Associated Press is reporting shocking news of mass graves being uncovered in South Korea. The expose is partly due to the work of a South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The mass executions of many tens of thousands took place in 1950, only weeks after North Korean armies invaded the South. One mass grave was exposed by a typhoon a few years ago. Recently declassified U.S. documents showed the Americans had taken pictures of a mass killing outside Daejeon. As reported at ABC News:

If we were wise and brave we would have taken down this President a long time ago.

Is an earnest desire for peace a foolish delusion?  George Bush thinks so…and who could know more about foolish delusions?

WANTED

Associated Press has a story up on the ongoing hunt for Nazi war criminals. The Simon Wiesenthal Center releases periodic lists of top war criminals from the Nazi era still at large. Despite the Wiesenthal Center’s one-sided apologetics for Israeli crimes against the Palestinians (all sides have engaged in atrocities), we should pay attention to their efforts to bring Nazi war criminals and their collaborators to justice, even decades after their hideous crimes took place. Such efforts should also make Bush and his cronies start sweating, for reasons I will make clear.

Do you recognize this man?

His name is Rod Serling and he once hosted an amazing little television show called the Twilight Zone.  Each week, he would appear to announce the story of someone trapped in a bizarre set of circumstances, typically surreal and frightening.  It was fiction, but great fun.

I suddenly find myself looking for Rod Serling to appear again because I am suffering from the same uncomfortable sensation of surreality, except this time it is neither fiction nor fun.

Recent revelations that torture was approved, applauded, and enjoyed by senior Bush administration officials have caused quite a stir. Bush now freely admits that he “approved” of the CIA torturing a few “high value” terrorism suspects in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. All those assertions that the United States does not torture were knowingly false. While lying to Congress, the American people, and the world community might get another president in trouble, even impeached, war crimes appear to be much more acceptable in post-9/11 America. The mea culpa simply forces the administration and its supporters to create a new mythology of torture.  

So, Bush last week admitted complicity in his administration’s policy of torturing people. Earlier, the Associated Press revealed that Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, John Ashcroft, and George Tenet were also complicit. Donald Rumsfeld was implicated as far back as July of 2005, and Alberto Gonzales’s already known complicity didn’t prevent him from being confirmed as this nation’s chief law enforcement officer, even earlier in 2005. Just over a month ago, Bush ignored the advice of “43 retired generals and admirals and 18 national security experts, including former secretaries of state and national security advisers,” and vetoed a bill that would have forbade the U.S. from engaging in torture, and Republican nominee-to-be John McCain supported his doing so. None of this is a surprise. At the risk of being cynical, none of it really matters, except for the historical record, because no one who is in the position of being able to do anything about it seems so inclined.

We are a nation that tortures people. The White House decides what forms of torture can be used, and Congress, which hasn’t overridden Bush’s veto, played its part by giving Bush tacit approval to continue doing so. And no leading Democrats mention that maybe violating international and moral laws ought to disqualify those responsible from holding public office. No leading Democrats ever supported impeaching the torturers. No leading Democrats talk about possible war crimes implications. No leading Democrats talk about holding the torturers legally accountable, once they leave office. Of course, no one will be surprised if Bush blanket pardons everyone, before he leaves office, and only impeachments would negate his ability to thus immunize them from prosecution. But Jack Balkin says the 2006 Military Commissions Act “effectively insulated government officials from liability for many of the violations of the War Crimes Act they might have committed during the period prior to 2006,” so it’s probably a moot point, anyway. And Marty Lederman is skeptical of the idea of a Department of Justice prosecuting people whose behavior was given legal clearance by a previous Department of Justice, so it’s probably a moot point, anyway- twice over.

