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White House: Rahm Didn't Mean What He Said On Not Prosecuting Bushies For Torture
On Sunday, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel went on ABC's This Week With George Stephanopoulos and clearly declared that the Obama administration would not prosecute the Bushies who "devised" torture policies.
That seemed to go further than anything the administration had said before. So yesterday we called the White House to get a more formal statement on the issue. And when we didn't hear back, we got to wondering: had Rahm been freelancing, and gotten out ahead of White House policy?
Looks like that's what happened: the White House now appears to be walking back Rahm's comments. The New York Times reports today:
[A]dministration officials said Monday that Mr. Emanuel had meant the officials who ordered the policies carried out, not the lawyers who provided the legal rationale.
In other words, Rahm slipped up.
We're glad the White House has walked back that position -- amid what seems to be mounting pressure to hold Bush officials fully accountable (more on that in a bit). But if nothing else, the episode may provide an interesting window into the White House chief of staff' personal views on the issue.
Josh
Zachary
I was nervous when Rahm Emmanuel made that comment on national tv, I'm glad that the administration hasn't ruled out prosecuting those in the Bush administration who both approved and rationalized these interrogation techniques. They represent a truly shameful chapter in American history and I can only hope that justice will be served and that we will never let this happen again.
April 21, 2009 10:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
I am curious that the media's perpetuation of the meme that CIA employees will feel hamstrung because the memos were released hasn't been challenged. Based on the response Obama received yesterday at Langley, I do not get the sense that agency employees are too distressed, though I've heard it repeated numerous times, including on NPR this morning. It makes no sense.
What makes sense is that the Bushco architects will feel hamstrung if they're, well, hamstrung.
April 21, 2009 10:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's not up to the President to decide who gets prosecuted and who doesn't, anyway.
That is under the purview of the Justice Dep't., and a special prosecutor if needed. A President can set the tone, and exert the influence of policy opinion, but can, and should, not decide who eventually comes before the bar. That was one of the problems of the Bush DOJ.
April 21, 2009 10:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
That folks now tend to assume that who the DOJ prosecutes is up to the POTUS sez volumes on how messed up we've been by previous assertions of Unitary privledge.
April 21, 2009 10:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
Amen.
April 21, 2009 11:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
True. Let's hope Eric Holder does his job, no matter what opinions are floating around the White House. This administration's claimed that they would have an independent DOJ. Well, this is a first test.
April 21, 2009 10:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, thats the impression I got from yesterdays discussions. Also apparently the fact that the interrogators asked the WH(Bush) to stop, saying they weren't getting any good information and were told by Cheney et al to continue.
Man, I wouldn't want that man anywhere around in my family! He is scared of his own shadow and takes it out on everyone else.
April 21, 2009 11:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ahh, but the Prez appoints the AG, so, in that sense, it IS up to the Prez who to prosecute, short of a Saturday Night Massacre scenario.
Theoretically, per the Convention against Torture, we don't have any other legal option. But, combine American exceptionalism with the "politics of change" exceptionalism, even though Big O admitted last week that America isn't perfect, and there's no pragmatic reason why Obama won't putz out.
April 21, 2009 11:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
Let's hope this is only the beginning of what ultimately should render the Unitary types forever discredited.
April 21, 2009 10:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
What else does Rahm Emmanuel want to cover-up? What else does he want to cover-up and who else is he shilling for?
The sad fact is that so many in Congress have vicariously participated in the torture. And while they perhaps could not legally be held accountable, their political reputations would suffer.
We have yet to see just how tough Obama can/will be.
But we can bet, just as in all administrations, the various members of Obama's staff and cabinet, Rahm Emmanuel included, have agendas of their own to push and accountability for torture or illegal spying on Americans is not an item of importance to them.
April 21, 2009 11:02 AM | Reply | Permalink
I believe that the Geneva Conventions require that nations knowing about violations committed by their citizens are obligated to prosecute those citizens. If so, the Obama administration has no legal option other than prosecuting several higher ups in the Bush administration, specifically including Judge Bybee and John Yoo, but not excluding Bush himself.
April 21, 2009 11:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
It is either the Geneva Conventions or the treaty on torture that Reagan signed in the mid to late 80's that requires a signatory to the treaty to prosecute...let's hope and pray that our Constitutional lawyer Pres. follows the law!!
April 21, 2009 12:19 PM | Reply | Permalink
And so the "officials who ordered the policies carried out," who aren't prosecuted, become the policymakers and legal-opinion-requesters of tomorrow.
April 21, 2009 11:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
Many of the politicians calling for and against investigating and indicting, if found breaking the law, are lawyers and 'officers of the court'. Is there something in their canon of ethics that permits to knowingly ignore illegalities. Honest to your higher power, if I hear one of those cretins spout "country of laws, not men," or "the rule of law", I will probably puke in my lap. The Republicans went to the mat to impeach Clinton because he tried to cover up getting a BJ in the Oval Office pantry. These MF'ers have been trying to cover up F'n TORTURE and lying about that! To Congress, to the American people, our allies and our antagonists. For Emanual to say they get a pass for that makes me hate that little prick even more. And he has to answer to Israel? He should summarily be fired.
April 21, 2009 11:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
Translation: OK, so we have established that there exists a high level of public support for going after the torture lawyers. Good. I guess I can have my Attorney General handle it without a bunch of you people hassling me about it.
