Bush attorneys who wrote terror memo face backlash »
Posted By Progressive 6 months, 2 weeks ago in Political NewsSAN FRANCISCO - Pressure is mounting against two former Bush administration attorneys who wrote the legal memos used to support harsh interrogation techniques that critics say constituted torture. John Yoo, a constitutional law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, is fighting calls for disbarment and dismissal, while Judge Jay Bybee of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals faces calls for impeachment.
Read Full Story at news.yahoo.com »
363 Views Share Story 16 Comments Report
Submitted By:
Progressive
There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating: people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing. -- Oscar Wilde
I ...
Who Also Submitted:
RSS Join the Discussion
+ Add CommentComments So Far: 16 (view all)
-
100%
Progressive6 months, 2 weeks ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
The Justice Department has signaled it won't prosecute the Bush administration lawyers who approved interrogation tactics widely considered to be torture, but they may have trouble keeping their jobs. A forthcoming report from the DoJ will recommend possible disciplinary action by state bar associations for the Bush lawyers, sources tell the AP. Jay Bybee, currently an appeals court judge, is facing calls for his impeachment, while students and faculty at Berkeley, where John Yoo now teaches, want him fired and disbarred.
Reply
"We believe there is a lot of evidence to suggest that war crimes were committed," says one activist. But legal experts tell the Washington Post that state investigators face "nearly insurmountable challenges," including a lack of subpoena power. Unless they can demonstrate that Yoo and Bybee provided advice that was illegal, and not merely poor, a case is unlikely to proceed.
http://www.newser.com/story/58269/bush-lawyers-fac...-
-
Neutral
KISA452a6 months, 2 weeks ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
"while students and faculty at Berkeley, where John Yoo now teaches, want him fired and disbarred. "
Reply
Of course. The Berkeley folks want anyone with a different opinion fired, disbarred, drawn and quartered. Never DARE disagree with them...
I don't know much about this, but as a general philosophy, if the Berkeley crowd is against it, I assume it is probably best to be for it.
-
-
100%
hyperbola6 months, 2 weeks ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
The whole "torture controversy" has become nothing but political theater designed to entertain the gullible while they are being fleeced. The Obama administration has already abdicated from defending the American Constitution and American democracy and has already put the mechanisms for the cover up in place.
Reply
You didn't notice that in the mainstream media?
Torture? Rudman to the Rescue
http://www.propeller.com/story/2009/05/06/torture-...
The announcement in mid-March that CIA Director Leon Panetta had picked former Sen. Warren Rudman to act as CIA “liaison” with the Senate Intelligence Committee during its “review” of interrogation and detention practices has drawn virtually no criticism from the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM).
Yet, it is a dead give-away as to how congressional leaders plan to go through the motions for a year or so, and then let everyone off the hook.
Why let everyone off the hook? Because congressional leaders, Republican and Democratic alike, were informed of the Bush/Cheney administration plans for torture — perhaps not chapter and verse, but enough to be complicit in their silence. Both parties have amply soiled the dirty linen that could be hung out.....
...Senate team managers Reid and Rockefeller have gone to their bench for an ace utility infielder — quintessential practitioner of “thorough” investigations, Warren Rudman. They are eager to bring Rudman on as liaison with the Senate Intelligence Committee led by Dianne Feinstein with Rockefeller sitting at her right hand, so to speak.
The FCM, whether from indolence or timidity, have completely missed the boat on Rudman, calling him a “respected” veteran of investigations of national security issues. Does no one do due diligence — or simple homework — anymore?...
...In the 1980s, Rudman earned his spurs by working hand in glove with then-Rep. Dick Cheney to limit the scope of the Iran-Contra investigation. Rudman was essentially the good cop to Cheney’s bad.
Rudman was one of three “moderate” Republican senators who collaborated with “moderate” Democratic co-chairman Lee Hamilton in soft-peddling the roles of President Ronald Reagan and Vice President George H.W. Bush in authorizing and overseeing the Iran-Contra law violations....-
Neutral
KISA452a6 months, 2 weeks ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
"The Obama administration has already abdicated from defending the American Constitution and American democracy "
Reply
You are decades late, but glad you finally found the party... The Constitution was thrown out long ago (I'm not a Constitutional scholar so can't say when). But anyone who think that judges should use anything other than the written word have supported coups against the US.
Was actually reading or heard (can't recall where), that 8 of 9 justices came from 2 ivy league schools and were previously federal judges (not certain of how that last fact was worded). Obviously, this allows a small number of faculty to mold the entire federal justic system. The obvious overpower of a small group can not help but be detrimental to the US.
