Warner/McCain/Graham/Powell to Bush: "Drop dead." (aka, the US, torture and the Geneva Convention, fall 2006)

http://graphics10.nytimes.com/images/2006/09/16/us/16bush600.1.jpg

Speaking at a late-morning news conference in the Rose Garden, Mr. Bush said he would have no choice but to end a C.I.A. program for the interrogation of high-level terrorism suspects if Congress passed an alternate set of rules supported by a group of Senate Republicans.

Those alternate rules were adopted Thursday by the Senate Armed Services Committee in defiance of Mr. Bush. Setting out what he suggested could be dire consequences if that bill became law, Mr. Bush said intelligence officers — he referred to them repeatedly as “professionals” — would no longer be willing and able to conduct interrogations out of concern that the vague standard for acceptable techniques could leave them vulnerable to legal action.

“Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that Al Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland,” he said. “But the practical matter is if our professionals don’t have clear standards in the law, the program is not going to go forward.”

Today's radio address.

BTW, get a load of the radio graphic on that second page -- Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld look like your local newscasters!

tonight, the I-team's Dick Cheney investigates links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. plus Condi with sports, and Don and the Accu-Weather forecast to tell you about storms heading our way.

known knowns and all that, of course

I do suspect that Bush is covering his ass. Because I suspect he ordered that torture be used on suspects some time ago (or Dick told him to order it)

As the Head of a Sovereign State he does have a certain amount of immunity under International Law, but soon he won't be Head of State. As was proved by the Pinochet case, that means if he shows up in Europe after that time he could be arrested and deported to a country who were willing to try him for Crimes Against Humanity and could make a case for doing so.

Which would be amusing. For me at least.

The last ABC News poll I read said its approval ratings were in the high twenties.

An honest question: was Vietnam one of the Geneva Convention signatories? Didn't it still torture prisoners?

i guess in some ways the net never changes

The point is that even elements of the end-all/be-all of Evil found that physical torture didn't work.

And Bush is called a bully, but not a National Socialist.

...The attack from the right, which coalesced over the weekend, could undercut McCain's effort to woo Bush backers and other party regulars for an anticipated 2008 presidential bid. His position on terrorism prisoners has fueled critics' skepticism about McCain's conservative credentials.

"This very definitely is going to put a chilling effect on the tremendous strides he has made in the conservative evangelical community," said the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, one of several conservative activists who support Bush's proposal on interrogation techniques.

Norquist, in an interview Monday, accused McCain of "showboating" and foiling a White House political strategy of framing this year's midterm elections as a choice between Republicans who support tough treatment of terrorists and Democrats who are standing in the president's way.

The White House "would like to have a conversation between now and the election about punishing the people who did 9/11," said Norquist. "McCain is interrupting that conversation and confusing the message."

Rush Limbaugh, the conservative radio talk show host, charged Monday that McCain was part of a "cabal" in Washington that was "trying to thwart the policies of the Bush administration."

The push for torture has never been about trying to extract useful intelligence; it's always about punishment. Remember, these guys have the full-on authoritarian/"strict father" thing going. Doesn't matter if the captives are innocent or rounded up by lazy bounty hunters, the system is always correct and so these guys must be guilty. And the guilty must be punished.

I'm less concerned about what ends up getting directed at Bush, than I am with the possibility that for the sake of political convenience, warrantless searches may forever after be a legal tool for the administration.

"This very definitely is going to put a chilling effect on the tremendous strides he has made in the conservative evangelical community," said the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, one of several conservative activists who support Bush's proposal on interrogation techniques.

yeah i don't get this considering jesus could've been said to be a political prisoner tortured by the romans, but hey.