We are a nation that tortures people. The outrage over last week’s revelations reveal that people still don’t understand that fact. We are a nation that tortures people. Outrage over further revelations of that fact will similarly reveal that people still won’t understand that fact. We are a nation that tortures people. It is no longer about this criminal administration or any criminal individuals working within it, we are a nation that tortures people. It’s now institutional. To address that fact, to do anything about it, will require levels of outrage far exceeding the outrage directed at one administration or the criminals working within it. We are a nation that tortures people. Until our ostensible progressive leaders, until we, as a nation, decide to do something about that fact, it will simply be a part of who we are. We are a nation that tortures people. The people responsible for that fact get away with it because no one and nothing will stop them from getting away with it. We are a nation that tortures people.

There are some pretty graphic descriptions in here.  I put them in to show just what resulted from the discussions and decisions of top administration officials, and how it is a big fucking deal.

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Besides the fact that the media here in the United States doesn’t seem to think it is important that Bush, Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Tenet (not to mention Gonzales, Yoo, most likely Miers and others) spent way too much time discussing, debating, justifying and approving how much torture is too much torture, it is pretty damn important.

It also matters that it is not being confronted forcefully and with more than just mere “strongly worded letters” amongst this shockingly blanket burying this atrocity that the world now knows runs straight to mister Bush himself.  No matter how many times the euphemistic “enhanced interrogation techniques” is used by the same people who applaud a fictional “badass” like Jack Bauer for doing “whatever it takes” to stop that ticking time bomb from going off.

Good Morning America! In the news today….President Bush admits/brags of authorizing torture. Here is the front page of the New York Times. And CNN? Why are they not reporting that the President has committed War Crimes, you ask? Because the entire Bush administration defense of their conspiracy to torture rests on their definition of what torture…..is. Sound familiar?

From ABC

The CIA has confirmed Zubaydah was one of three al Qaeda suspects subjected to waterboarding. After he was waterboarded, officials say Zubaydah gave up valuable information that led to the capture of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammad and fellow 9/11 plotter Ramzi bin al-Shibh.

Mohammad, who is known as KSM, was also subjected to waterboarding by the CIA.

In the interview with ABC News Friday, Bush defended the waterboarding technique used against KSM.

“We had legal opinions that enabled us to do it,” Bush said. “And no, I didn’t have any problem at all trying to find out what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed knew.”

In interview with ABC’s Charles Gibson last year, Tenet said: “It was authorized. It was legal, according to the Attorney General of the United States.”

“Why are we talking about this in the White House?” the network quoted Ashcroft as saying during one meeting. “History will not judge this kindly.”

From Raw Story

In one, (memo) dated Aug. 1, 2002, then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee defined torture as covering “only extreme acts” causing pain similar in intensity to that caused by death or organ failure. A second, dated March 14, 2003, justified using harsh tactics on detainees held overseas so long as military interrogators did not specifically intend to torture their captives.



Both legal opinions since have been withdrawn.

From Wikipedias article on the Clinton impeachment:

Clinton denied having a “sexual affair” with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. At the deposition, the judge ordered a precise legal definition of the term “sexual relations”  that Clinton claims to have construed to mean only vaginal intercourse. A much-quoted statement from Clinton’s grand jury testimony showed him questioning the precise use of the word “is.” Clinton said, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If the-if he-if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not-that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement”

If a co-conspirator gets to define what torture….is. It isn’t torture. Can we please have “the judge order(ed) a precise legal definition of the term “sexual relations” torture.  

The National Lawyers Guild has issued a press release calling for University of California at Berkeley’s Boalt Hall law school to fire Professor John Yoo. The NLG calls for the rescission of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 provisions that allow immunity and the prosecution of Yoo as a war criminal. Meanwhile, yesterday, Judiciary Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) threatened to subpoena John Yoo to testify about the memo at a May 6 hearing of the House Judiciary Committee.

The declassification and release of Yoo’s memorandum to William Haynes, General Counsel of the Department of Defense, written in March 2003, has caused a firestorm in the press. Yoo’s memo is the smoking gun for those looking for evidence of how the Bush Administration flouted basic human rights law, the UN Convention Against Torture, and the U.S. War Crimes Act to initiate a campaign of torture against detainees swept up in the aggressive U.S. military and covert campaigns that followed 9/11.