What a perky war criminal

Meet Jennifer Koester Hardy, a hitherto redacted and unknown author of the torture memos. She worked under John Yoo and did a lot of the drafting. Who would guess that behind this smiling face is a brain that promotes torture as a policy of the United States government.

The report makes clear that, despite apparently having been given the assignment almost at random, Koester played a more active role in the process of producing the memos than perhaps anyone else at DOJ, with the possible exception of Yoo. In July 2002, when Yoo and Koester went to the White House to brief then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, and perhaps David Addington, Dick Cheney's top lawyer, on one memo, it was Koester, not Yoo, who orally summarized the memo's conclusions (p. 46). (None of the attendees offered any feedback at the meeting, Yoo told OPR.)

You can read about her here.

In the words of our friend Göran: "Another Nürnberg!"

Ship her to the Hague along with the boys. They should not be walking free.


--the BB

Watch us weasel

bmaz reports at emptywheel:

Mike Isikoff and Dan Klaidman put up a post about an hour ago letting the first blood for the Obama Administration’s intentional tanking of the OPR (Office of Professional Responsibility) Report. In light of Obama’s focused determination to sweep the acts of the Bush Administration, no matter how malevolent, under the rug and “move forward” the report is not unexpected. However, digesting the first leak in what would appear to be a staged rollout is painful:

…an upcoming Justice Department report from its ethics-watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), clears the Bush administration lawyers who authored the “torture” memos of professional-misconduct allegations.

While the probe is sharply critical of the legal reasoning used to justify waterboarding and other “enhanced” interrogation techniques, NEWSWEEK has learned that a senior Justice official who did the final review of the report softened an earlier OPR finding. Previously, the report concluded that two key authors—Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor—violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed “poor judgment,” say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action—which, in Bybee’s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry.

Sigh.

This is not about mercy, reconciliation, or - heaven forfend - truth. It is about impunity. And where impunity prevails the law is irrelevant.

One of my fiercest criticisms of the Obama administration is its refusal to enforce the law where war crimes BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT are concerned.

Yoo, Bybee, Addington, Cheney, Rice, Bush and several others should not be walking free.


--the BB

Right wing heads explode (oh, if they only would!)

CIA Man Retracts Claim on Waterboarding

That's the headline of an article by Jeff Stein at Foreign Policy.

Well, it's official now: John Kiriakou, the former CIA operative who affirmed claims that waterboarding quickly unloosed the tongues of hard-core terrorists, says he didn't know what he was talking about.

...

"I wasn't there when the interrogation took place; instead, I relied on what I'd heard and read inside the agency at the time."

In a word, it was hearsay, water-cooler talk.

With that admission, claims that waterboarding works sort of evanesce.

Imagine my surprise.

--the BB

One step against the war criminals

INTERNATIONAL ARREST WARRANTS REQUESTED

Professor Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign, U.S.A. has filed a Complaint with the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (I.C.C.) in The Hague against U.S. citizens George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, and Alberto Gonzales (the "Accused") for their criminal policy and practice of "extraordinary rendition" perpetrated upon about 100 human beings. This term is really their euphemism for the enforced disappearance of persons and their consequent torture. This criminal policy and practice by the Accused constitute Crimes against Humanity in violation of the Rome Statute establishing the I.C.C.

The United States is not a party to the Rome Statute. Nevertheless the Accused have ordered and been responsible for the commission of I.C.C. statutory crimes within the respective territories of many I.C.C. member states, including several in Europe. Consequently, the I.C.C. has jurisdiction to prosecute the Accused for their I.C.C. statutory crimes under Rome Statute article 12(2)(a) that affords the I.C.C. jurisdiction to prosecute for I.C.C. statutory crimes committed in I.C.C. member states.

--David Swanson at Daily Kos

Click the link above to read it all.

How about "renditioning" them to the Hague?

I marvel that they are allowed out in public at all. It must take an amazing level of self-delusion to be able to step out into sunshine. Par for the course for sociopaths.

Blessings on Frank A. Boyle and godspeed!

--the BB

This is not over

Emptywheel, whom I revere, keeps digging:

So Cheney and Libby asked Schmall (for at least the third time) about Wilson’s trip. Then Cheney went into a briefing, then meeting, with Bush, Condi, Card, and Rove. And then Rove went into the senior staff meeting talking about how they had to push back against Wilson. Cathie Martin wrote up some talking points reflecting Rove’s comments. And then Libby told Ari Fleischer about Plame’s identity.