In one of his books, W.G. Sebald describes an SS interrogation technique that involved handcuffing the prisoner behind his back, then attaching a chain from the ceiling to the handcuffs and lifting the prisoner by the chain. This would cause the shoulders to dislocate.

but that's just it -- if you'd had pansy-boy mccain there instead of some hardass romans, you'd have probably no torture, no crucifixion, no resurrection and then where would we be? you have to think about the consequences of not martyring people.

and of course then NO RAPTURE

I really don't see Bush ever having this problem.

doesn't matter that the shit doesn't work, as long as you are "tough" and "aggressive," you'll be victorius and righteous and blah blah blah

ROFL @ "GOP Rebels"

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/topicons/thomas_sowell.jpg...Even with a nuclear Iran looming on the horizon and the prospect that its nuclear weapons will end up in the hands of international terrorists that it has been sponsoring for years, many in the media and in the government that is supposed to protect us have been preoccupied with whether we are being nice enough to the terrorists in our custody.

The issue has been brought to a head by the efforts of Senators John McCain, John Warner, and Lindsey Graham to get us to apply the rules of the Geneva convention to cutthroats who respect no Geneva convention and are not covered by the Geneva convention.

[...]

Congress has the power to impeach judges, including Supreme Court justices, but apparently not the guts. Runaway judges are not going to stop until they get stopped.

In short, the clash between Senator McCain, et al., and the President of the United States is more than just another political clash. It is part of a far more general, and ultimately suicidal, confusion and hand-wringing in the face of mortal dangers...

courtesy of Glenn Greenwald

Y'know, if we survive all this, we're going to look back on the era of history with great confusion and/or anger.

except that most eras don't have the sheer WTF-ness of our present time

I agree, but I think the hand-wringing is on the administration's end

good with accepted media narratives? Able to use his campaigning of years ago to cover with his voting of today? the fact that no one actually questions what he says or compares it with how he votes?

anyway,

russ feingold on this torture bill

and john kerry.

and since when have people EVER been rational? jesus christ, dude, we've been around long enough on this planet to have easily disproved this

There is not enough time to fix these bills, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.

McCain rolled over on the same issue late last year -- Nat Hentoff dissects:

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0552,hentoff,71304,6.html

don't speak for me

Is the relinquishment of the trial by jury and the liberty of the press necessary for your liberty? Will the abandonment of your most sacred rights tend to the security of your liberty? Liberty, the greatest of all earthly blessings--give us that precious jewel, and you may take everything else! ...Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel.

what I meant is that the general interrogation M.O. isn't going to be changed significantly by this bill. All it will do is provide a slight amount of legal cover for the interrogators in the rare occasion when they actually need it.

I fear ultimately it's gonna bloom like a motherfucker though.

Chafee voted agin', Snowe didn't vote, and democrats votin' fer:

Carper (D-DE)
Johnson (D-SD)
Landrieu (D-LA)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Lieberman (D-CT)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Pryor (D-AR)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Stabenow (D-MI)

also: fuck you, democratic quislings.

so they're effectively kicking the can down the road, as Tom Oliphant said yesterday on Al Franken's show, 'coz the courts are gunna get at this(assuming they're not all stacked with rightwing authoritarians before the cases come up).

(This does nothing to change my assertion above that a vote is important, and that the lesser of two evils is still better than the worse of two evils).

what a JOEk.

Read or watch the speeches Obama, Byrd, and Clinton gave yesterday. The bill passed 65-34, but the numbers don't reflect the real divide.

thing is, if you're in a state w/o open primaries, party affliation mainly lets vote in the primaries, which has a practical aspect beyond just philosophical identification(if such things matter to you)

I'm still sifting through the jargon, so I can't post an opinion yet, but I am fairly appalled.

Here's a lawyer's response, on The Corner:

