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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Office of Legal Counsel, which has become controversial because of its legal defense of practices bordering on torture.
Was this taken from the Onion? Saying that waterboarding "borders on torture" is like saying that the Vatican City borders on Italy.
Screw Feinstein. She works her own agenda most of the time anyway..and it seldom lines up with the left or the good of the people.
Either Kmiec is not really a legal scholar, or Newsweek is blowing smoke, or they are both pulling their baloney on Goldsmith out of the place where the sun don't shine.
The Fourth Geneva Convention says precious little about prisoners of war, since that is the subject of the Third Geneva Convention. And Jack Goldsmith's opinion on the Fourth Convention was to state that people who were not citizens of the place where the war was taking place could be treated as illegal immigrants and deported, apparently without permission from the local government (as the Pakistanis and CIA had previously been doing at Kohat).
And he opined that the word "deport" had a different meaning in 1949 than now, so that it wasn't ever really meant to imply that civilians in a war zone who were citizens couldn't be deported, even though that's what Article 49 says explicitly ("Individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory to the territory of the Occupying Power or to that of any other country, occupied or not, are prohibited, regardless of their motive."). But just in case, he opined, if a civilian national was to be detained or interned, then they could be transported temporarily (say, from Iraq to Guantanamo or a black site for enhanced interrogation), because they wouldn't have the protected status in Article 49 until they had been charged, so it makes sense not to charge them with a crime.
I find the premature rehabilitation of Jack Goldsmith to be thoroughly repugnant, almost as repugnant as seeing John Yoo publishing in the now increasingly Neocon NYTimes Op-Ed page. It's a black mark on Harvard Law School.
BTW harpie, some additions to your latest timeline: John Bolton, after revoking the U.S. signature on the Rome Statute (May 6th, 2002) declared it the "happiest day of my life." His revocation was around a month after the capture and injury of Abu Zubaydah, who, by that time had been transferred to a black site in Thailand. They were getting ready to, or had started torturing him, with personal intervention from the top, as Kiriakou says they were on the horn to Washington for approval of each belly slap or missed night of sleep, and that was the time of the Torture sessions in the Situation Room.
This partially answers Thomas Dumm who asked before about Bolton, since the reason for removing the signature may very well have been because the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties states that a country that has signed but not ratified a convention is bound to uphold it but not enforce it. The Rome Statute explicitly makes systematic or widespread torture a "crime against humanity." It was also Bolton in his Interim U.N. Rep position who argued to the Committee Against Torture in 2006 that Geneva was lex specialis in war and therefore the Convention Against Torture did not apply to the conduct of U.S. military prisons in a war zone, even while simultaneously claiming that just about everybody else was not eligible for Geneva Protections.
Back to trying to catch up on the comments.
In a blunt statement to the press, Feinstein said that the CIA should be headed by a Intelligence professional at this time.
There is that school that believes that the CIA only gets stuff done (and morale is better) when the director is someone who comes up from the ranks and 'knows what needs to be done' (and presumably how to do it). I've read Weiner's "Legacy of Ashes" and Coll's "Ghost Wars", and that sentiment shows in the comments of many in or near the CIA.
Such as Stansfield Turner, James Woolsley and John Deutsch did prove to be unable to reform from outside ... but then, when they promote from inside, you get cowboys like Bill Colby that manage to do a lot ... and screw up a lot (see, e.g., the above books).
In light of the rather dismal results of the CIA over the years ("Legacy of Ashes" is quite clear on this; more dissenting voices come from such as Kinzer and Bamford), perhaps we don't need a more "effective" CIA.
Some have thought that the best thing that could be done to the CIA was to nuke it and start over.
In any case, Dianne Feinstein is the last person I'd be listening to for advice on this. She can go f*** herself.
Cheers,
"Dawn Johnsen's appointment is clearly more significant than Jane Harman's snubbing. Still, for pure petty enjoyment value, the latter event wins easily."
Unbelievably, I am enjoying the significant annoyance of Feinstein even more. I didn't know "pure, petty enjoyment" could be so nice.
Today's appointments portend very good omens for the future.
Thanks, Obama!
Well, if the little panel discussion between Wolf Blitzer and his usual crew is any indication, the hugely significant fact that Panetta likely represents a separation from torture policy is going to go completely over the establishment media's heads.
In typical "Village" fashion, it's all about insider vs. outsider to them.
Unbelievably, I am enjoying the significant annoyance of Feinstein even more. I didn't know "pure, petty enjoyment" could be so nice.
Indeed. And Rockefeller's annoyance.
You might be right: for pure petty enjoyment, the fact that those two preening, pompous cretins weren't "consulted" -- and the upset they are experiencing -- might be even better than Jane Harman's public rejection.
It's all such a close call. The right people really were scorned and angered today.
Amazing, isn't it - it's always about them. They're all upset because Obama didn't get their permission first -- and because he brought in an outsider rather than some CIA hack beholden to the Rockefeller/Feinstein feifdom -- so they go and undercut Obama and Panetta publicly over nothing more than their own feelings of resentment. What empty, little people they are.
We're talking here about who is going to head the CIA after 8 years of the worst abuse imaginable and they're all mad that Barack didn't call them first.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