-
-
100%
hyperbola6 months, 2 weeks ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
continued
Reply
In the end, none of the White House folks or other senior officials who played fast and loose with the law during the Iran-Contra affair were held to account.
A noxious precedent was set. This kind of experience, one might say, has a way of emboldening lawbreakers to try again — and again.
Dissing Gulf War Veterans
In this next example, I am having difficulty controlling my anger. For I remain outraged by Rudman’s willingness to do the Pentagon’s bidding by refusing to acknowledge that the illnesses of over 200,000 U.S. Gulf War veterans were related to exposure to several toxic chemicals — pesticides, experimental pills and vaccines, depleted uranium, oil-well fire pollution, and nerve gas — for starters.
Dual-use technologies needed to make nerve agents were sold to Iraq during the Reagan and Bush I administrations (when Saddam Hussein was something of a secret ally) and the stockpiles of nerve agents were then blown up by U.S. Army engineers in 1991 oblivious to the fact that 145,000 U.S. troops were downwind.
After a decade of denials, the Pentagon fessed up and notified those 145,000 Gulf War veterans they may have been exposed to low levels of chemical warfare agents....
... So, in May 1997, Warren Rudman was appointed as the Pentagon’s special adviser on Gulf War syndrome by his old Senate colleague William Cohen, who had moved on to be President Bill Clinton’s bipartisan choice as Defense Secretary.
In the advisory post, Rudman dismissed all evidence that challenged the Pentagon’s conclusion that Gulf War illnesses were not caused by multiple toxic exposures.
Rudman succeeded in sparing the Pentagon embarrassment, but at the price of denying over 200,000 Gulf War veterans the medical care they needed to cope with a wide array of neurological and other maladies. The result was to delay for over a decade medical research, treatment and disability benefits for Gulf War veterans.
... That’s right, over 200,000 of the 700,000 U.S. troops remain ill 18 years after the March 1991 cease-fire.
The findings of the panel led by Rudman from 1997 to 2001 have now been thoroughly discredited.
Late last year, after reviewing hundreds of peer-reviewed research studies, an independent Research Advisory Committee (RAC) mandated by Congress, concluded that prior investigations were biased against veterans, slanted in favor of the military and VA leadership, and woefully incomplete.
The November 2008 RAC report found that scientific research has determined a conclusive link between Gulf War illnesses and toxic exposures during deployment. The RAC also called pointedly for a reduction in government interference in the scientific process. -
100%
hyperbola6 months, 2 weeks ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
continued
Reply
Another Cover-up?
Covering up President Bush's torture policies is more about avoiding liability to prosecution — or, at least, acute political embarrassment. But the tools of cover-up are the same; and, again, what is needed is an experienced hand.
...Though now 79, he is assumed to be well rested and no doubt has been warming up for his new job with the help of Panetta, who made the revealing comment during his confirmation hearing that he is, first and foremost, a “creature of Congress.”
Rudman, another “creature of Congress,” can be expected to exhibit his usual exuberance in coming off the bench to play his customary role and save the game in the coming months.
If all goes as expected, the torture thing will be fixed by this time next year, when Rudman reaches 80.
We shall have to wait to see if the FCM will wake up and take interest so that the body politic has an opportunity to be informed and to summon the courage to prevent a repeat performance — this time on torture. -
100%
berkeley6 months, 2 weeks ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
the DOJ is presently defending yoo in another court case leftover from the bush/cheney years.
Reply
http://www.firejohnyoo.org/2009/03/the-latest-on-p...
what idiots to imagine no one will notice, or remember.-
100%
Progressive6 months, 2 weeks ago
This comment is below the standard viewing threshold View It »
Thanks for that link, berkeley. I hope this abrogation of the Constitutional rights of an American citizen will come to the attention of those who believe Yoo's memos applied only to "alien" combatants.
Reply
From your link:
"Despite their efforts, the judge did not seem inclined to dismiss the lawsuit, which was brought by Jose Padilla, an American citizen who spent more than three years in isolation in a military brig as an enemy combatant."
-
More News
The Huffington Post
Bernard-Henri Lévy: Jean-Baptiste Descroix-Vernier, Nietzsche, and the Rioters
Huff TV: Arianna Discusses Senate Health Care Reform On Countdown With Keith Olbermann
Lynda Obst: Cindy Hampton: Time To Tell All
Jeff Ma: Splitting 10s With Belichick
Arianna Huffington: Will The Unemployment Disaster Be Obama's Katrina?
Add a Comment
Sign In With Your Propeller Account
Please keep your comments relevant to this story.
To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.