Tag: John Yoo

Friday: Fairwell to Habeas Corpus, Greenwald on Obama’s Win on Indefinite Detention

This is a must read review in Salon of today’s court ruling on “Boumediene vs Bush”  written by Glenn Greenwald, which gives the history of the creation of Bush’s prison gulag in 2006 with the Military Commissions Act, and background and then says:

  Congratulations to the United States and Obama for winning the power to abduct people anywhere in the world and then imprison them for as long as they want with no judicial review of any kind.  

If you’re secretly kidnapped by, say,  a military for profit contractor and shipped off to Gitmo, the Bush DOJ contended that the detainee under Boumediene has a right to a hearing (when they get “around to it,” years later, if you survived the torture) but when you’re secretly kidnapped by Only God Knows What or Who and shipped off to Bagram’s Secret little hell holes in Afghanistan, then the non existent detainee has no rights to any such kind of hearing.  

Greenwald:


 In other words, the detainee’s Constitutional rights depends on where the Government decides to drop them off to be encaged.  One of the first acts undertaken by the Obama DOJ that actually shocked civil libertarians was when, last February, as The New York Times put it, Obama lawyers “told a federal judge that military detainees in Afghanistan have no legal right to challenge their imprisonment there, embracing a key argument of former President Bush’s legal team.”

But last April, John Bates, the Bush-43-appointed, right-wing judge overseeing the case, rejected the Bush/Obama position and held that Boumediene applies to detainees picked up outside of Afghanistan and then shipped to Bagram.  

But which Bagram are they being shipped to ?  The known Bagram Prison, or the one Gen McChrystal’s Secret Special Forces and the CIA and Blackwater Xe’s operations aren’t admitting the existence of ?  

Obama Continues Bush/Cheney’s Persecution of Abu Zubaydah

On March 28, 2002, Abu Zubaydah was captured in Faisalabad, Pakistan by the FBI, “identified” as a high-ranking operative of al Qaeda, and subsequently tortured by American agents at Guantanamo and elsewhere.

Abu Zubaydah’s treatment at the hands of the CIA has been called torture by Ali Soufan, the FBI interrogator who witnessed part of Abu Zubaydah’s CIA interrogation, multiple U.S. officials including President Obama, and by the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Media and DOJ reports about torturing Mr. Zubaydah were always careful to mention his connection to al Qaeda.

The C.I.A. officers used waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002 against Abu Zubaydah, according to a 2005 Justice Department legal memorandum. Abu Zubaydah has been described as a Qaeda operative.

Yoo’s E-Mails

Keeping the pressure on the DoJ as well as John Yoo. CREW continues to get to all that is there or possibly destroyed as our Government joined those we Condemn in Torture and Human Rights violations. Not only leaving our Military Troops wide open to the same leaving us with no ability to condemn nor brings charges on the World Court venue, but opening up same for our own citizens anywhere with same results!

It also greatly weaken our National Security as it was one more of the many Failed Policies, of the previous decade, that has created greater hatreds, not just as to our government done clandestine but also the citizens of our country as we all share the guilt of those policies and leave that wide open with no accountability for crimes committed by those who approved and ordered!

Bob Barr booed at CPAC for saying ‘waterboarding is torture’

Yesterday afternoon, former Republican Congressman and 2008 Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr had the audacity to say, “Waterboarding is torture.”  The reason it took audacity is that he was at CPAC, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference.  He was promptly booed.

Instead of adhering to the Constitution or the Geneva Conventions, conservative ideological leaders and Republican leaders have decided to shoot for political expediency, stubbornness, and sadism.

We are Closer to What We Once Condemned a Rogue Nation! {UpDated w/video}

That would be a Country that doesn’t follow Law nor the Human Rights of Others!!

Government Lawyers Get Hand Slapped

Friday:Torture Enablers Yoo & Bybee Only Showed “Poor Judgement”

Today is Friday, January 29, the year 2010.  Remember this full moon evening.  

According to Newsweek’s Declassified Blog, http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs…

two Department of Justice anonymous sources said that a Senior DOJ official who finalized an Office of Professional Responsibility report, changed the assessment of the torture memo’s creator’s  Jay Bybee and John Yoo’s behavior to “poor judgement.”


But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed “poor judgment,” say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.)  The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action-which, in Bybee’s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry.  

/snip

Two of the most controversial sections of the 2002 memo-including one contending that the president, as commander in chief, can override a federal law banning torture-were not in the original draft of the memo, say the sources. But when Michael Chertoff, then-chief of Justice’s criminal division, refused the CIA’s request for a blanket pledge not to prosecute its officers for torture, Yoo met at the White House with David Addington, Dick Cheney’s chief counsel, and then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales. After that, Yoo inserted a section about the commander in chief’s wartime powers and another saying that agency officers accused of torturing Qaeda suspects could claim they were acting in “self-defense” to prevent future terror attacks, the sources say. Both legal claims have long since been rejected by Justice officials as overly broad and unsupported by legal precedent.

