Torture memos

Originally Posted by classicman

What are their definitions? I gotta rethink this part.

Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment is illegal under UNCAT....the definitions in the treaty itself are not very specific, but under international law, under which the treaty is held accountable, that would include:

prolonged sleep deprivation - days not hours
excessive physical abuse - banging one's head against a wall
extremely painful stress positions - being shackled with arms above the head for days at a time
psychological abuse - threatening to inject AID virus
sensory deprivation
there are others

I agree it is subjective.

In the US Code, it refers to Constitutional protections as well as UNCAT protections:

TITLE 42 > CHAPTER 21D > § 2000dd–0

§ 2000dd–0. Additional prohibition on cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment

(1) In general
No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

(2) Cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment defined
In this section, the term “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” means cruel, unusual, and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, as defined in the United States Reservations, Declarations and Understandings to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment done at New York, December 10, 1984.

(3) Compliance
The President shall take action to ensure compliance with this section, including through the establishment of administrative rules and procedures.

Again, IMO, determination of the limits of such treatments should not be made unilaterally by the executive branch but if questions arise, should be in consultation with either the legislative or judicial branch.

Even more so if there is any likelihood or possibility of political motivation....like as noted in the Senate report, Cheney/Rumsfeld directing interrogators to do whatever necessary and as harsh as necessary to find an al queda - Saddam connection.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by Redux

Torture and cruel and degrading treatment is ILLEGAL.

Torture, yes.

Define cruel and degrading. You really can't because it differs for each person. And on that note I would suggest it is not illegal. If it was you can make a case for every single person arrested in the US under our law by any police officer.

[lookout123]

After prolonged torture and cruel and degrading treatment, he lost focus and gave information.

He named names....the Green Bay Packer offensive line.

He named cities in Vietnam.....cities that were not targets of opportunity.

Huh, funny thing is I seem to remember one of McCain's greatest sources of personal shame is that he did finally crack and give them what they wanted on at least one occasion.

But I should probably just ask you if you really equate going years malnourished, disfigured, and in solitude with preventing someone from sleeping for 48 hours? I see a difference. One = discomfort the other is permanently scarring.

Originally Posted by lookout123

Huh, funny thing is I seem to remember one of McCain's greatest sources of personal shame is that he did finally crack and give them what they wanted on at least one occasion.

But I should probably just ask you if you really equate going years malnourished, disfigured, and in solitude with preventing someone from sleeping for 48 hours? I see a difference. One = discomfort the other is permanently scarring.

This is what McCain wrote in his memoirs:

McCain explained that after refusing an offer of early release, North Vietnamese soldiers "worked me over harder than they ever had before. For a long time. And they broke me." While McCain did not go in to detail during his speech, he explained in his memoir Faith of my Fathers that the information he gave the Vietnamese after being "broken" was out of date, fabricated, or of little use to his captors:

Eventually, I gave them my ship's name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant. Pressed for more useful information, I gave the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line, and said they were members of my squadron. When asked to identify future targets, I simply recited the names of a number of North Vietnamese cities that had already been bombed.

McCain..."waterboarding is torture"

[lookout123]

And the second part of my post?

McCain..."waterboarding is torture"

McCain... "Sarah Palin is my choice for Vice President"

Originally Posted by lookout123

And the second part of my post?

Cruel and degrading treatment is also prohibited under UNCAT.

Because it is often difficult to distinguish between cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and torture, the Committee regards Article 16's prohibition of such treatment as similarly absolute and non-derogable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_...ding_treatment

UNCAT text

We (Reagan) signed it, we (the US) should live by it.

Originally Posted by lookout123

McCain... "Sarah Palin is my choice for Vice President"

I have no explanation for that decision.

[classicman]

Originally Posted by lookout123

McCain... "Sarah Palin is my choice for Vice President"

Originally Posted by Redux

I have no explanation for that decision.

lol - We all agree with that assessment!

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by Redux

We (Reagan) signed it, we (the US) should live by it.

Have you never considered that we die by it, Redux? You want to volunteer to be the first casualty? I certainly wouldn't. When are you going to get it through your skull that if you want a good world, we should not lose to these people of unfreedom. The less unfreedom, the better the world. I have understood this for so long that I stand in opposition to your ideas, and all ideas like them. What then is there to say of your understanding? Is it truly profound?

"By any means necessary" is the cry of the fanatic, but are not our foes almost entirely fanatics? They are already doing the "by any means necessary." And they are a pack of damned fools, for they don't, as fanatics generally do not, calculate that a mirroring fanaticism rises in opposition to theirs

The Left has made it abundantly if tacitly clear that they do not want us to win. (The Left can't even call these latterday Fascists dirty names!) Frankly, this sets the American Left against the interest of all humankind, which lies along freedom's road -- and what a fucking stupid place to be. No, the sins of the Left are simply too appalling, when they're not merely risible.