Like most making overwrought statements on the
subject, your seemingly “fairly persuasive” emailer is
wrong. I am a working lawyer, and an expert at
statutory construction and interpretation, and I know
what I am talking about. (Heh) I used Thomas to look
up HR6166. As your emailer acknowledges, an American
citizen cannot be tried by a military tribunal under
this bill, so he fantasizes that Bushitler must have
some nefarious plans for citizen UECs. Get real. A
US citizen can fall within the definition of a UEC
because a US citizen can be a UEC. A US citizen can
be a UEC because a US citizen can go to Afghanistan
and join Al Qaeda and fight for the enemy, which makes
him a UEC under international law regardless of the
fact he is a citizen of the power that captured him.
I defy you to draft me a definition of an unlawful
enemy combatant that excludes American citizens who
are captured in the act of unlawfully conducting
hostilities against the U.S. The question is, can a
UEC who is an American citizen be tried under this
bill? No. The bill passed yesterday does not apply
to him.
As to your emailer’s point that anyone is a UEC if
the military says so, that is more hyperbole. A
person is a UEC if a Combatant Status Review Tribunal
says he is. CSRTs are established under Article 5 of
the Third Geneva Convention to determine the status of
persons who have committed belligerent acts and
“fallen into the hands of the enemy.” The GC requires
that if there is any doubt that a person is a UEC, he
is to be treated as a protected person until
determined to be a UEC by a competent tribunal.
Interestingly, if he is a UEC, he is not a protected
person. He can be lined up against a wall and shot.
Anyway, the point is that generals can’t just walk
down the streets of Berkeley and declare people to be
UECs.

the scoreboard is all that counts and everybody knows it

Boy am I tired of that analysis. There are times when it is acceptable to me, but not here. Upthread the phrase "declaration of conscience" was brought up. I agreed that a citizen's vote need not be a declaration of conscience. But if anything, yesterday's Senate vote was EXACTLY such a declaration. Or to any person with an ounce of integrity, it should have been. As was the case with the AUMF, I believe the Dems needed to play this vote straight in order to maintain their credibility longer term.

Because under the practices of the US CSRTs, it's at least 2% harder than that.

A military tribunal determined last fall that Murat Kurnaz, a German national seized in Pakistan in 2001, was a member of al Qaeda and an enemy combatant whom the government could detain indefinitely at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The three military officers on the panel, whose identities are kept secret, said in papers filed in federal court that they reached their conclusion based largely on classified evidence that was too sensitive to release to the public.

In Kurnaz's case, a tribunal panel made up of an Air Force colonel and lieutenant colonel and a Navy lieutenant commander concluded that he was an al Qaeda member, based on "some evidence" that was classified.

But in nearly 100 pages of documents, now declassified by the government, U.S. military investigators and German law enforcement authorities said they had no such evidence. Only one document in Kurnaz's file, a short memo written by an unidentified military official, concludes that the German Muslim of Turkish descent is an al Qaeda member.

Eugene R. Fidell, a Washington-based expert in military law, said Green appropriately chided the tribunal for not considering the overwhelming conclusion of the government that Kurnaz was improperly detained and should be released.

"It suggests the procedure is a sham," Fidell said. "If a case like that can get through, what it means is that the merest scintilla of evidence against someone would carry the day for the government, even if there's a mountain of evidence on the other side."

Mine are old because I've lived with em since '81.

...It's interesting to me. They were being treated very lavishly, as you know, to Ramadan, and we at the meal that...when I was down there, that the detainees eat, and very proudly, we were told, as they served up this fantastic meal, that it featured homemade pastries, especially cooked for the detainees for Ramadan. So I can tell you something. They eat much better food...I've eaten MRE's with American troops in Iraq, and these detainees eat much better than American troops do...

Ha ha ha that reminds me of an old CBS "In the News" report on the things Soviet kids learn in school, and the gist of what the teachers said was that, sure, Americans have rights, but the USSR is better because they have guaranteed jobs and housing etc. (Probably not even true back then, but what the hey.)

No, living under the swiftly approaching spectre of fascismo has made it clearer that they're all incompetent chickenshit swine as well as being a pack of felons

perhaps using this example as a starting point, the case could be made that certain rights, drawn certain ways, have consequences that are not beneficial to the welfare of the people or to the health of national democracy

Here's an analysis at a very macro level that states that this legislation merely formalizes an existing fundamental reinterpretation of the Constitution, due to the powers' that be realization, or false projection, that the current economic and political organization is not sufficient to preserve the interests of the current power structure. As you might expect, it kind of morphs into a stroking fantasy as it moves along, but I think scores some points.

