Rumsfeld Faces Law Suit Over 'Enhanced Interrogation' of Whistleblowers.

Faith in simple things like justice would be restored if this goes ahead:

According to the complaint filed against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, as summarized by Judge Anderson in his order refusing to dismiss the case, two men employed in Iraq by Shield Group Security (SGS) allege that their employer bribed Iraqi Sheiks and trafficked in weapons, activities they worried were illegal.

The men allege that on a visit back home, one (with the knowledge and cooperation of the other) contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation and became informants, giving regular reports and copying computer files as directed.

SGS started questioning their loyalty and took away the identification cards that allowed them to access Baghdad's Green Zone. As a result, their lives were placed at risk; the only safe place to be was the SGS compound. When the men contacted their law enforcement handlers, they claim they were told to barricade themselves in an SGS room and await rescue by the U.S. military.

They were in fact rescued and brought to the U.S. embassy, where allegedly they explained their undercover corruption- exposing work, and turned over their laptops, which corroborated what they said.

So far, so good. What happened next is when this made-for-TV patriotic movie goes off-message.

According to the complaint, after the men slept for a couple of hours, several armed guards woke, arrested, handcuffed and blindfolded them, put into a Humvee, and brought them to Camp Prosperity and ultimately Camp Cropper for detention and interrogation. The men were labeled "security internees" affiliated with SGS, a status that enabled the men to be detained indefinitely, incommunicado, without access to due process or an attorney, and interrogated with torturous techniques.

This status was a direct result of policies enacted by Rumsfeld and others, and the interrogation techniques used were specifically authorized by Rumsfeld, the men allege.

What kind of interrogation did these whistleblowers endure? Well, according to the complaint: "threats of violence and actual violence, sleep deprivation and alteration, extremes of temperature, extremes of sound, manipulation of light, threats of indefinite detention, denial of food, denial of water, denial of needed medical care, yelling, prolonged solitary confinement, incommunicado detention, falsified allegations and other psychologically disruptive and injuries techniques."

Rumsfeld's lawyers are arguing that he deserves immunity because he was Secretary of Defence at the time, but it's very interesting that the judge isn't buying that argument. The judge has explained that this immunity was designed to prevent speculative lawsuits from wasting officials' time; it's not a bar against bringing legitimate claims.

And, of course, this also raises the question of whether or not these techniques qualify as torture. The judge has said that perhaps individually they do not, but cumulatively, quite possibly they do, especially as they were deliberately inflicted.

This is the nearest we have come to seeing one of these buggers answer in a court of law for what they have done. I won't hold my breath, but it is very interesting that Rumsfeld wasn't cleared at the very first hurdle.

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Tags: Rumsfeld, torture

Rumsfeld let Bin Laden escape in 2001, says Senate report.

A new Senate report has found that Donald Rumsfeld failed to capture or kill Osama bin Laden when he was trapped at Tora Bora and that this failure has left the US more vulnerable to terrorism.

The report by the Senate foreign relations committee is damning of the way George Bush's administration conducted the aftermath of its bombing campaign in Afghanistan, saying it amounted to a "lost opportunity". It states that as a result of allowing the al-Qaida leader to flee from his Tora Bora stronghold into Pakistan, Americans were left more vulnerable to terrorism, and the foundations were laid for today's protracted Afghan insurgency. It also lays blame for the July 2005 London bombings on a failure to kill the al-Qaida leaders at Tora Bora.

Republican critics are likely to dismiss the report as a partisan work designed to deflect the current military troubles in Afghanistan away from President Barack Obama and on to his predecessor. The committee is Democratic-controlled.

But the report contains a mass of evidence that points towards the near certainty that Bin Laden was in the Tora Bora district of the White Mountains in eastern Afghanistan, along with up to 1,500 of his most loyal al-Qaida fighters and bodyguards, in late November 2001, shortly before the fall of Kabul.

Further evidence came from al-Qaida suspects detained at Guantánamo and, most authoritatively, from the official history of the US special operations command, which confirms bin Laden's presence at Tora Bora.

"Osama bin Laden's demise would not have erased the worldwide threat from extremists," it concludes. "But the failure to kill or capture him has allowed Bin Laden to exert a malign influence over events in the region."

The Republicans make much of the fact that the US was not attacked (again) during the presidency of George W Bush, often ignoring the fact that Bush was warned that al Qaeda intended to attack inside the United States and that he took no steps of any kind to prevent or even inquire into how one could work to prevent 9-11.

Warnings about al Qaeda began to pour in. The Bush Administration was repeatedly warned by both the U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies that al Qaeda was planning an attack. In his testimony before the independent 9-11 commission, Richard Clarke asserted that both he and Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) George Tenet "tried very hard to create a sense of urgency by seeing to it that intelligence reports on the Al Qaida threat were frequently given to the president and other high-level officials." Clarke further stated that "President Bush was regularly told by the director of Central Intelligence that there was an urgent threat...He was told this dozens of times in the morning briefings that George Tenet gave him." The White House has confirmed that, on August 6, 2001, President Bush's Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) specifically focused on al Qaeda's intent to attack the United States, and specifically warned that airplane hijackings could be involved. According to press reports, the PDB included a fresh report from British intelligence warning that al Qaeda was planning multiple hijackings.

The Associated Press reported that "President Bush's national security leadership met formally nearly 100 times in the months prior to the Sept. 11 attacks yet terrorism was the topic during only two of those sessions, officials say..

And now we find that bin Laden was at Tora Bora, surrounded by US troops, and yet, somehow, he managed to get away.

When it comes to the subject of terrorism, it has always seemed to me that it matters more to the Republicans (and their supporters) that they talk tough, rather than that their actions actually be effective.

That's why they advocate torture, even though most people say it is highly ineffective. It's why they always advocate sending other people's children to war rather than attempting any kind of diplomacy, because at all times it matters more to them that they are seen to be making "tough" choices than actually being effective.

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Tags: bin Laden Tora Bora, al Qaeda, Rumsfeld, Bush

CIA threats to detainees' families exposed.