It’s just a mere five hours from Cheney and Rove’s conversation with Bush to Libby telling the White House Press Secretary that Plame was a CIA officer.

I remain of the opinion that even when the war is illegal, immoral, and counterproductive, the outing of a covert CIA operative in a time of war constitutes treason. It is all the more heinous when that operative was engaged in tracking nuclear capabilities in a region where governments are questionable and terrorists lurk on the fringes - in other words, risking her ass to save ours.

It's a pity the Obama administration does not believe in holding criminals accountable.

--the BB

When the perps are behind bars, I will let this rest

This is too delish:

“It cannot be suggested that information as to how officials of the U.S. government admitted treating (Binyam Mohamed) during his interrogation is information that can in any democratic society governed by the rule of law be characterized as ’secret’ or as ‘intelligence’…”

--Paisley Dodds for the AP (full article here)

What is this all about? In a nutshell:

In a stunning and refreshing decision, the British High Court has overruled the British government’s attempt to suppress torture evidence on the US and British treatment of Binyam Mohamed.

See bmaz's article at emptywheel.

“In our view, as a court in the United Kingdom, a vital public interest requires, for reasons of democratic accountability and the rule of law in the United Kingdom, that a summary of the most important evidence relating to the involvement of the British security services in wrongdoing be placed in the public domain in the United Kingdom.”

The British High Court shows the world how torture is considered in a real legal system.

Yes!

--the BB

I have two new military heroes today

Their names are CHARLES C. KRULAK AND JOSEPH P. HOAR. "Charles C. Krulak was commandant of the Marine Corps from 1995 to 1999. Joseph P. Hoar was commander in chief of U.S. Central Command from 1991 to 1994."

Their op-ed piece was published Friday in the Miami Herald. Snippets:

But we never imagined that we would feel duty-bound to publicly denounce a vice president of the United States, a man who has served our country for many years. In light of the irresponsible statements recently made by former Vice President Dick Cheney, however, we feel we must repudiate his dangerous ideas -- and his scare tactics.

...

Repeating these assertions doesn't make them true. We now see that the best intelligence, which led to the capture of Saddam Hussein and the elimination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was produced by professional interrogations using non-coercive techniques. When the abuse began, prisoners told interrogators whatever they thought would make it stop.

...

The Bush administration had already degraded the rules of war by authorizing techniques that violated the Geneva Conventions and shocked the conscience of the world. Now Cheney has publicly condoned the abuse that went beyond even those weakened standards, leading us down a slippery slope of lawlessness. Rules about the humane treatment of prisoners exist precisely to deter those in the field from taking matters into their own hands. They protect our nation's honor.

I want to thank these men for standing up and speaking out on behalf of the honor of the United States of America AND for the protection of our troops in the field.

Gentlemen, thank you.

h/t to Digby and Scott Horton for pointing me to this. I recommend the entire article.

--the BB

¡Sí! ¡Sí! ¡Sí! ¡Sí! ¡Sí!

¿Han entendido Uds. que España piensa en perseguir los crimenes de la administración de Bush? ¡Qué buenas noticias!

Have y'all heard that Spain plans to prosecute the Bushies for their war crimes? What good news!

MinistryOfTruth shared this segment from Raw Story at Daily Kos:

A Spanish judge has decided to go ahead with the prosecution of six Bush administration lawyers - including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales - who were the architects of the legal framework for President George W. Bush "enhanced interrogation" program, according to a report in the Spanish newspaper Publico. (Original article here; Google translation here.)

The six Bush administration alumni targeted in the prosecution are former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; John Yoo, author of the "torture memos"; Douglas Feith, then a deputy defense secretary; Pentagon lawyer William Haynes II; former assistant attorney general Jay Bybee; and David Addington, a former chief of staff to then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

~snip~

. . . Holder’s investigation will be limited to instances where interrogators overstepped the boundaries set out by Bush lawyers for "enhanced interrogation." By contrast, the Spanish case challenges the legality of the entire program.