This is not, in short a bureaucratic red tape cutting exercise, but, in essence, and Amendment to the Constitution that reads: "All other rights are superceded by the needs of the state, under the sole discretion of the executive.

This is an invocation of the right of governments to self-preservation, an ur-right which is seen precisely at moments of constitutional change. Under normal circumstances, everyone assumes that the government will be there tomorrow and the day after. Under normal circumstances governments do not need to explain this right, nor do they need to do much in the way of justifying the national interest.

[T]his legislation is completely and obviously unconstitutional, and yet it will survive judicial review, simply because the present Constitutional order cannot survive without it. It is impossible to have a regular transfer of power, where the architects of power are going to be arrested upon leaving office. If their architecture remains behind they must remain at liberty.

The last part summarizes well the reason for my frustration with the retroactive immunity for Bushco. It's not about covering for the "brave professionals" of the CIA who violated the War Powers Act. It's about protecting any US national, including those whose initials are GWB, CR, DC, DR, AG and more. And later...

Hence constitutional orders rest on a group of people facing insolvency, and acting in concert to secure the liquidity that they need, structured in the way which they prefer. It might seem a distant connection between the repeal of the Bill of Rights, and liquidity, but it is no distance at all.

Ha, Law and Economics aikido is ON. Has anyone read Posner's book about the need to reinterpret the Constitution so that we don't become a dhimmi state or whatever? Boy, does he know which way the wind blows.

exactly, which is what several people have been saying all along. Problem is, these people either aren't listened to or don't get enough mic time.

a failed fucking state, that's what.

Best comment I heard: "Legalizing torture is the sizzle, covering their asses is the steak. Sell the sizzle."

"Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!"

Crimes, not Powers duh

Borat-esque.

fuck Spector, what kind of senator votes for something they acknowledge publically as unconstitutional!? In a way I wish this really were ancient Rome cuz then I would be secure in the knowledge that these fuckers would go home and commit suicide after they realize how they've disgraced the country.

you think that's the first time?!

The Specter thing threw me for a loop because, from what I heard from his soundbytes, I just assumed he shot it down. Party before principles, I guess. Wheeeeeeeeeeeee.

This was going to be the deciding factor, essentially, if I was going to vote for her this November. I'm pleasantly surprised she voted this way, so she's getting my vote, although I'm not feeling pleasant overall (for obvious reasons.)

75% of the Democrats in the Senate voted against this, yet its passing is indicative of how all Democrats are just like Republicans?

i am not saying this -- i am disappointed that MY states' two Democratic senators voted for this bill.

http://img.gamespot.com/gamespot/images/2005/135/459841_20050516_screen012.jpg

Somewhere on TPM a commenter wrote that to claim that "no Democrat could have forseen the political outcome of this legislation as it was pending" is like Condi claiming that nobody could have predicted a terrorist flying a plane into the WTC.

Frontpage of CNN International is the school shooting story, with yearbook photo of the victim.

you're more accurate than you'd think

FFXII will be one of the worst games ever made.

featuring some of tombot's(and dan i.'s) finest work

xpost that too

But in hindsight, Abu Ghraib wasn't a scandal for the Bush administration. It was a coup. Because when the Senate passes the president's detainee bill today, we will, as a country, have yet more evidence that yesterday's disgrace is today's ordinary, and that—with a little time and a little help from the media—we can normalize almost anything in the span of a few short years. Lord Byron once wrote that "There are some feelings time cannot benumb/ Nor torture shake." He was, evidently, wrong as to both counts...

menendez is a political cockroach AFAIK but lautenberg is the puzzler to me - he's usually the go-to democrat for bush-bashing press quotes when the brand name guys aren't available and generally votes NAY on all of the bills that the republicans get jazzed up about, the ALL POWER TO THE CHIEF shit.

but at last bush gets a bill that needs no signing statement.