As soon as a nation abandons international norms on something as universally understood to be wrong as torture, it tells people acting on it's behalf to behave in a way which goes against their every instinct.

And, when one tells them to do so because the whole of civilisation is at risk, then one really is giving them permission to do anything at all.

So, I don't find it remotely surprising that some CIA officers went beyond the cruel remit of the Yoo/Bybee torture memos and found themselves acting in a truly appalling way.

I mean, once you tell someone that they can strip a prisoner naked, keep him awake for days on end, batter him off walls and waterboard him, you have literally told your captor that the gloves are off and that he can do to the detainee pretty much what he wants.

It is, therefore, no surprise at all that some individual officers reacted to this orgy of abuse by feeling that there was nothing that they couldn't do to prisoners. And it was inevitable that we would end up reading about shit like this:

An internal CIA report published yesterday reveals a host of incidents in which its interrogators went far beyond acceptable bounds, including threatening an al-Qaida leader that his children would be killed and hinting to another suspect that his mother would be raped in front of him.

The CIA document, which the agency fought for years to keep secret, was released after a court action by a civil rights group. It described interrogation techniques that were "unauthorised, improvised, inhumane and undocumented".

Interrogators, questioning al-Qaida and other suspects at Guantánamo and secret prisons round the world, took a power drill and a handgun into an interrogation room and also staged a mock execution in a cell next door.

The report says interrogators threatened Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11 attacks, that if there was another attack on the US, "we're going to kill your children".

In a separate incident, an interrogator told a suspected al-Qaida leader, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, that if he did not talk "we could get your mother in here. We can bring your family in here". The report added that the interrogator wanted Nashiri to infer that the "interrogation technique involves sexually abusing female relatives in front of the detainee".

Whose fault is this? Who really set off the chain reaction which resulted in these individual officers behaving in such a disgusting way?

Holder is hinting at where he is coming from on this:

As a result of the report, the US attorney general, Eric Holder, is to order a special investigation into whether criminal proceedings should be brought against some of the interrogators involved.

But, these men were told that they were saving the US from further terrorist attack. They were told that we were engaged in a war for civilisation. As they themselves acknowledged:

The report quotes concerns by some CIA officers that action might be taken against them in the future. One said: "Ten years from now we're going to be sorry we're doing this ... [but] it has to be done."

I would argue that they got that notion from the language and the actions of the Bush administration. Certainly it was the Bush administration who told them to engage in actions which went way beyond what they had ever been authorised to do in the past.

Indeed, Dick Cheney had even said publicly that the US would have to embrace "the dark side":

"A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies," Cheney told Americans just after 9/11. He warned the public that the government would have to operate on the "dark side."

These people believed what their president and vice president told them.

And it was Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Yoo, Bybee and Addington who encouraged these officers to "take the gloves off" in order to win this "clash of civilisations".

They set off something which they had no way of controlling, and they did so whilst deliberately filling the people tasked to carry out these actions with fear.

I know who I hold responsible for what happened. And I know who I believe deserves to be prosecuted for this. And, if we are going to prosecute the grunts on the ground, we must also prosecute the guys who took off the interrogators gloves before sending them into the room.

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Tags: CIA, torture, memos, threats, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bybee, Yoo, Addington

Criminal investigation into CIA treatment of detainees expected.

Something utterly bizarre is about to take place, according to the LA Times.

U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. is poised to appoint a criminal prosecutor to investigate alleged CIA abuses committed during the interrogation of terrorism suspects, current and former U.S. government officials said.

A senior Justice Department official said that Holder envisioned an inquiry that would be narrow in scope, focusing on "whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized" in Bush administration memos that liberally interpreted anti-torture laws.

In other words, Holder is about to accept that the Yoo memos were, to all intents and purposes, legal; and he is going to prosecute those who went beyond what those foul memos allowed.

Other potentially criminal abuses have already come to light, including the waterboarding of prisoners in excess of Justice Department guidelines, and the deaths of detainees in CIA custody in Afghanistan and Iraq in 2002 and 2003.

So, Holder is going to prosecute someone for using too much water, rather than prosecuting the people who ordered the waterboarding in the first place.

It's Abu Ghraib all over again, where we prosecute those who show too much zeal when carrying out the policies, rather than prosecute the people who said that these policies - which are clearly illegal - were permissible.

Obama and Holder have both said that they believe waterboarding constitutes torture. But an investigation would pose thorny political problems for the administration, and probably draw criticism over questions of fairness.

"An investigation that focuses only on low-ranking operators would be, I think, worse than doing nothing at all," said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch.

I am with Malinowski, it would be better to do nothing than to prosecute merely the grunts on the ground who got carried away.

The criminals in this case are the people who ordered that the gloves be removed and that the US stop pussyfooting around. We all know who they are as they have publicly confessed to their crimes. Bush and Cheney are on record authorising waterboarding. David Addington, Jay Bybee and John Yoo are known to be amongst the architects of this cruel US policy.

The notion, pushed by some on the right, that a low level employee such as Yoo can declare waterboarding legal and that this somehow removes the criminality of anyone who then orders such a crime is ludicrous.

But my main problem with Holder's suggestion is this: if you prosecute someone who waterboards outside of Yoo's guidelines, aren't you establishing, under law, that waterboarding itself is actually legal?

That would place the US in a unique position in that regard. A country who has signed the UN Convention Against Torture and yet states that waterboarding is an acceptable practice.

I am with Andrew Sullivan when he states that this is "the very very worst of all possible worlds":

This strikes me as the very very worst of all possible worlds - the kind of split-the-difference pragmatism that will end up alienating everyone. It is vital that the Obama administration does nothing to imply that what was authorized within the rules under the Cheney torture program is in any way legal, defensible or moral.

Obama has ended the torture - and in this subsequent six months, we have seen real progress against al Qaeda.

But if the Obama administration does not investigate those really responsible for war crimes, and scapegoats a few sadists down the line instead, then they risk retroactively justifying the crimes they ran against.

If this LA Times story is true, then Holder is about to enrage both his enemies and his friends.

The right will explode in indignation and the left will not be there to defend him as they will, correctly, state that he is prosecuting the wrong people.