This is the beginning of the article at Público.es:

La Fiscalía tildó la querella de "fraudulenta", al Gobierno le incomoda y la Administración Obama no la quiere. Pero el juez de la Audiencia Nacional Baltasar Garzón parece dispuesto a abrir una causa explosiva, dirigida contra el equipo legal de George W. Bush, que redefinió el concepto de tortura para emplearla en la "guerra contra el terrorismo", y que afectaría también a su secretario de Defensa, Donald Rumsfeld.

En una providencia fechada el 11 de agosto y entregada a la vuelta de vacaciones, Garzón no sólo mantiene vivo el caso, sino que deja entrever sus intenciones de abrirlo formalmente: acepta tres nuevas acusaciones particulares y desoye a la Fiscalía, que sostiene que antes de abordarse el asunto en Madrid debería acudirse a los tribunales enWashington.

De la providencia se desprende también que Garzón apremia a EEUU para que conteste la comisión rogatoria planteada y aporte información sobre las eventuales acciones emprendidas allí. No se conforma con el silencio: según subraya en el escrito, solicitó por vez primera dicha información a las autoridades estadounidenses el 15 de junio y, al no obtener respuesta, envió un segundo escrito el 11 de agosto.

Nail 'em. Jail 'em. Show the world that the law applies to everyone!

--the BB

Epic fail

Ali H. Soufan, FBI special agent involved in many interrogations, writes in the NYT:

It is surprising, as the eighth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, that none of Al Qaeda’s top leadership is in our custody. One damaging consequence of the harsh interrogation program was that the expert interrogators whose skills were deemed unnecessary to the new methods were forced out.

Mr. Mohammed knew the location of most, if not all, of the members of Al Qaeda’s leadership council, and possibly of every covert cell around the world. One can only imagine who else we could have captured, or what attacks we might have disrupted, if Mr. Mohammed had been questioned by the experts who knew the most about him.

I will conclude here with his opening paragraph:

PUBLIC bravado aside, the defenders of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques are fast running out of classified documents to hide behind. The three that were released recently by the C.I.A. — the 2004 report by the inspector general and two memos from 2004 and 2005 on intelligence gained from detainees — fail to show that the techniques stopped even a single imminent threat of terrorism.

--the BB

Good fracking question

The Gestapo did not use waterboarding - so their methods of interrogation in this case were not as extreme as Cheney's. Nonetheless, the US-run court ruled that Cheney-style EITs, deployed by the Gestapo with the same justification as Cheney, constituted prosecutable torture:

...
And they were executed for war crimes.

The question Americans have to ask themselves is why they hold the former president and vice-president to lower moral and ethical standards than the United States once held the Gestapo. That's all. And that's everything, isn't it?

--Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic

h/t to Markos

Indeed.

--the BB

It is in the legal record now - updated with link

FishOurofWater reports at Daily Kos:

Major David J.R. Frakt gave a blistering argument, a virtual indictment of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Gonzales for enabling war crimes in his request for pre-trial dismissal in the case of United States v. Mohammed Jawad, the 12 year old child that was tortured by the United States then held in Gitmo indefinitely. The Court has now ordered the release of Jawad.

Sadly, this military commission has no power to do anything to the enablers of torture such as John Yoo, Jay Bybee, Robert Delahunty, Alberto Gonzales, Douglas Feith, David Addington, William Haynes, Vice President Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, for the jurisdiction of military commissions is strictly and carefully limited to foreign war criminals, not the home-grown variety. All you can do is to try to send a message, a clear and unmistakable message that the U.S. really doesn’t torture, and when we do, we own up to it, and we try to make it right.

FishOutofWater concludes:

JAG Fract, by winning this case with this damning evidence has put into the legal record, a basis for trying Yoo, Cheney, Rumsfeld and other high level Bush administration officials as war criminals.

It's past time to appoint a special prosecutor.

However, if American courts don't act there is now a clear case on the record for action in the Hague or other courts to try Cheney, Rumsfeld and other high level Bush administration officials for war crimes.

The petition to the Department of Justice to appoint a special prosecutor may be found here.

--the BB

"not a single significant plot"

Just go read today's article from the Washington Post. It has no gruesome details to churn your stomach though moral nausea is guaranteed. The link is to the print version, so you should have no photographs (beyond an advertisement).

These two paragraphs are nothing new but everyone really needs to be aware of them.

