Attorney General Eric Holder did the right thing when, responding to a recommendation from the Justice Department’s ethics office, he appointed veteran federal prosecutor John Durham to investigate up to a dozen cases of terrorist suspects being subjected to illegal abuse during CIA interrogations between 2001 and 2004. Despite pressure within his own administration to protect the CIA, President Obama — to his credit — is leaving to Holder any decision to prosecute interrogators. Whatever the complications, or the embarrassment, of a legal accounting for past violations of U.S. torture statutes and the Geneva Conventions, a refusal to apply the law would only compound one betrayal of American values with another. — Boston Globe editorial
In 2004, the CIA’s inspector general did an investigation of those interrogations and found much that was “inconsistent with the public policy positions that the United States has taken regarding human rights.” The CIA then appeared to have acted properly. It referred the most egregious cases of prisoner abuse to the Justice Department. Those investigations resulted in a single prosecution. Attorney General Eric Holder should consider the conditions under which the agents labored in 2002-03. It was widely believed another Sept. 11-style terrorist attack was imminent. Many of the interrogators seemed poorly trained for the task, were poorly supervised and given little guidance. — Dale McFeatters, Scripps Howard News Service
18 Comments
The CIA’s mission has always made it vulnerable to sub-legal actions.
It’s a Cold War relic, designed to vie against a comparable force, the KGB.
If any agency needs a regular Sunset Law re-evaluation and reassignment of its mission, it’s the CIA.
Just more evidence that Democrats can’t be trusted with our National Security.
What an absolute joke this must be to the terrorists around the world right now.
Uhm.. “A_J_” –
It was Shrub’s CIA that said finding WMDs in Iraq was “a slam dunk.”
It was Cheney’s CIA that gave us Abu Ghraib.
I think when the dust setttles this will go down in history as the dumbest thing this administration ever did.
We are punishing men who served honorably so we can help a bad prez to regain some politicfal capital. There has already been an investigation into this and those who were quilty were punished. Check the facts.
Holder now is going after Bush and Cheney because they haven’t been able to find anything else to ‘punish’ them for. MH’s line ‘It was Cheney’s CIA that gave us Abu Ghraib.’ is a prime example of this.
The people behind this outrage were punished with discharges and brig time. Still the left wants more blood.
Meanwhile the worlds terrorists are laughing at our stupidity and planning their next attack.
This is what happens when you elect a community organizer as prez.
It would seem totally unnecessary. An investigation has been done. Problems were fixed. Many very good reasons not to continue down that road.
I think the Obama and his Holder will find that this country is not masochistic, regardless of what their own personal tendencies might be.
Only “outlander” could determine the people who tortured people with techniques we hanged Japanese and German generals for are “…men who served honorably.”
And even if you’re gonna try to make a case for the “Ve vere only vollowing orders” defense, the people at the top who encouraged those crimes against humanity might be held accountable, don’t'cha think?
Oh please.
We didn’t hang Japanese and Germans for what we did.
“It was Shrub’s CIA that said finding WMDs in Iraq was “a slam dunk.”
It was Cheney’s CIA that gave us Abu Ghraib.”
It was Clinton’s CIA/Admin that passed on Bin Laden when Sudan wanted to hand him over. Weird rumor going around about Bin Laden having something to do with 9/11 and countless other attacks around the globe.
But hey, why don’t we just replace then with Writer’s understanding of Obama’s civilian force concept, where we send unarmed civilians to Afgh to show them the right way. Hopefully you’ll be first in line to sign up for that gig, right MH?
“A_J_” –
To lower the level of this discussion to what, apparently, if your level, I’m forced to say, simply:
UH-HUH!!
Oh, look!
Pudding cups!
The simple truth is that we didn’t torture anyone.
Nothing we did was done with intentional malice just for pleasure.
We used controlled and supervised techniques apporved by the DOJ in order to extract information from terrorists after one of the worst terrorist attacks in our nations history.
It produced results.
And now the Democrats are using it to score cheap politcal points at best.
While the terrorists are laughing…
The simple truth is that we didn’t torture anyone.
. . .followed by a string of rationalizations. Nice.
Meet AJ, the surrealist master! This is not a pipe!
Monday, 07 November 2005 @ bob harris dot com:
In his 1928 work “La Trahison Des Images,” Belgian surrealist René Magritte famously expressed the ineffable dichotomy of reality and its perception in one simple statement:
(image of the not-a-pipe)
“This is not a pipe,” said Magritte.
And so we ask: if this is not a pipe, then is it the representation of the pipe? Or is it perhaps a representation of something other than a pipe? Perhaps it is a representation of yet another mere representation? Therefore, what representation is ever authentic? Can reality, in fact, ever be represented?
In 1974, famed American surrealist Richard Nixon took Magritte’s conundrum one step farther, with his own mystifying announcement:
(image of Nixon)
“I am not a crook,” said Nixon.
And so we ask: if this “Nixon” is not a “crook,” are we looking instead at merely a representation of Nixon? Or is our concept of what is “criminal” somehow merely a representation of criminality, one which cannot be embodied by the actual president? Is the president, therefore, somehow above the law?