It is, literally, the worst of all worlds. It would be better to prosecute nobody than to do this.

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Tags: Holder, Obama, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Addington, Yoo, Bybee, torture, war crimes

Agog at Gog and Magog.

I suppose, once Bush left office it was bound to happen. Former foreign leaders feel free to talk far more candidly than they ever could whilst Bush was still in office. But, even so, this is jaw dropping:

President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.

Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”

And I swear I am not making any of this up.

What kind of mindset would one need to have to be able to ever seriously say that to another world leader? How deluded must he actually have been?

Chirac says he was boggled by Bush’s call and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.”

This insane person was in charge of the free world. And this is how he chose to speak to other world leaders. He wasn't even embarrassed by this crap, he actually bloody meant it.

After the 2003 call, the puzzled French leader didn’t comply with Bush’s request. Instead, his staff asked Thomas Romer, a theologian at the University of Lausanne, to analyze the weird appeal. Dr. Romer explained that the Old Testament book of Ezekiel contains two chapters (38 and 39) in which God rages against Gog and Magog, sinister and mysterious forces menacing Israel. Jehovah vows to smite them savagely, to “turn thee back, and put hooks into thy jaws,” and slaughter them ruthlessly. In the New Testament, the mystical book of Revelation envisions Gog and Magog gathering nations for battle, “and fire came down from God out of heaven, and devoured them.”

In 2007, Dr. Romer recounted Bush’s strange behavior in Lausanne University’s review, Allez Savoir. A French-language Swiss newspaper, Le Matin Dimanche, printed a sarcastic account titled: “When President George W. Bush Saw the Prophesies of the Bible Coming to Pass.” France’s La Liberte likewise spoofed it under the headline “A Small Scoop on Bush, Chirac, God, Gog and Magog.” But other news media missed the amazing report.

They missed it my ass. Around about the time of the Iraq war the press in the US were terrified of being called unpatriotic by the loons of the right and the last thing they would have reported on was the fact that the man in the Oval Office was a religious zealot who believed that God was, literally, sending him on a mission to defeat Gog and Magog.

Subsequently, ex-President Chirac confirmed the nutty event in a long interview with French journalist Jean-Claude Maurice, who tells the tale in his new book, Si Vous le Répétez, Je Démentirai (If You Repeat it, I Will Deny), released in March by the publisher Plon.

Oddly, mainstream media are ignoring this alarming revelation that Bush may have been half-cracked when he started his Iraq war.

There's nothing odd about it. That's what the MSM do. That's why The New York Times can still only use the word torture when talking about other countries and speaks of "enhanced interrogation techniques which some allege amounts to torture" when talking of the actions which Bush gave permission for.

It’s awkward to say openly, but now-departed President Bush is a religious crackpot, an ex-drunk of small intellect who “got saved.” He never should have been entrusted with the power to start wars.

He never should have been president in the first place. Exactly as we saw with Sarah Palin; the lessons to be learned here are that the Republicans will name any nutcase as their leader if they think they can fool enough people into voting for them.

He had the name Bush and she was nutty enough to please the Christian Fundamentalists that the Republicans have come to increasingly rely upon to get power. And they hoped that, once they got elected, that they would be malleable enough to be persuaded to follow the neo-con agenda.

Indeed, their ignorance is what makes them appealing This is Richard Perle talking about the first time he met George W. Bush:

"The first time I met Bush 43 … two things became clear. One, he didn't know very much. The other was that he had the confidence to ask questions that revealed he didn't know very much."

In other words, he was an empty vessel; a blank canvass on which the neo-cons could paint. Exactly as they attempted to do with Sarah Palin as Bush was leaving office.

Which suddenly explains this creepiness:

Recently, GQ magazine revealed that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld attached warlike Bible verses and Iraq battle photos to war reports he hand-delivered to Bush. One declared: “Put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground.”

He was probably too dumb to even realise that he was being shamelessly manipulated. And, anyway, he had unfinished business with Gog and Magog to think about.

It really is terrifying to think that such a "superficial and fanatical" zealot ever had his hand on the nuclear button.

Hat tip to The Booman Tribune.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Bush, Iraq war, Gog and Magog, religious fundamentalism, Gog, Magog, neo-cons, Rumsfeld, Christian fundamentalism

Bush's key men face grilling on torture and death squads

I sometimes wonder just how much truth there is behind reports that I am reading. Especially this one:

America is bracing itself for a series of investigations that could see top officials from the administration of President George W Bush hauled in front of Congress, grilled by a special prosecutor and possibly facing criminal charges.

Several investigations will now cast a spotlight on Bush-era torture policy and a secret CIA assassination programme, examining the role played by big names such as the former vice-president Dick Cheney and the former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

In one investigation into the controversial firing of federal prosecutors, Bush's political guru, Karl Rove, has already been forced to appear before Congress and give testimony behind closed doors. Another investigation, by the House of Representatives' intelligence committee, has already asked for documents from the CIA and has now announced that it will examine the legality of keeping a secret CIA hit squad hidden from Congress, something alleged to have been ordered by Cheney himself.

"I intend to make this investigation fair and thorough," said the committee's chairman, Texas congressman Silvestre Reyes late on Friday.

We all know that the Obama administration have been very keen to, "look forward, not backwards" so I am unsure whether or the Guardian are reading too much into these reports.

I would especially love to see the Bush regime brought to account for the use of torture, as I have always argued that the US cannot go forward allowing this issue to stand on the books as a disagreement over policy. War crimes cannot be dismissed or overlooked as "policy differences". The criminality of what the Bush regime engaged in has to be addressed.

So, I am pleased to read that investigations are about to take place, even as I note that The Guardian are speculating slightly.

Holder is mulling whether to appoint a special prosecutor to examine CIA activities since 2001, focusing on the use of torture in interrogation of terror suspects. Any such prosecutor could have the power to bring criminal charges.

Obama has made clear that the final decision is Holder's alone and news reports last week indicated that Holder was "leaning" towards making such a move. The prosecutor's mandate could be narrowly focused on minor officials or broadened to reach the top levels of Bush's cabinet.