The officials who authorized or participated in harsh interrogations continue to dispute how effective such methods were and whether important information could have been obtained from Abu Zubaida and others without them. In March, The Washington Post reported that former senior government officials said that not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's coerced confessions.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, in a 2007 report made public this year, said the application of harsh interrogation methods, "either singly or in combination, constituted torture."

[Emphasis mine]

The CIA loves them some torture until they have to witness it.

The two men threatened to quit if the waterboarding continued and insisted that officials from Langley come to Thailand to watch the procedure, the former official said.

After a CIA delegation arrived, Abu Zubaida was strapped down one more time. As water poured over his cloth-covered mouth, he gasped for breath. "They all watched, and then they all agreed to stop," the former official said.

A 2005 Justice Department memo released this year confirmed the visit. "These officials," the memo said, "reported that enhanced techniques were no longer needed."

The immediate engineers of torture were under pressure from Langley to come up with something. One cannot help wondering who was putting the pressure on Langley. My vote, of course, would be RBC but there may have been others. THAT is where the war crimes trials need to go.

--the BB

WSJ gives platform to war criminal

Mcjoan, who tracks issues of ongoing interest to me, posted today about John Yoo's disingenuous (dishonest? Yes, let's go with dishonest!) opinion piece in the WSJ defending FISA violations. That's defending illegal behavior, in case I'm being too subtle here.

She quotes extensively from Anonymous Liberal's "detailed and devastating take down of Yoo."

A sample from Anonymous Liberal:

In today's op-ed Yoo finally gets around to a subject that he didn't bother to mention in his original opinion, the relevance of the Youngstown case. In an almost childish bit of sophistry, Yoo asserts that "Youngstown correctly found that the Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the exclusive power to make law concerning labor disputes. It does not, however, address the scope of the president's power involving military strategy or tactics in war." Needless to say, this is an interpretation of Youngstown shared by precisely no one. Youngstown explicitly involved a conflict between the president's power to direct the Korean War and Congress. In every case since then, the Supreme Court has applied the Youngstown framework to presidential claims of Article II authority. In the recent Hamdan case, the Court relied on Youngstown in striking down the Bush administration's military commissions. Suggesting that Youngstown was about a "labor dispute" is like suggesting that Marbury v. Madison was about a judicial appointment. It entirely misses the point of the case.

[Emphasis mine]

Indeed.

Yoo is an especially nasty piece of work. He makes the most noisome drengturd look and smell good.

Why, by every star in heaven, is this man not under indictment, if not behind bars?

--the BB

I regret that hanging is not available

To deal with war criminals, that is. It is rather like my position on hell. I don't believe in it, but I want to hang on to if for certain persons. We saw to it that Saddam Hussein was hanged. It would seem apt for the same fate to befall equally guilty war criminals. (Bush, Cheney, and the whole damned WHIG crowd would be a nice start.)

Richard A. Clarke, who should be in a position to know, shreds the Cheney-Rice twaddle that's being peddled these days.

Yet listening to Cheney and Rice, it seems that they want to be excused for the measures they authorized after the attacks on the grounds that 9/11 was traumatic. "If you were there in a position of authority and watched Americans drop out of eighty-story buildings because these murderous tyrants went after innocent people," Rice said in her recent comments, "then you were determined to do anything that you could that was legal to prevent that from happening again."

I have little sympathy for this argument. Yes, we went for days with little sleep, and we all assumed that more attacks were coming. But the decisions that Bush officials made in the following months and years -- on Iraq, on detentions, on interrogations, on wiretapping -- were not appropriate. Careful analysis could have replaced the impulse to break all the rules, even more so because the Sept. 11 attacks, though horrifying, should not have surprised senior officials. Cheney's admission that 9/11 caused him to reassess the threats to the nation only underscores how, for months, top officials had ignored warnings from the CIA and the NSC staff that urgent action was needed to preempt a major al-Qaeda attack.

A few more sentences

Yes, Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice may have been surprised by the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 -- but it was because they had not listened.

...

The White House thought that 9/11 changed everything. It may have changed many things, but it did not change the Constitution, which the vice president, the national security adviser and all of us who were in the White House that tragic day had pledged to protect and preserve.

It is all rather damning, though almost any review of the evidence we have before us is.

I would like the entire American public to be aware that we already knew Bush & Cheney were full of crap. Way back when.