Hell of a job, Rahm. You really woke people the hell up.
In other words, Rahm Emmanuel, like his boss, is not an idiot, and he only plays a loose cannon on TV. Now we can go after the masterminds of this terrible blot on our nation's soul with little expenditure of political capital while Rahm takes one for the team (he'll be OK).
April 21, 2009 11:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
i think you're onto something. releasing the memos unredacted was obama's part in this. over to holder, who will likely want to keep away from the radioactivity and appoint a special prosecutor, maybe some workaholic irish-american brooklynite/chicagoan or something.
April 21, 2009 12:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
ooooo....
Now we're gettin into Dreams Come True territory...
April 21, 2009 12:17 PM | Reply | Permalink
It has to suck for the WH. Here is a transformational president at a time when the nation wants change, with both Houses of Congress, and a steaming pile of manure in the Oval Office that refuses any executive order to stop stinking.
That said, and as much tooth enamel I've worn away over it, someone has to govern while investigations proceed, inquiries that are likely to turn up many more steaming piles.
And the observations upthread are spot-on: the WH and DoJ have no business deciding any legal matter "together". 8 Years of unitary executive has warped the thinking of many.
There is an argument to be made that Obama consolidates his power over the CIA by embracing them. The CIA's black eye will only grow larger, and none of it was Obama's doing. He is the Safe Space for those who survive prosecution, and that's probably the vast majority. Innocent until proven guilty, and all that.
Like FDR, Obama is making us want it.
April 21, 2009 12:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Maybe you're onto something, Steaming Pile-- I mean that figuratively.
I was surprised to see Emanuel attempt to rule out prosecution for everybody on Sunday. Perhaps he was test-marketing the strategy before it became official.
NEW! and Improved! Justice, now with 90% more whitewashing! Your neighbors won't know what to think!
But there was always wiggle room to tweak it, Obama just had to disavow Emanuel's roll-out. So now the policy morphs to: the CIA gets its CYA action, we'll see about the policy lawyers and their superiors.
April 21, 2009 3:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
I haven't given up hope, yet, that the President hasn't abandoned the principles that we'd hoped he would uphold...maybe truth, justice, and The American Way. So why does Rahm Emanuel make me so fucking nervous?
I was never enamored of Mr Emanuel, he's not my sort of liberal Democrat. For now I will hope that the President, with or without Rahm, is playing a game of political chess that allows the Pres his "looking to the future" bullshit-schtick while proceeding in the background to bring to justice the army of evil, glad-handing, logic-mangling, politically self-aggrandizing, Gods of Douche-Baggery that we need as a nation to see standing in the dock.
April 21, 2009 12:32 PM | Reply | Permalink
Backgrond: Following WWI and the defeat of Nazi Germany, the Nuremberg trials were established so as to prosecute 2 different catoragories of war criminals (a) Major War Criminals (22 of the most important captured leaders of Nazi Germany) were tried before the International Military Tribunal (IMT), and (b) lesser war criminals were tried under Control Council Law No. 10.
The reason for a class (b) of war criminal was that even if a person was under order to carry out a heinous act, that did not protect them from prosecution. They knew right from wrong.
The reason for a class (a) catoragory of war criminal is self explanatory.
The Nuremberg trials in small part engendered the development of international criminal law. The Trials served the basis for:
- Genocide Convention, 1948.
- Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948.
- Nuremberg Principles, 1950.
- Convention on the Abolition of the Statute of Limitations on War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity, 1968.
- Geneva Convention on the Laws and Customs of War, 1949; its supplementary protocols, 1977.
- Principles of International Law Recognized in the Charter of the Nürnberg Tribunal and in the Judgement of the Tribunal (Yearbook of the International Law Commission, 1950, vol. II[31]).
- International Criminal Court (ICC), and an international criminal codes (International Law Commission.)
America, rightly so, was front and center in all the above actions. And yet it is not a signatory to the ICC.
Comment: This country has three branches of government, the executive, the legislative and the judiciary. They are SEPARATE. Under Bush, we suffered 8 years when that separation was blurred and the innate nobility of this country was tarnished. Bush acted as a despot and the other branches of government let him get away with it (even when the democrats took over for the last 2 years of Bush's reign.) And now President Obama is deciding who should and should not be prosecuted. We voted for change. Not for another 4 years of despotic rule.
Any and all persons involved in torture must be prosecuted. They should be tried before a jury of their peers. They should be given access to lawyers. They should be granted every opportunity to defend themselves. They should be given justice, even though they denied all this and more to those they tortured. And the trials in their entirity should be made public.
If were as a nation do any less, then we are nothing more than hypocrites. We have a double standard. We demand of other nations to live by standards which we do not then apply to ourselves.
This is not just a legal issue, this is also a moral.
To quote from The Noble Quran, 4:85 “Whoever rallies to a good cause shall have a share in its blessings; and whoever rallies to an evil cause shall be answerable for his part in it.”
We look to history so as not to make the same mistakes. Those who participated in torture must be held accountable.
April 21, 2009 2:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Nice quote, salaha. Reminds me of the old quote "Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan." Variously attributed to JFK, the Greeks, the Chinese, Mussolini's son-in-law, etc. . . .Hmmm, I guess the quote is self-fulfilling.
April 22, 2009 12:03 AM | Reply | Permalink