Cheney endorses simulated drowning

Dick Cheney, US vice-president, has endorsed the use of “water boarding” for terror suspects and confirmed that the controversial interrogation technique was used on Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, the senior al-Qaeda operative now being held at Guantánamo Bay.

Mr Cheney was responding to a conservative radio interviewer who asked whether water boarding, which involves simulated drowning, was a “no-brainer” if the information it yielded would save American lives. “It’s a no-brainer for me,” Mr Cheney replied.

The comments by the vice-president, who has been one of the leading advocates of reducing limitations on what interrogation techniques can be used in the war on terror, are the first public confirmation that water boarding has been used on suspects held in US custody.

“For a while there, I was criticised as being the ‘vice-president for torture’,” Mr Cheney added. “We don’t torture . . . We live up to our obligations in international treaties that we’re party to and so forth.

“But the fact is, you can have a fairly robust interrogation programme without torture and we need to be able to do that.”

Mr Cheney said recent legislation passed by Congress allowed the White House to continue its aggressive interrogation programme.

But his remarks appear to stand at odds with the views of three key Republican senators who helped draft the recently passed Military Commission Act, and who argue that water boarding is not permitted according to that law.

“[It’s] a direct affront to the primary authors of the Military Commission Act in the Senate – John McCain, Lindsey Graham and John Warner – all of whom have publicly stated that the legislation signed by the president last week makes water boarding a war crime,” said Jennifer Daskal, advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “This is Cheney ignoring the consensus of his own Pentagon,” she said, referring to comments by senior officials that harsh interrogation techniques do not produce reliable intelligence.

John Bellinger, the State Department legal adviser, last week declined to answer specific questions on water boarding, saying Congress would have to determine whether specific interrogation techniques were permissible under the Geneva ­conventions.

The Bush administration was forced to work with Congress to pass the Military Commissions Act after the Supreme Court ruled that al-Qaeda suspects were entitled to some protections under the Geneva convention. “Any procedures going forward would have to comply with the standards of Common Article 3 [of the Geneva conventions], including the prohibition on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment . . . ,” Mr Bellinger said. “Congress would have to agree that they are permitted under the law.”

Asked in the radio interview whether he would agree that the debate over terrorist interrogations and water boarding was “a little silly”, Mr Cheney responded: “I do agree”.

“I think the terrorist threat, for example, with respect to our ability to interrogate high-value detainees like Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, that’s been a very important tool that we’ve had to be able to secure the nation,” he said.

Lee Ann McBride, a spokeswoman for Cheney, denied that Cheney had confirmed that U.S. interrogators used water-boarding or endorsed the technique. "What the vice president was referring to was an interrogation program without torture," she said. "The vice president never goes into what may or may not be techniques or methods of questioning."

i hate my city sometimes.

U.S. Col. Harry Summers to North Vietnamese officer: "You never defeated us in the field."

North Vietnamese officer: "That is true. It is also irrelevant."

That story gets repeated a lot as a reminder of what war is not. It is not a sporting event in which the winners of various battles are awarded points, and the team with the most points wins.

Dick Cheney doesn't know this.

"Keep in mind," Cheney told NPR yesterday: "We've never been defeated in a stand-up fight in Iraq in over three years."

This is true. It is also irrelevant.

The Effective Terrorists Prosecution Act:

-Restores Habeas Corpus protections to detainees

-Narrows the definition of unlawful enemy combatant to individuals who directly participate in hostilities against the United States who are not lawful combatants

-Bars information gained through coercion from being introduced as evidence in trials

-Empowers military judges to exclude hearsay evidence they deem to be unreliable

-Authorizes the US Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces to review decisions by the Military commissions

-Limits the authority of the President to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions and makes that authority subject to congressional and judicial oversight

-Provides for expedited judicial review of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 to determine the constitutionally of its provisions

I consider it obscene & horrifying that we actually have to specify this shit, but such is life in these modern times.

offered w/out comment:

http://www.allannairn.com/2009/01/torture-ban-that-doesnt-ban-torture.html

A prediction is not a future history already written in stone.

auditioning for a reboot of Kung Fu?

oh, that's where A Nairn went!

