Letters to the Editor
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Bush's "Smoking Gun" Memo AuthorizingTorture of Detainees
If you haven't read it, the torture-authorizing memo that Bush signed on February 2, 2002 is available for viewing online: go to Consortiumnews.com for the link.
Yoo's on First?
By Ray McGovern
April 10, 2008
"Is it because John Yoo, the former Justice Department's hired hand, is such an easy target? Is it because of the cheeky, in-your-face way in which Yoo argues that the president has the authority to have your eyes poked out and your sons' testicles crushed, because we are 'at war' and he is commander in chief?
"Or is it because our press is STILL reluctant to go after Yoo's guys – first and foremost his ultimate client – President George W. Bush? Oh, but that would be hard, you say.
"Nonsense.
"Available on the Web, in its original format, is a 7 Feb. 2002 action memorandum that the president signed to implement the dubious advice he was getting from Yoo and those at Justice who hired Yoo – and from the vice president's office which guided Yoo.
"Yoo did their dirty work (and now he takes the rap).
"Weren't Yoo's co-conspirators careful to keep their fingerprints off the more blatantly offensive memoranda? Sure, they were.
"But there was one problem. Then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and then-CIA Director George Tenet could not get their people to torture folks without written, signed authorization by the president.
"And we have a copy of that authorization? Yes, it's been available for years. You have to download it to believe it.
"In his Feb. 7, 2002, memorandum, Bush wrote: 'I determine that common Article 3 of Geneva does not apply to either al Qaeda or Taliban detainees.' (Common Article 3 bans 'torture [and] outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.')
"Then, drawing on the lawyerly legerdemain, Bush did something really dumb. Using words drafted by Vice President Dick Cheney's lawyer, David Addington, for a memo dated Jan. 25, 2002, signed by then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, the president ordered that detainees be treated, 'humanely ... to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity.'
"Tacked onto the end of that sentence is a classic circumlocution: 'in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva.' But that is not what Geneva says, and there is no way to square that circle.
"This is the giant loophole through which Rumsfeld and Tenet drove the Mack truck of torture ... yes, signed by the president. The rotten apples were – demonstrably – at the very top of the barrel.
"Typical of the timid treatment accorded this issue is what initially seemed to be a straightforward article by Don Eggen in Sunday's Washington Post. It spotlighted scapegoat-of-the-hour Yoo, noting that he advised that in time of war the president's ultimate authority as commander in chief trumps laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes by military interrogators.
"In focusing on Yoo's legal advice, however, Eggen joined his 'mainstream' journalist colleagues in omitting the smoking gun – Bush's implementing memorandum of Feb. 7, 2002. That document already had cleared the way for waterboarding, stress positions, forced nudity and other abuse of detainees – as well as for further legal musings about the unlimited powers of a wartime president, like Yoo’s newly disclosed March 14, 2003, memo.
"The omission was all the more conspicuous in that a listing of nine memoranda relevant to the story sits side by side with Eggen's article. Guess which memo did not make it onto that list?
"Again, I urge you to download the president's Feb. 7 smoking gun from the Web and read it yourself. The Jan. 25, 2002, memo bearing Gonzales's signature is also available – in its original form."
KR
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Haha
Haha. The pleasure of stirring up this lefty hornet nest never abates.
"Good luck digging the beam out of your own eye, fuckface."
No, I meant bile like that, 'sport'.
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Proportionality
As in the lack of any sense of it. I don't want to say it is just right wingers, it is common to extremism of any nature but the Bushcons and RWAs and quite a few on the right seem to have no sense of proportionality at all. If you merely criticize, you are attacking and they respond as if you just bombed Pearl Harbor or flew planes into buildings:
"bile on the blog of a reasonably sensible person"
Like "Now go back to bed; your sister will be getting lonely," you mean bile like that, sport?
I love how it's right-wing, authoritarian bullies like you who always affect a tone of such high dudgeon when pointing out the mote in the eye of someone they disagree with.
-- Paul Daniel Ash
If you read up on just war theory you will find proportionality is a key component of it:
Proportionality. A state must, prior to initiating a war, weigh the universal goods expected to result from it, such as securing the just cause...
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/war/
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Omlettes
So basically (Update II), if you are planning on breaking eggs, you'd better expect omelettes, and if you claimed you expected to be able to break eggs and get them hardboiled, you should have cooked them first.
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McSame
AP Poll: Bush Public Approval at New Low
1 hour ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — Public approval of President Bush has reached a new low in the Associated Press-Ipsos poll, driven by dissatisfaction with his handling of the economy.
A survey released Thursday showed just 28 percent approve of the overall job he is doing. His previous record low in the poll was 30 percent last month.
In another record low, only 27 percent are happy with his job on the economy, which threatens to enter a recession.
The AP-Ipsos poll was taken from April 7-9 and involved telephone interviews with 1,005 adults. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
If the GOP thinks continuing support for the occupation in Iraq and McCain's nominal acceptance of global climate change as a real threat will carry him to the White House in Nov., they are more out of touch with reality than anyone can comprehend.
One wonders how this party of rich, old white men will handle with having their clocks cleaned by a woman with high negatives or a black man who can't bowl. Defenestration?