The headline leads one to believe that a decision has been reached, but words like "mulling" and "leaning" lead me to believe that The Guardian are engaging in a bit of wishful thinking here.

I would love it were Holder to do the right thing and examine the actions of leading figures in the Bush regime on the subject of war crimes and torture and would hate it if he decided instead only to look at the actions of CIA agents who went beyond the torture allowed by the Bush regime.

The Guardian are leading us to believe that Holder is about to do the former. It would be wonderful, but I won't get too excited until I hear something a bit firmer than this Guardian report.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Holder, war crimes, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld

Bush And The Truth About His Crusades.

Olbermann has a look at the way Rumsfeld and others exploited Bush's deep religious beliefs to convince him to stick by his noble mission to "liberate Iraq" by the use of religious images on the front cover of defence reports, which Rumsfeld would also hand deliver to Bush.

I find it genuinely scary that these people were ever in charge of a nuclear arsenal. Surely Rumsfeld was cynically manipulating Bush by portraying US policy as somehow the work of God?

Could you imagine what would have happened had any of this become public during a war which Bush had already made the mistake of calling "a crusade"?

You can read the GQ report they are discussing here.

Tags: bush, cheney, rumsfeld, war criminal, crime, torture, waterboard, crusade

How to Meet and Greet a War Criminal.

It actually gives me some faith that there are Americans who react this way when they see Donald Rumsfeld in public.

O'Reilly thinks she could have made her point with more dignity but I think she greeted him exactly as a war criminal should be greeted.

Tags: Bill O'Reilly, Donald Rumsfeld, war criminal, war crimes

US interrogators may have killed dozens, human rights researcher and rights group say.

I accept that I am out of kilter with Obama when it comes to "looking forwards and not backwards" and that O'Reilly and others think that people like myself are guilty of "playing politics" with "policy differences" when we call for prosecution of war criminals, but are we now going to extend this right wing delusion regarding what actually happened so that we can now ignore murder?

United States interrogators killed nearly four dozen detainees during or after their interrogations, according a report published by a human rights researcher based on a Human Rights First report and followup investigations.

In all, 98 detainees have died while in US hands. Thirty-four homicides have been identified, with at least eight detainees — and as many as 12 — having been tortured to death, according to a 2006 Human Rights First report that underwrites the researcher’s posting. The causes of 48 more deaths remain uncertain.

I mean this goes beyond whether or not waterboarding constitues drowning, or whether slapping people or holding them in stress positions violates their human rights, we are now talking about killing people.

And the details are ugly.

They include at least one Afghani soldier, Jamal Naseer, who was mistakenly arrested in 2004. “Those arrested with Naseer later said that during interrogations U.S. personnel punched and kicked them, hung them upside down, and hit them with sticks or cables,” Sifton writes. “Some said they were doused with cold water and forced to lie in the snow. Nasser collapsed about two weeks after the arrest, complaining of stomach pain, probably an internal hemorrhage.”

Another Afghan killing occurred in 2002. Mohammad Sayari was killed by four U.S. servicemembers after being detained for allegedly “following their movements.” A Pentagon document obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union in 2005 said that the Defense Department found a captain and three sergeants had “murdered” Sayari, but the section dealing with the department’s probe was redacted.

"Enhanced interrogation" really sounds so mundane, until one reads of what was done under this programme, a programme which was signed off on at the highest levels of the Bush amdinistration.

“Abed Hamed Mowhoush [was] a former Iraqi general beaten over days by U.S. Army, CIA and other non-military forces, stuffed into a sleeping bag, wrapped with electrical cord, and suffocated to death,” Human Rights First writes. “In the recently concluded trial of a low-level military officer charged in Mowhoush’s death, the officer received a written reprimand, a fine, and 60 days with his movements limited to his work, home, and church.”

The punishment for suffocating this man to death included having one's movements restricted for 60 days. Unlike Lynndie England, and the other cases which carried huge negative publicity, here we see the price that is demanded as the punishment for suffocating a prisoner. You will be reprimanded and might lose some of your right to free movement for 60 days.

Surely, even those who argue that waterboarding isn't really torture can agree that death is actually death? And the US, according to this report, have actually killed 48 people in their custody. That's not to say 48 people have died in US custody, the claim is that the 48 have been killed in US custody.

Is there anyone who still thinks it would be too politically motivated if one were to insist on prosecuting the people who introduced this policy? I mean, are we literally going to allow them to get away with murder?

Related Articles:

Washington Post: Homicide Unpunished.

ONE OF THE most shocking photographs from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq shows a grinning guard giving a thumbs-up sign over the bruised corpse of an Iraqi detainee. Subsequent investigation showed that the deceased prisoner, an Iraqi named Manadel al-Jamadi, died of asphyxiation on Nov. 4, 2003: He was tortured to death by Navy SEAL and CIA interrogators who took turns punching and kicking him, then handcuffed his arms behind his back and shackled them to a window five feet above the floor. Nine SEALs, a sailor and several CIA personnel were implicated in the killing. As it turned out, the Abu Ghraib guard who posed with the body, former Cpl. Charles A. Graner Jr., was not involved.

Two years after the photo came into the hands of Army investigators, the result of the case is this: Mr. Graner is serving a 10-year prison sentence for his role in the nonlethal abuse of other detainees at Abu Ghraib -- and no one involved in killing Mr. Jamadi has suffered serious penalty. Nine members of the Navy team were given "nonjudicial punishment" by their commanding officer; the 10th, a lieutenant, was acquitted on charges of assault and dereliction of duty. None of the CIA personnel has been prosecuted. The lead interrogator, Mark Swanner, reportedly continues to work for the agency.

The de facto principles governing the punishment of U.S. personnel guilty of prisoner abuse since 2002 now are clear: Torturing a foreign prisoner to death is excusable. Authoring and implementing policies of torture may lead to promotion. But being pictured in an Abu Ghraib photograph that leaks to the press is grounds for a heavy prison sentence.