Hahaha, I was thinking the same thing, Dan!

offered w/out comment:

http://www.allannairn.com/2009/01/killer-in-chief-obamas-choice-will-this.html

http://www.allannairn.com/2009/01/obama-to-america-drop-dead.html

it's amazing how we can read each other's biased non-comments perfectly, aint it

Morbs, Allan Nairn (not to be confused with "a nairn") has been blogging about torture since 2004. No one on ILX, via a rudimentary search, has quoted his News And Comment blog until you have, just after Obama has been president for 5 "business" days.

Just admit you have a fucking axe to grind, already.

And no, I don't think Obama is going to defy being disingenuous -- similar to presidents of past. I'm don't worship the guy, nor will I ever. So keep your faux-sly "biased non comments" to yourself.

no idea what that first post of yours means

That might be the problem.

who cares who hasn't been quoted before? ppl here read THE CORNER.

& stfu Ned

That's an awesome argument.

"BUT PEOPLE HERE POST TYRA GIFS"

I don't argue w/ Amen Choruses

Morbs just wants to take Rush Limbaugh's "I want to see our new president fail" idea to the next level. With more experimentation, 5/4 beats, etc.

I don't argue w/ Amen Choruses

That's all you've been doing for over a year!

Sorry, you haven't really been "arguing" technically. You've been exhibiting passive aggressive catty observations.

you couldn't be more awesome, you must like Spiderman.

Life becomes easier when you realize talking to Morbs about politics is like talking to Geir about music, with the caveat that Geir is willing to tell you why he thinks the way he does.

like that

I'm glad you admit the "practical Dem" CW around here is an Amen Chorus, tho. Changing One Mind at a Time.

Life becomes easier when you realize talking to Morbs about politics is like talking to Geir about music, with the caveat that Geir is willing to tell you why he thinks the way he does, even though both will just make up shit up if cornered.

fxd, otm

haha "make shit up", but i like it the way it is.

Dan, nobody knows why they think the way they do.

eg, that "US president" is a synonym for "killer" is obvious to me. How much more of that do you wanna hear? Didn't think so.

You really missed your calling; political punditry would fit you like a glove.

Morbz, I agree that there's less difference between Obama, Clinton, GWB, Bush I, Reagan than most Americans, especially Obama fans, realize. Duh. Duh. And duh.

How many times do you have to repeat this on ILX? We get it, STFU, etc.

Dan once again OTM. Rehashing same point over and over and over again is the golden prereq for a polit pundit career.

At least the LaRouchies have the balls to go out in public and say similar shit to this, instead of creep around on 20s-30s demographic free internets discussion forum.

lol "creep around 20s-30s" very subtle! I'm a poli-pedophile.

You'd regret saying that to me in "public."

I love how your contemptuous old ass made all these bullshit, bullshit, BULLSHIT promises to shut the FUCK up about this shit for 100 days or what the FUCK ever and you couldn't even keep yourself off the sauce for TWO.
You're a piece of shit poster and every goddamn thing you write lately is disgusting troll nonsense and you know I like you IRL but SHIT GOD.

SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP.

stick to movies, at least there your schtick is vaguely amusing from time to time. We get it, you hate america and we murder innocents with our tax dollars because we're all too stupid to know better. Now eat shit and quit reviving politics threads with your wingnut concern frottage

Wow. Your ability to misconstrue and extrapolate whatever is said to you in the most comically-unintended manner while remaining ensconced in your bubble of righteousness surpasses Momus. It's like watching Ann Coulter with all of the biases inverted.

xpost: wow u broke TOMBOT

YAAAAAAOOOOOOOW!

This is a return to the status quo ante, the torture regime of Ford through Clinton, which, year by year, often produced more US-backed strapped-down agony than was produced during the Bush/Cheney years.

strapped-down agony

u got it T-bot

(I literally kept my vow, but yeah, I'm just spoilin the fun)

strapped-on ecstasy