Frank Rich, in his column at the NYT today, notes of the journalists who just did the research that refuted Cheney's claims in his recent emesis of lies that passed for a speech that

These are the same two journalists who, reporting for what was then Knight Ridder, uncovered much of the deceit in the Bush-Cheney case for the Iraq war in the crucial weeks before Congress gave the invasion the green light.

On Sept. 6, 2002, Landay and Strobel reported that there was no known new intelligence indicating that “the Iraqis have made significant advances in their nuclear, biological or chemical weapons programs.” It was two days later that The Times ran its now notorious front-page account of Saddam Hussein’s “quest for thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes.” In the months that followed, as the Bush White House kept beating the drum for Saddam’s imminent mushroom clouds to little challenge from most news organizations, Landay and Strobel reported on the “lack of hard evidence” of Iraqi weapons and the infighting among intelligence agencies. Their scoops were largely ignored by the big papers and networks as America hurtled toward fiasco.

[Emphasis mine]

h/t to teacherken

Remember, we all have a duty to stand up to twaddlemongers.

--the BB

The day the smirking stopped

occams hatchet has published a must-read diary about the Nuremberg trials and the central issue of holding leaders to account for a war of aggression when they were not under threat (wink, wink, nudge, nudge, Iraq, know what I mean, know what I mean?).

It is a solid and sobering account (no graphic violence so the squeamish may read it). I believe it gives us important perspective on the issues we face today.

It should be required reading for every member of Congress and all cable and newspaper pundits. (Come to think of it, they should all re-read the Constitution while they're at it.)

--the BB

Sumbitch ipse loquitur

Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit. Beating, burning, rape, and electric shock are some of the grisly tools such regimes use to terrorize their own citizens. These despicable crimes cannot be tolerated by a world committed to justice.
--George Walker Bush, 26 June 2003

h/t to Hunter

What can one say in the face of such brazen hypocrisy?

--the BB

The photos are out there already

This was not the work of "a few bad apples." This was White House policy!

This blood is on the hands of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush and their accomplices AND ON OURS UNLESS WE HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE!

Photo via The Sydney Morning Herald
h/t to Juan Cole

--the BB
[Note: I make no apology for posting photos of the atrocities committed by our government in our name. The truth must be exposed.]

It wasn't just the frat boys

Let's not forget Madame Chevron:



Yes, Condaliar Rice uttered this Nixonian nonsense:

"The United States was told, we were told, nothing that violates our obligations under the Convention Against Torture, and so by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture."

As to culpabilty....

"I didn't authorize anything. I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency, that they had policy authorization, subject to the Justice Department's clearance. That's what I did."

Just carrying water for ... was that your boyfriend W or the Dark Lord hisself? Ooh, that nose is growing.

Girlfriend, we so have a seat for you at the Hague.

Check out Cenk Uygur's full article at HuffPo.

When the war crimes trials are held I definitely want her among the defendants.

I remember screaming "*** ******* liar" when she was testifying, on more than one occasion, before Congress. She was saying things I knew were untrue. And oh, the offense she takes if you impugn her "integrity"! She is among the worst of them. (Chevron took her name off their tanker, btw.)

--the BB

Clearly coordinated FROM THE TOP

Check out Rachel on how the CIA and the military were up to the same shit on orders from the top. This did not rise from the bottom. Worth six and a half minutes of your time.



h/t to John Aravosis at Americablog

--the BB

Oh, Donny boy, the Hague, the Hague is calling....

The report showed that Mr. Rumsfeld’s authorization was cited by a United States military special-operations lawyer in Afghanistan as “an analogy and basis for use of these techniques,” and that, in February 2003, a special-operations unit in Iraq obtained a copy of the policy from Afghanistan “that included aggressive techniques, changed the letterhead, and adopted the policy verbatim.”

Months later, the report said, the interrogation officer in charge at Abu Ghraib obtained a copy of that policy “and submitted it, virtually unchanged, through her chain of command.” This ultimately led to authorization by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez of the use of stress positions, “sleep management” and military dogs to exploit detainees’ fears, the report said.

“The paper trail on abuse leads to top civilian leaders, and our report connects the dots,” Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said on Tuesday in a conference call with reporters. “This report, in great detail, shows a paper trail going from that authorization” by Mr. Rumsfeld “to Guantánamo to Afghanistan and to Iraq,” Mr. Levin said.
--NT Times

h/t to Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars

--the BB