And it's left to retired Army generals to bring any sense of what needs to happen next:

Sadly, it has been left to retired officers, such as Brig. Gen. David R. Irvine, to speak honestly about this shameful record. The "torture and death" catalogued by Human Rights First, he wrote in a response to the report, "are the consequence of a shocking breakdown of command discipline on the part of the Army's Officer Corps. . . . What is unquestionably broken is the fundamental principle of command accountability, and that starts at the very top."

What is needed is an investigation into the orders given by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Yoo, Bybee, Bradbury and others. The cancer, in this instance, was at the very top of the organisation. It is they who need to answer for what they have done.

It's well worth reading the entire article.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, war crimes, torture, Abu Ghraib, Human Rights First, prisoner abuse

Bruce Fein: Obama needs to pardon or prosecute.

Bill Moyers has made it very clear what we are talking about here.

Enhanced interrogation, "harsh" questioning techniques, extraordinary rendition... now we know what they were really talking about — throwing a man against a wall thirty times in a row, depriving a prisoner of sleep for 11 straight days, waterboarding one detainee 183 times — in a word, torture.

In the interview with Bruce Fein and Mark Danner there is actually an extraordinary amount of agreement.

Obama has said that waterboarding is torture. Both President Bush and Vice President Cheney are on record as having ordered or authorised waterboarding. Torture is a crime under US law. Obama is, therefore, duty bound to take action as he has sworn to uphold the constitution and the laws of the United States.

The situation as it now stands is untenable. President Obama is admitting that Bush and Cheney have committed crimes and it is, therefore, impossible for him to simply "look forward and not backwards" until he sorts out this dilemma.

BRUCE FEIN: I would have asked him, since he's agreed that what was done was torture, and that the United States criminal code makes torture a crime. And there's no national security exception, no exception if you get useful information. And because we had impeached, in the House Judiciary Committee, a former President, called Richard Nixon, for failing faithfully to execute the laws. How he can justify not moving forward with an investigation when we have a former President and Vice President openly acknowledging they authorized water boarding, what he has described as torture, is a crime.

Or in the alternative, if he thinks that there are mitigating circumstances, and there's body language suggests that, then he should pardon them like Ford did Richard Nixon. And the reason why the difference between a pardon and non-prosecution is important, is because a pardon requires the recipient to acknowledge guilt. That there was wrongdoing. There was a crime. Just forgetting and sweeping it under the rug suggests this wasn't illegal.

I have said before that I have no difficulty with Obama pardoning Bush and Cheney, I simply want it established that what they did was utterly illegal. I support Mark Danner's view that it would be better for all if any pardon was to come after an investigation so that the public would have an opportunity to learn of the crimes that Bush and Cheney committed, in much the same way as investigation allowed the public to truly realise the scale of Nixon's crimes.

And Fein is especially critical of the argument put forward by people like Karl Rove suggesting that to prosecute is somehow to politicise "policy differences":

BRUCE FEIN: That is nonsense on stilts. Torture is not a political issue. Torture is something prohibited--

BILL MOYERS: By--

BRUCE FEIN: --under a treaty by the U.S. Senate. It was prohibited in the U.S. Criminal Code. A bill passed by the House and Senate, including Republicans. And this idea that this would be like banana republics. No, we have due process. No one gets convicted without proof beyond a reasonable doubt, right to counsel, opportunity to cross-examine all adverse witnesses, make all the arguments, reasonable reliance on the law, which is a defense. So, this idea of saying that we have a criminal enforcement system that's a banana republic shows his ignorance of how our system works, as opposed to how banana republics work.

Let us remember that Bruce Fein was an associate deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration and that gives us some indication of just how far to the right the Republican party have now swung when we hear Karl Rove making the nonsensical arguments which he is now making.

The problem for Obama is that both of the accused have admitted their crimes in public, almost daring Obama to contradict them. They also have their supporters, Krauthammer and other loons, making the case in public that these crimes should be the official policy of the United States.

Both Bush and Cheney had the opportunity whilst in office to rescind any laws which they felt restricted them unduly.

BRUCE FEIN: Well, there are two things that I would think I would have advised the President. Number one, we can get any law repealed, revoked, changed, authorized what you think needs to be done. Congress did that with regards to the authorization to use military force, so you change the law if you think they're restricting. Even-

BILL MOYERS: You go to Congress.

BRUCE FEIN: Yes, go to Congress. And you can do this in secret session. Then Congress would have done anything the President- they would have passed a law saying the world is flat after 9/11, if the President asked for it. The second thing is, even if you thought that there was no time whatsoever. You'd say, "Mr. President, if we do it, as soon as we've done, we need to go to Congress and ask for ratification, after the fact. They've got to ratify what we're doing is legal." We can't just throw the Constitution and shred it. Like we're- now national security, then it trumps the Constitution of the United States.

So, there are ways in which you can approach this kind of crisis. Even defying the law as long as you make certain that you're going to go back, have political ratification. You can explain what you've done, without exposing sources and methods. And if you have to expose sources and methods, in order to have a legitimacy, that's what a republic requires. That's how you can do this.

The US is either a nation run by laws or it is a nation where the president has the powers of a King and this King states what the law is at any given moment.

At the moment we have an ex-President and ex-Vice President demanding that what they did be accepted as legal when it is clear to all that what they did was illegal.

At stake here is a principle; either the law is what the law says it is, or the law is what the president at any given moment decides it to be.

Obama has stated that the US is " a nation of laws". Principled words, but they will be rendered meaningless unless he takes some kind of action here. Both Bush and Cheney are stating that they were right to torture under the law. And Cheney, especially, is making the case that Obama in endangering the nation by refusing to torture.

In other words, unless Obama acts to establish the illegality of what they are stating, he is allowing their claims to stand. That torture is legal and that Obama is simply too weak to do what is necessary to protect the nation.

Both Bush and Cheney's behaviour makes investigation impossible to avoid.

BRUCE FEIN: But the people you go after, you were mentioning, Mark, is at the very top. It's at Bush and the Cheney level. That's why Richard Nixon was under investigation for obstruction of justice. They didn't say, "Just go after Haldeman and Ehrlichman and the Watergate burglars." They went after the President of the United States. That's why he needed a pardon. And that's what should happen here.

