause pain similar in intensity to that caused by death or organ failure. That memo was later rescinded by the Justice Department.
Late Update: The ACLU has posted the memos here.
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Comments (20)
"The Aug. 1, 2002 memo signed by then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee was issued the same day he wrote a memo for then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales defining torture as only those "extreme acts" that cause pain similar in intensity to that caused by death or organ failure."
Similar in intensity to that caused by DEATH?
And his reference point for said notion is what exactly? Is it all of the anecdotal evidence collected from previous victims of death?
It's quite staggering the nonsense that just oozes out of the brains of the Cheney apparatchiks.
Almost every bit of it is riddle-me-this stuff. Karl Rove never REALLY left the White House batcave did he?
July 24, 2008 2:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
WTF? And what about deaths that are supposedly painfree - like a morphine overdose or getting your head cut off?
I hope George Orwell's estate is collecting royalties from these criminals - they're stealing NewSpeak from "1984", bigtime!
July 24, 2008 2:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
There are two things in contemporary American jurisprudence that I believe are wrong, I hate both doctrines, they've done more damage to our rights than anything else out there: the first is the SCOTUS turning due process into a totally subjective determination - which is what "good faith" is. The second is the damned to hell doctrine of "harmless error."
Watch as they both continue to tear huge holes in our constitutional protections.
This trend has been shaping up and working for some time now.
July 24, 2008 2:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's what they're there for, innit, dahlin?
If they didn't exist, they'd hafta be invented, postee hastee, doncha know? Laws mainly protect the law-makers from the insolence of the masses.
July 24, 2008 3:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes my dear, but you tend to ignore the fact that the pendulum swings BOTH ways by nature - cannot be sustained swinging only to the right, Tokin.
There is always correction.
July 24, 2008 3:48 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here you and I go again on "Faith". Faith, regardless of language usage, has no place in government or policy. Empirical evidence and rational thought must replace every gap left in governance after expunging faith as a tool for and product of decision-making. (All faith is religious and religion depends absolutely on faith.)
I have not heard of a "harmless error" doctrine. It sounds heinous. Does it mean something along the lines of; I made an error that hurt somebody else but was harmless to me?
July 24, 2008 3:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Ianal,b, the way i get it is:
I made an error that hurt somebody else but was harmless to me?
i broke a law but since there is no specific victim, there can be no charge upheld. I have a disorderly conduct bust recently which specifies the injury somewhat less expansively than that.
July 24, 2008 3:20 PM | Reply | Permalink
Didn't Bybee tell Congress under oath that he had nothing to do with the torture memos? Hmmm . . .
July 24, 2008 3:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just looked at the August 2002 18 page document. 95% of it is blacked out. Only a few short paragraphs are visible.
IMHO, it is absolutely ridiculous to draw any conclusion or derive any meaning from it whatsoever.
July 24, 2008 3:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
No,Tokin - that ain't it.
Harmless Error is a doctrine that determines that some error in a trial, while acknowledged as error is deemed to have had so little influence on the verdict it was harmless error. Most procedural error is harmless error.
Sorry - Tokin - but you're dead wrong there.
July 24, 2008 3:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
The January 18th memo has this:
So we kept records of the torture. (Just like the Nazis.) Let's have a look at those records, then. Let's review each act and each individual involved, on a case-by-case basis. Let's turn all this evidence over to the Hague.
-- ARG
July 24, 2008 4:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
The records that this administration better be keeping, is the list of pardons that Shrub will need to make on his way out the door!
July 24, 2008 4:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
I have been thinking this too, but I'm stuck. Does a presidential pardon insulate someone from an international war crimes trial? And, the real bigee: can a president pardon himself, or does the next president get that disgusting task?
July 24, 2008 4:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Don't think a pardon from Prezdint Chimpy will save you from the ICC. However, as the US is not a signatory, it's unlikely that we'd extradite a top official who get indicted. Now, all bets are off if that person happens to get "kidnapped" to The Hague while out of the country - then President Obama's State Department could revoke their US passport!
July 24, 2008 4:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Torture, corruption, no bid contracts, lies leading up to the Iraq war, exposure of a CIA agent, politicalization of the DOJ, bad medcial care for American soldiers wounded in Iraq, the lies of Jessica Lynn's rescue, the death of Pat Tillman, illegal spying on Americans....and on and on and on....
All will be forgiven and forgotton by the U.S. Congress and the new president in January, 2009.
If you can't cover it up illegally, then cover it up legally.