The art world was again turned on its ear.
But all of this was merely prelude. A deeper questioning of the nature of perception still awaited.
Finally, today, George W. Bush made a stunning announcement:
(Image of Abu Garaib)
“We do not torture,” said Bush.
This is truly an artistic breakthrough.
And so we ask: what is the nature of “we?” Is Bush simply saying that he himself does not personally torture, perhaps extending the “we” here to include Laura and the twins? Is “torture” itself the elusive concept, not encompassing practices like rendition, waterboarding, sexual humiliation, and savage physical punishment?
Or perhaps (and this would be truly the master stroke) Bush is questioning the meaning of “not”? Perhaps we are to contemplate the nature of negation — and therefore question the very existence of any objective reality to negate?
Has Bush finally made his final step away from the “reality-based” community, into a land where governance is fully untethered from the humdrum limitations of conventional spacetime? Is the president, at last, above not only the law but reality itself?
We can only gasp, hope, applaud, and enjoy the brie.
As with the other great works, such questions will live on for generations, long after the artist himself has been publicly shamed, reviled, and possibly impeached by a public too small to understand his greatness.
http://www.bobharris.com/content/view/726/1/
Rage,
My post was not a rationaliztion at all. We simply didn’t torture anyone. Period.
I was explaining what we did do.
CIA prisoners faced chilling interrogation methods
__________________
A detainee could be forced to stand, almost naked, handcuffed, going days without sleep, and if that failed to break his will, there were other methods for interrogators at secret prisons to try.
____________________________________
Interrogators, some from private security firms, others agents from the CIA itself, had authorization to slap detainees across the face, force them into uncomfortable stress positions, and keep them awake for 11 consecutive days.
If that did not work, they could strap a collar and leash around a detainee’s neck, using the leash to repeatedly slam the suspect into a wall.
They could force a suspect into a dark box and leave him there for 18 hours, and if the pressure needed to be increased, insects could be placed inside.
If all else had failed, there was waterboarding: interrogators could strap a detainee to a bench with his feet higher than his head, place a cloth firmly over his mouth and nose, and pour water onto his face.
“Airflow is restricted for 20 to 40 seconds and the technique produces the sense of drowning and suffocation,” a 2004 CIA inspector general report said of the process.
Once the suspect had been allowed to take “three or four full breaths,” the waterboarding could resume, for up to 20 minutes, according to the report, which was released on Monday.
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/08/27/cia-prisoners-faced-chilling-interrogation-methods/
monkey, writerdog, and all the rest of you lefties, I have some questions for you.
Exactly which America do we live in? Is it the America you are constantly railing against that practiced legal slavery for over eighty-five years after the Declaration of Independence? Is it the America that you claim stole the Southwest from its rightful owners the Mexicans? Is it the Country that you claim murdered and stole this land from its rightful indigenous owners the Indians? Is it the Nation that has deposed lawfully elected governments in other Countries and replaced them with puppet regimes friendly to the U.S.? Is it the America of John Kerry who claims that we committed unspeakable atrocities in Vietnam?
Or is it the Country you claim is better than all the other nations because of our Constitution. A Constitution that you regularly trash when it fits your needs. A Constitution that you claim prevents us from obtaining vital information from our enemies by somewhat distasteful means even if it means placing this Nation and her people at great risk. You speak of international laws and treaties that other Nations violate with impunity yet which you claim we must follow to the letter because “we are better than them”.
I wish we were that Nation, but the truth is we no longer have the luxury of waiting to be attacked before responding. Also your self righteous pontificating rings hollow when we know that you champion a party that steals, cheats and does whatever it takes to gain power. Just like so many other things, you have greatly mistaken where the vast majority of the American people are on this subject. Proceed at your own peril.
Chris, maybe you should get out a little more often. You could use some fresh air.
Dennis
Why is it OK to imprison the grunts for Abu Ghraib not not CIA spooks for doing similar acts?
In Theory, we live in a constitutional democracy that’s “Of the people, by the people and for the people.” It’s very difficult for the people to know whom to elect when the executive branch is conducting business in the shadows, which it must sometimes, but more often does to keep the voters in the dark. Most of what has come out lately are things our enemies have already known for a long time- our government isn’t keeping any secrets from them, they’re keeping them from us and keeping them out of the decision-making process.
They say “Trust us,” time and again, and time and again we find we can’t, and they try to explain their actions away as anomalies when all too often it’s business as usual, and the purpose of their secrecy is to protect their party and friends and financial interests, not their nation.
Somehow, we the people need to form a more perfect union between ourselves and our government; we do that by making our government accountable for it’s actions, just as it makes us accountable for our own. This is where the legislative and judicial branches are supposed to step in and represent the people and the law, and they’ve done a miserable job of it so far. Our only way (short of reopening the civil war) to deal with it is to get together and vote out every incumbent, and keep voting them out until we get a mostly bullsh*t-free congress of those who represent us first. It took us 233 years to get to this point, and it will take us a while to get back. Better get started!
Liberals claim the high moral ground when they say waterboarding is torture. But when a pin is stuck in a baby’s skull during abortion they call it “choice”. How can you reason with these folks?