The authorization came at the top. It's unfair to suggest these people who are being told by the President, who has access, purportedly, to all the national intelligence and security things in the world. "Do this. It's legal." And then you prosecute them? And the one who actually was responsible gets off scot-free? No, that's not the rule of law.

As I've said before, pardon them if you must, but have it established, once and for all, that the US opposes torture and recognises it's illegality.

As long as the former President and Vice President are making the argument that what they did was legal and right, and having their right wing supporters echo this, then the subject remains one which is under debate in American society.

And America cannot return to it's position as leader of the free world as long as it appears to be debating a subject which the rest of us have long ago come to a conclusion on. Torture is wrong. Period.

Obama needs to make it clear to nutty right wingers - and to the rest of the world - that the US utterly rejects the Republican argument on this subject.

And, until he does, the US will remain in legal limbo on this subject. And you can't lead the world from a position of limbo, you can only lead by the power of example. Obama needs to give us one.

UPDATE:

It appears as if even former members of the Armed Forces feel that something needs to be done.

Gen. Antonio Taguba:

[T]here is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. . . . [T]he Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. . . . The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.

Click title for transcript.

Tags: Bill Moyers, Bruce Fein, Mark Danner, Barack Obama, Bush, Cheney, torture, war crimes

Senate implicates Bush aides in prisoner abuse.

A Senate inquiry published today joins the dots and directly implicates senior members of the Bush administration in prisoner abuse.

The 232-page report, the most detailed investigation yet into the background of torture, undercuts the claim of the then deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, that the abuse of prisoners in Iraq was the work of "a few bad apples".

The report's release added to the debate raging within the US after Barack Obama, who regards the techniques as torture, opened the way for possible prosecution of members of the Bush administration.

Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the senate armed services committee, which ordered the inquiry, said today: "The paper trail on abuse leads to top civilian leaders, and our report connects the dots." The report shows a paper trail going from the then defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, to Guantánamo to Afghanistan and to Iraq.

The report says: "The abuse of detainees in US custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of "a few bad apples" acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorised their use against detainees."

The report reveals pressure for the adoption of more aggressive interrogation techniques came from the uppermost reaches of the Bush administration. Rumsfeld gave the go-ahead for the use of 15 interrogation techniques.

The mood within the administration at the time is caught in a handwritten note attached to a memo in December 2002 from Rumsfeld, on the use of stress positions. "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?" Rumsfeld asked.

It is also being reported that both Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice signed off on the waterboarding of prisoners:

As McClatchy notes, Cheney attended a meeting in 2003 to discuss the continuation of the interrogation program:

The Director of Central Intelligence in the spring of 2003 sought a reaffirmation of the legality of the interrogation methods. Cheney, Rice, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and White House counsel Alberto Gonzales were among those at a meeting where it was decided that the policies would continue. Rumsfeld and Powell weren't.

The Washington Post reports that the timeline suggests Rumsfeld and Powell were not briefed on the program until September 2003.

Last fall, Rice acknowledged to the Senate Armed Services Committee only that she had attended meetings where the CIA interrogation request was discussed. She said she did not recall details. Rice omitted her direct role in approving the program in her written statement to the committee.

A spokesman for Rice declined comment when reached Wednesday.

The report also reveals that the administration rejected advice from the armed services which were against the use of more aggressive interrogation techniques, on the grounds of both morality and the quality of the information obtained through such methods.

But the training unit warned that harsh physical techniques could backfire by making prisoners more resistant. They also cautioned about the reliability of information gleaned from the severe methods and warned that the public and political backlash could be "intolerable."

"A subject in extreme pain may provide an answer, any answer or many answers in order to get the pain to stop," the training officials said in their memo.

Less than a week later, the Justice Department issued two legal opinions that sanctioned the CIA's harsh interrogation program.

It is now becoming obvious why Cheney and others have recently moved from denying that they ever engaged in the practice of torture to the more morally challenged argument of stating that "torture works".

They appear to be in this up to their necks and this most recent report suggests that they have left a paper trail.

The internal debate also suggests that the definition of what was acceptable was flexible. The report notes that a senior CIA official attended a meeting of staff at Guantánamo in 2002. The minutes tell of a discussion of interrogation techniques, and the official saying that the legal statutes were vague. "It is basically subject to perception. If the detainee dies, you're doing it wrong," the official said.

And the report implies that the activities at Abu Ghraib, far from being the work of a few bad apples, was actually specifically approved by the Bush administration. Which makes the jailing of Lynndie England and others all the more disgusting.

The Independent are reporting that this is all making Obama's position ever more uncomfortable.

Now Mr Obama himself is at the centre of the crossfire. Liberals, human rights groups, not to mention the overwhelming majority of Democrats in Congress demand a full reckoning. But the right accuses him of indulging what the Wall Street Journal's editorial pages – that daily bible of conservatives – call "the liberal mob" bent on score settling, and refusing to recognise how harsh interrogation had kept the country safe since 9/11.

The right wing have changed course several times over the past few years on this subject. Initially they put forward the argument that waterboarding and the other methods used did not constitute torture, but this has segued into a wider claim that these methods "worked" and that this is what has kept America safe.

The argument over whether or not these methods "worked" is actually an irrelevance, the argument is actually whether or not these methods are legal or illegal. The various right wingers are now attempting to move the goalposts to argue that these methods should be legal, even if they were not at the time when they applied them.

This is to be expected from people who have been caught behaving in blatantly illegal manner. First deny, then attempt to justify.

Obama has stated that the US is "a nation of laws". If that is the case, then he has no choice. The previous administration repeatedly and deliberately broke the law. One doesn't have to be part of a "liberal mob" to demand that lawbreakers be punished. Indeed, that is almost the mantra of the Republican party.

This is not a matter of "score settling", it is a matter of ensuring that lawbreakers be punished.

The Attorney-General should immediately begin an investigation.

UPDATE:



General Karpinski points out the direct link between these memos and the abuse at Abu Ghraib. This was not the work of "a few bad apples", this was official policy.

And Rumsfeld and others were well aware of this when Lynndie England and others were being prosecuted. It's disgusting. They sold out serving soldiers in a war zone for political convenience.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Obama, Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Senate Inquiry, torture, prisoner abuse

CIA Exempt On Torture, But Not Lynndie England.