John Yoo, a graduate of Harvard and Yale law school, who clerked for SC Justice Clarence Thomas, and served as a torture enabler in the Bush administration at the Dept of Justice from 2001 to 2003, is currently a law professor at the University of CA at Berkeley. http://www.law.berkeley.edu/ph…

Jay Bybee, a graduate of Brigham Young University and BYU’s J Reuben Clark Law School, helped John Yoo write the torture rationalization memos for President Bush during his Dept of Justice Office of Legal Counsel tenure from 2001 to 2003.  Bybee currently serves on the US Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit. http://www.fjc.gov/servlet/tGe…

It is not known at the current time when they will be displaying “poor judgement” again, nor how many fatalities might result.

 

Some good ways to start ‘The Year of Resistance’

I have recently been calling for a large social movement (or, more realistically, an expansion of the social movements for justice already in existence) and here are a few ways we can all get started on being part of this movement.

(Included:  Cindy Sheehan’s thoughts on recent events and a list of upcoming action events you can get involved with.)

Thank Yoo, Mr. President!

C’mon.  Let me get in one more shot before the year ends.  

This President is an absolute disgrace.

White House wants suit against Yoo dismissed.

White House wants suit against Yoo dismissed.

Obama administration saying federal law does not allow damage claims against lawyers who advise the president on national security issues. While I do not know if that is actually the case, or should be, in the absence of criminal charges not being brought for the last 5 plus years, is there any hope left that Yoo will face justice for his actions?

Yoo was represented by the DOJ, and now being defended at taxpayer expense by attorney, Miguel Estrada, who says the case interfered with presidential war making authority and threatened to “open the floodgates to politically motivated lawsuits” against government officials.

While the Office of Professional Responsibility has been investigating Yoo’s advice to former President George W. Bush since 2004, which according to the WH has the power to recommend professional discipline or even criminal prosecution, and of course it is now the end of 2009 without action!

The Obama administration has asked an appeals court to dismiss a lawsuit accusing former Bush administration attorney John Yoo of authorizing the torture of a terrorism suspect, saying federal law does not allow damage claims against lawyers who advise the president on national security issues.

In the current lawsuit, Jose Padilla, now serving a 17-year sentence for conspiring to aid Islamic extremist groups, accuses Yoo of devising legal theories that justified what he claims was his illegal detention and abusive interrogation. The Justice Department represented Yoo until June, when a federal judge in San Francisco ruled that the suit could proceed. The department then bowed out, citing unspecified conflicts, and was replaced by a government-paid private lawyer. Yoo’s new attorney, Miguel Estrada, argued for dismissal in a filing last month, saying the case interfered with presidential war-making authority and threatened to “open the floodgates to politically motivated lawsuits” against government officials. The Justice Department’s filing Thursday endorsed the request for dismissal but offered narrower arguments, noting its continuing investigation of Yoo.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/…

Phila. Inquirer still printing war criminal John Yoo’s opinions

I wonder if the Philadelphia Inquirer will start printing opinion pieces by Charles Taylor or Robert Mugabe soon.  Probably not, because their crimes were committed in Africa, at a safe distance from the editors’ board room, where the editors can comfortably judge these war criminals’ actions.  They aren’t intellectuals who justified torture of prisoners in America, like John Yoo.

In any case, they’re printing Yoo’s op-ed pieces now.  They are giving credibility to him and destroying their own credibility.  And, surprise, today John Yoo is saying that there’s no real reason to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a federal court in New York City.

1 more time! Spain Will PROSECUTE Bushies. ¡Viva España!

Crossposted at Daily Kos

I know our fellow dharma bum Edger already covered this, but I wanted to keep the story alive and enjoy the celebration of the rule of law

From September 8, 2009

    A Spanish judge has decided to go ahead with the prosecution of six Bush administration lawyers – including former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales – who were the architects of the legal framework for President George W. Bush “enhanced interrogation” program, according to a report in the Spanish newspaper Publico. (Original article here; Google translation here.)

    The six Bush administration alumni targeted in the prosecution are former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; John Yoo, author of the “torture memos”; Douglas Feith, then a deputy defense secretary; Pentagon lawyer William Haynes II; former assistant attorney general Jay Bybee; and David Addington, a former chief of staff to then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

~snip~

. . .  Holder’s investigation will be limited to instances where interrogators overstepped the boundaries set out by Bush lawyers for “enhanced interrogation.” By contrast, the Spanish case challenges the legality of the entire program.

rawstory.com

More below the fold! YAY!

Beyond Yoo: Army Field Manual Allows Torture with Drugs

Adapted from original post at Firedoglake

Sometimes people can be too smart for their own good.

According to recent news stories (see Spencer Ackerman’s article in the Washington Independent), the Obama administration task force on interrogations is likely to recommend “small, mixed-agency teams for interviewing the most important terrorist targets.” Moreover, according to former Deputy Attorney General  and Intelligence Science Board member Philip Heymann:

… interrogators from across the military, CIA, and FBI, would be charged with creating a “syllabus” of best interrogation practices that fall within the boundaries of the U.S. Army Field Manual on Interrogations, which complies with the Geneva Conventions.

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