Some of us here could be smart enough not to be leftists, but have not yet used this intelligence, and a shining few of us show our higher intelligence and great enlightenment in not accepting leftism.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by Redux

But I am still not convinced that prosecution of Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld et al even if there is compelling evidence that they conspired in the authorization of torture is still in the best public interest.

I agree. I'd like to see the truth fully explored and names named of those responsible, but that said, I fear a politicized witch hunt.
Disgrace, maybe disbarment, but not prosecution.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Blah blah blah.

"By any means necessary" is the cry of the fanatic, but are not our foes almost entirely fanatics? They are already doing the "by any means necessary." And they are a pack of damned fools, for they don't, as fanatics generally do not, calculate that a mirroring fanaticism rises in opposition to theirs

Blah blah blah.

Yes, they are fanatics that will do anything.
But the millions of people that support the fanatics stated goals, and sort of support the fanatics themselves, will throw themselves 100% into the fanatics camp, if you myopic imperialists are allowed to fuck things up.

[sugarpop]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Have you never considered that we die by it, Redux? You want to volunteer to be the first casualty? I certainly wouldn't. When are you going to get it through your skull that if you want a good world, we should not lose to these people of unfreedom. The less unfreedom, the better the world. I have understood this for so long that I stand in opposition to your ideas, and all ideas like them. What then is there to say of your understanding? Is it truly profound?

"By any means necessary" is the cry of the fanatic, but are not our foes almost entirely fanatics? They are already doing the "by any means necessary." And they are a pack of damned fools, for they don't, as fanatics generally do not, calculate that a mirroring fanaticism rises in opposition to theirs

The Left has made it abundantly if tacitly clear that they do not want us to win. (The Left can't even call these latterday Fascists dirty names!) Frankly, this sets the American Left against the interest of all humankind, which lies along freedom's road -- and what a fucking stupid place to be. No, the sins of the Left are simply too appalling, when they're not merely risible.

Some of us here could be smart enough not to be leftists, but have not yet used this intelligence, and a shining few of us show our higher intelligence and great enlightenment in not accepting leftism.

[TheMercenary]

There are a few facts associated with a interrogation situation. First it is not what you know as much as how long you can hold out. After 24 hours, and knowing that you are missing, all information that you know will be changed. You are trained to hold out for as long as possible within your means. Second is that every person can be broken. Every single person. Some sooner than others. And every person that you know who is read in knows this as well. There is no shame lost in it.

[classicman]

Obama Intel director: High-value info obtained

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Obama administration's top intelligence official privately told employees last week that "high value information" was obtained in interrogations that included harsh techniques approved by former President George W. Bush.

"A deeper understanding of the al-Qaida network" resulted, National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair said in the memo, in which he added, "I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past." The Associated Press obtained a copy.

Critics of the harsh methods—waterboarding, face slapping, sleep deprivation and other techniques—have called them torture. President Barack Obama said Tuesday they showed the United States "losing our moral bearings" and said they would not be used while he is in office. But he did not say whether he believed they worked.

Obama ordered the release of long-secret Bush-era documents on the subject last week, and Blair circulated his memo declaring that useful information was obtained at the same time.

In a public statement released the same day, Blair did not say that interrogations using the techniques had yielded useful information.

As word of the private memo surfaced Tuesday night, a new statement was issued in his name that appeared to be more explicit in one regard and contained something of a hedge on another point.

A disturbing revelation from the most Senate recent report goes beyond the authorization of the use of torture...to part of the motivation....to "prove" a link between al Queda and Saddam:

The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist....

A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.

"There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used," the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.

"The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."

It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003 — according to a newly released Justice Department document.

"There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder," he continued.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66622.html

if that is the case, that political motivation makes the act even more egregious, IMO.

BUT....I am not ready to call for criminal investigations yet.

As to the torture memos, I would like to see the results of the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) investigation of the attorneys who drafted the memos. It was held up in the last days of the Bush administration by the AG and is now evidently in the hands of the Obama AG.

If, in fact, as reported earlier this year, Newsweek and Newsweek, that the OPR found that the attorneys who drafted the torture memos violated professional legal standards by basing their opinions on political rather than legal considerations, then, IMO, at the very least, they should be disbarred.

At the same time, if that in fact, is the OPR finding, I think a broader inquiry should be conducted to determine if other top officials, particularly in the White House and DoD, knowingly and willfully participated in the "politicization" of these memos. (The DoJ-OPR internal investigation did not extend that far).

At some point, you have to ask, should top officials in the former Administration be above the law?

[Happy Monkey]

At no point.

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

At no point.

I absolutely believe that further investigation in necessary, but for now I am leaning in the direction of a "truth commission" rather than a criminal investigation, with the results pointing to where ever it may.

If such an investigation points to the White House, Cheney and Bush could testify if they chose (they probably could not be compelled). If they chose not to tesitfy, then history will be left to judge their culpability.

The question for me is balancing the need for justice to be served with the adverse impact of criminal prosecutions of folks like Cheney (who probably deserves to be prosecuted).

Such a criminal investigation would rip the country apart. Is it worth it or is getting the truth out enough?