The photograph to the left is from the cover of a new book on Lynndie England by Gary Winkler, (his wife was kind enough to email this to me in advance of publication).

It couldn't be about to be released at a more apt time.

For as Obama and his administration put forward the argument that they must "look forward and not back" - and as they proclaim that it would be unfair to punish members of the CIA for doing things which they were told was perfectly legal - then we really are left with the dichotomy of how to compensate people like Lynndie England, who it would appear are almost certain to be the only people, from that dreadful period of American history, to have been punished for the fact that the Bush administration brought in a systematic regime of torture.

Is it remotely right that these low ranking soldiers should be the only members of the entire US establishment to have been punished for what was a systemic torture policy?

"Every American should be outraged," says Roy T. Hardy, who represents Pfc. Lynndie England. The 22-year-old Army clerk became the international face of the Abu Ghraib scandal when photos of her in poses with naked Iraqi detainees shocked the world.

"Obama, who I love to death, is not going to punish CIA agents for doing what they were told to do," says Hardy, England's civilian lawyer, "when those torture memos gave them permission to do more than what was ever done at Abu Ghraib?"

Convicted in 2005 of maltreatment and conspiracy for posing in those pictures, including one in which she held a leash around a prisoner's neck, England has already served one and a half years in military prisons, and an equal time on parole.

And, as Lynndie England's lawyer points out, what she was doing in those photographs - which caused such revulsion around the world - was simply nothing compared with what the Red Cross have described the CIA as doing away from any prying cameras.

Don't get me wrong, I have always said that what I object to here is the fact that the low level grunts who carried out these policies were punished rather than the people at the top of the food chain who enabled and ordered torture to take place. So, this is not a plea for the CIA to face prosecution.

Eugene Fidell, who teaches military law at Yale University, says that "there is a bind between the fact that England did time, and the people who many Americans believe have done far worse are not going to be criminally punished."

"I wouldn't fault her for making the argument," he says. "But there's not much that can be done at this point besides changing the character of her discharge."

I disagree. The way to ensure that Lynndie England and the others aren't the only Americans convicted for what was official US policy is to prosecute Yoo, Bybee and those who set this policy in place. And I include Cheney and Bush amongst that number.

England has already done her time and that can't be given back to her. But it would surely offer them some consolation to see the people who gave out those orders face at least the equivalent of she and the rest went through.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Lynndie England, Obama, CIA, torture, Bush, Cheney

The Torturers’ Manifesto.

I am really pleased that the New York Times have responded to the release of the torture memos with a sufficient level of disgust:

To read the four newly released memos on prisoner interrogation written by George W. Bush’s Justice Department is to take a journey into depravity.

Their language is the precise bureaucratese favored by dungeon masters throughout history. They detail how to fashion a collar for slamming a prisoner against a wall, exactly how many days he can be kept without sleep (11), and what, specifically, he should be told before being locked in a box with an insect — all to stop just short of having a jury decide that these acts violate the laws against torture and abusive treatment of prisoners.

In one of the more nauseating passages, Jay Bybee, then an assistant attorney general and now a federal judge, wrote admiringly about a contraption for waterboarding that would lurch a prisoner upright if he stopped breathing while water was poured over his face. He praised the Central Intelligence Agency for having doctors ready to perform an emergency tracheotomy if necessary.

These memos are not an honest attempt to set the legal limits on interrogations, which was the authors’ statutory obligation. They were written to provide legal immunity for acts that are clearly illegal, immoral and a violation of this country’s most basic values.

And I am especially pleased by what they wish to see done about it:

That investigation should start with the lawyers who wrote these sickening memos, including John Yoo, who now teaches law in California; Steven Bradbury, who was job-hunting when we last heard; and Mr. Bybee, who holds the lifetime seat on the federal appeals court that Mr. Bush rewarded him with.

These memos make it clear that Mr. Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution. Congress should impeach him. And if the administration will not conduct a thorough investigation of these issues, then Congress has a constitutional duty to hold the executive branch accountable. If that means putting Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales on the stand, even Dick Cheney, we are sure Americans can handle it.

After eight years without transparency or accountability, Mr. Obama promised the American people both. His decision to release these memos was another sign of his commitment to transparency. We are waiting to see an equal commitment to accountability.

I agree that Obama should be going after the people who gave the orders for torture to take place, rather than the grunts on the ground who carried out these orders.

And I feel quite sure that, if an investigation revealed to the public exactly what the Bush administration authorised, that the public would demand that these people be prosecuted.

Obama should fulfill the promises on which he was elected. And, at the very least, that means an investigation into just what exactly the Bush administration did or didn't do.

UPDATE:

There is nothing that these lying liars ever told us that turns out to be what it seems. Remember how they used to tell us that they only waterboarded three people, which many right wingers then converted in debates into, "We only used the technique three times."

Well, it turns out they were greatly underestimating the cruelty of the Bush regime:

I've put this detail in a series of posts, but it really deserves a full post. According to the May 30, 2005 Bradbury memo, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 and Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002.

On page 37 of the OLC memo, in a passage discussing the differences between SERE techniques and the torture used with detainees, the memo explains:

The CIA used the waterboard "at least 83 times during August 2002" in the interrogation of Zubaydah. IG Report at 90, and 183 times during March 2003 in the interrogation of KSM, see id. at 91.

It turns out waterboarding isn't even very effective if you have to do it 183 times to get a result.

Click title for full New York Times editorial.

Tags: New York Times, torture memos, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, torture, war crimes

Bush officials defend physical abuse described in memos released by Obama.

I suppose they have no option other than to try and defend themselves. So we should not be surprised that they have gone where they have gone:

Senior members of the Bush administration today defended the physical abuse of prisoners by CIA operatives at Guantánamo and elsewhere round the world set out in graphic detail in secret memos released by president Barack Obama.

General Michael Hayden, head of the CIA under president George Bush, and Michael Mukasey, who was attorney-general, criticised Obama for releasing the memos. The two accused him of pandering to the media in creating "faux outrage", undermining the morale of the intelligence services and inviting the scorn of America's enemies.