In fact, by the Congressional votes of both political partys, the forgiveness has already started; that was what the recent FISA vote all about, anyway.
You don't have to be a blind conservative not to see it, just an ignorant one to deny it.
July 24, 2008 4:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
You are so sadly and accurately correct, dar. Obama has said so, too, of course...it's play nice now time.
July 25, 2008 3:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Will corrupt, despicable pigs like Jay Bybee be rightly remembered and excoriated for their evil? I hope his lies and immorality will be recorded in history, and that the slime he practiced while in government will follow him for the rest of his days.
July 24, 2008 4:43 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is like saying, if Ted Bundy didn't enjoy tormenting his victims he wasn't guilty of torture.
Back in the day, when I went to law school, we were taught that the law presumed a defendant intended the foreseeable and logical consequences of his actions, that objective outcomes not subjective intent was not the standard for determining whether or not the action constituted a crime. (This is not to be confused with crimes where intent -- e.g., premeditation, malice, recklessness -- is an element of the charge, which is not the case with the Conventions barring torture.)
Ah, but in those days no one had ever heard of the unitary executive and other legal nonsense that the Bush enablers have come up with.
July 24, 2008 9:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Justice Department in 2002 told the CIA that its interrogators would be safe from prosecution for violations of anti-torture laws if they believed "in good faith" that harsh techniques used to break the will of prisoners, including waterboarding, would not cause "prolonged mental harm."
It should be noted that this refers only to the crime of torture under Title 18 of the U.S. Code (i.e. the federal criminal code).
The memo is clearly wrong in law as applied strictly to that crime as well, but it is silent in respect of other means of prosecution of torturers.
I believe that 2340A of Title 18, was the means through which the U.S. fulfilled its state party obligations under the UN Convention Against Torture. I would note that under the conditions set out in the 2002 memo, the US would clearly (I think, even, uncontroversially) be derelict in its obligations under the Convention (specifically Article 4 thereof).
July 25, 2008 1:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
THE TORTURE SCANDAL....with lost videotapes of the CHIPPING OF THOMAS S. BEAN IN HIS HOME WHILE THIS WITNESS WAS ASLEEP....is the real story that Democrats and MSM are complicit in covering up.
THE GOOD FAITH DOCTRINE to "overzealous police state crimes" is another "punk excuse" used to make CONSPIRACIES TO COMMIT FED CRIMES OF VIOLENCE and PATRIOT ACT POLITICIZED ACTS OF VIOLENCE appear to be, "Heroic and Patriotic"????
I WANT ANSWERS TO WHY LEAHY, BIDEN, SCHUMER, CONYERS ALL REFUSE TO ASK THE OBVIOUS QUESTIONS:
"How is a coerced, reluctant, stalked, intimidated cooperating Minneapolis FBI witness named DR. MARK GORDON...a terrorist?...resulting in a deprivation of civil liberties (STALKING, BREAKINS, PIN HOLE SPY CAMERAS IN HOME, FRIED AND TORTURED WITH A DOD DARPA WEAPON CALLED DEW)?"
HOW IS YANKTON, SD, ATTORNEY (and known associate of mine) named JOHN KABIESEMAN a TERRORIST to justify his murder (staged vehicle accident in Bon Homme County ten days after another known associate of mine, YPD SGT MARK DEFENBAUGH was murdered in a staged vehicle accident) to prevent the filing of a civil suit in SIOUX FALLS, SD FED COURT?
How is A PREGNANT CHRISTIAN HOUSEWIFE NAMED CHRISTINA MOORE, a terrorist, used to rationalize the MURDER OF THIS ENRON WITNESS using the same m.o. and same group of CONTRACT MERC'S known as NSA TSP contractors?
HOW COME NOBODY WILL GRILL THAT LYING, CORRUPT, LOWLIFE, COWARDLY, BUTT LICKING PUNK NAMED ROBERT SWAN MUELLER, III, about his "overt acts in furtherance of CONSPIRACY TO OBSTRUCT JUSTICE" when the punks at FBI "stood down" to their own benefit--COVERING UP THIER CRIMES IN VIOLATION OF TITLE III, AND RCMP WARRANT FOR TERRY NELSON'S MONTANA DRUG PIPELINE wi money laundered into GOP campaigns by MARC RACICOT?
That is the story.
No one will cover it.
Not one Dem staffer...has ever polygraphed me?
July 26, 2008 11:48 AM | Reply | Permalink