But the interrogation techniques outlined in the memos prompted a flood of calls from human rights groups and others for the prosecution of politicians, lawyers, doctors and CIA operatives involved.

It is impossible to read about what was authorised - the beatings, the sleep deprivation, the leaving of people tied to chairs for three weeks at a time, the waterboarding - and not to conclude that this was a system designed to torture people into giving information.

And, as Obama has already stated that no CIA personnel who obeyed such orders will ever be prosecuted, Hayden's fake concern for the morale of the CIA is there for everyone to see. Hayden is outraged because what they did in secret, and what they believed would always be secret, has been dragged screaming and kicking into the light.

And, with the release of these memos, Obama has made the prospect of prosecution more likely, even if it still remains a faint possibility. Obama has thrown open the doors to the dirty world which the Bush operatives inhabited and, I believe, is waiting to see if public anger at what was done will demand prosecutions.

"The release of CIA memos on interrogation methods by the US department of justice appears to have offered a get-out-of-jail-free card to people involved in torture," Amnesty International said. "Torture is never acceptable and those who conduct it should not escape justice."

I understand the point which Amnesty are making, but I think Obama - by clearing CIA officers from future prosecution - is inviting people to ask who, if anyone, should be prosecuted if one absolves the CIA from engaging in practices which they were assured was legal.

Obama is asking the public to look much further up the food chain at the people who gave the orders and at the lawyers who mangled what they knew to be the law to make the case that such barbarity was, indeed, legal. And, of course, to the people at the very top of that food chain - Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld - who gave the order for this barbarity to become official US policy.

The Centre for Constitutional Rights called for prosecutions: "Whether or not CIA operatives who conducted water boarding are guaranteed immunity, it is the high level officials who conceived, justified and ordered the torture programme who bear the most responsibility for breaking domestic and international law, and it is they who must be prosecuted."

But the language of Hayden and Mukasey as they seek to justify what they did, leaves one open mouthed:

"Disclosure of the techniques is likely to be met by faux outrage and is perfectly packaged for media consumption. It will also incur the utter contempt of our enemies.

"Somehow, it seems unlikely that the people who beheaded Nicholas Berg [the US businessman who was killed in Iraq] and Daniel Pearl [the US journalist killed in Pakistan], and have tortured and slain other American captives, are likely to be shamed into giving up violence by the news that the US will no longer interrupt that sleep cycle of captured terrorists even to help elicit intelligence that could save the lives of its citizens."

There is nothing "faux" about the outrage which many of us feel when the world's leading democracy engages in actions which would not have been out of place in the days of the Spanish Inquisition.

Nor is there any sense of shame in Hayden and Mukasey's defence of what was done. Indeed, they appear to think that what was done was justified. With every word and with every "faux" justification, they hang themselves.

They are now publicly arguing the case for torture.

The terrorist Abu Zubaydah (sometimes derided as a low-level operative of questionable reliability, but who was in fact close to KSM and other senior al Qaeda leaders) disclosed some information voluntarily. But he was coerced into disclosing information that led to the capture of Ramzi bin al Shibh, another of the planners of Sept. 11, who in turn disclosed information which -- when combined with what was learned from Abu Zubaydah -- helped lead to the capture of KSM and other senior terrorists, and the disruption of follow-on plots aimed at both Europe and the U.S. Details of these successes, and the methods used to obtain them, were disclosed repeatedly in more than 30 congressional briefings and hearings beginning in 2002, and open to all members of the Intelligence Committees of both Houses of Congress beginning in September 2006. Any protestation of ignorance of those details, particularly by members of those committees, is pretense.

They are clearly arguing that the end justifies the means.

History will condemn them, as it will the entire logic with which the Bush administration blackened America's name.

The only question now is whether or not the Obama Justice Department will step in and do the right thing by prosecuting these people, or whether they will be left to simply face history's disapprobation.

I would strongly argue that what is desperately needed is the former. If there is no prosecution, then future administrations might be able to argue that there is precedence for the use of torture in exceptional circumstances. In a civilised society that is a view that cannot be allowed to stand.

Stacy Sullivan, of Human Rights Watch, echoed this: "President Obama said there was nothing to gain 'by laying blame for the past'. But prosecuting those responsible for torture is really about ensuring that such crimes don't happen in the future."

There is a huge difference between "laying blame for the past" and "assigning responsibility for crimes". I can think of no other crime for which an American president would argue that we should "look forward and not backwards." A crime was committed here. And, as Mukasey and Hayden make abundantly clear, the criminals feel no shame at what they have done. Indeed, they are condemning Obama for having the temerity to expose them.

They are stating that they would do it again.

That is why prosecuting them is of such importance. A line needs to be drawn in the sand.

UPDATE:

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Turley: You know, it's not retribution to enforce criminal laws. But it is, is obstruction to prevent that enforcement, and that's exactly what he's done thus far. He is trying to lay the groundwork to look principled when he's doing an utterly unprincipled thing. There's very few things worse for a president to do than to protect accused war criminals, and that's what we're talking about here.

UPDATE II:

I am pleased to note that Glenn Greenwald is also of the opinion that Obama is laying the way for public anger to demand prosecutions and that there is already evidence that the public favour prosecutions:

But more crucially, it is also the responsibility of the citizenry to demand that this happen. What Obama did yesterday -- whether by design or not -- provided the most potent tools yet to create the political pressure for prosecutions. As Kevin Drum makes clear, no decent human being reading those memos would be anything other than repelled by what was in them. Polls already found that large percentages of Americans, majorities even, favor investigations and/or prosecutions for Bush crimes. The onus is on those who believe in the rule of law to find ways to force the government to criminally investigate whether they want to or not (this petition demanding that Holder appoint a Special Prosecutor is a very good place to begin, though it will require much more than just petitions).

Americans need to make their voices known on this issue. Left only with the O'Reilly's and the Rove's of this world, it is possible to believe that most Americans don't care about what was done in their name.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Hayden, Mukasey, Obama, war crimes, torture, CIA, memos, 9-11