A Lying SOB and the Lying SOB's That Cover For Him

I posted below on the cynical and baseless refusal of the Obama administration to make public the two documents requested by former VP Dick Cheney and that Cheney claims will clearly establish both the value and necessity of waterboarding. Obama has already released redacted OLC memos that have exposed our intelligence tactics for his own partisan purposes. This is a national security matter on which thousands, if not millions of American lives may rest. The left has politicized this issue to gain political power. We as a nation are, at this point, entitled to full disclosure and a true national debate on this issue. That is, I would think, self evident. It is now equally clear that the Obama Administration does not want that.

So how does WaPo report on this decision to deny production of the two Cheney requested memos? These equally lying s.o.b.'s neglect to mention the decisive fact - that the OLC memos already released by Obama were subject to the same FOIA litigation that the Obama administration is now relying on to deny production of the Cheney memos. In other words, Obama can declassify these two memos with "a wave of his hand." The failure to acknowledge that singularly relevant fact a lie by omission that makes WaPo's story a wholly misleading one. And then WaPo finishs with:

Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), a member of the Senate intelligence committee, said at a hearing yesterday that the documents cited by Cheney did not make a persuasive case.

"Nothing I have seen -- including the two documents to which former vice president Cheney has repeatedly referred -- indicates that the torture techniques authorized by the last administration were necessary, or that they were the best way to get information out of detainees," Feingold said.

Well, if Russ Feingold says it, why that's definitive, right? He's obviously non-partisan and trustworthy. That WaPo went to him for their concluding quote, suggesting that this is a non-issue not worthy of further public inquiry, shows WaPo to be as thoroughly corrupt as the thugocracy they are attempting to protect at all costs. Interestingly, WaPo could have sustituted for Feingold almost the exact same quote from Obama himself at the 100 days news conference, but that would have made this issue too clear.

The WaPo has spun this as far as they possibly can to favor the administration. For its part, the NYT did not deem this a newsworthy event in its print edition. It apparently has made the Caucus blog on the NYT website, but the information given there is even less illuminating than that provided by WaPo.

I try not to ever curse on these pages, but I am now so livid I can't see straight. Let there be no doubt, we are at war in this country. Its a civil war. And these s.o.b.'s in the MSM and on the left, led by the One himself, will destroy this nation if they are not utterly exposed and defeated first.

Read More...

Summary only...

Andrew McCarthy's Clear Eyed Response To An Obama Invitation

Former U.S. attorney and author Andrew McCarthy has turned down an Obama administration request to participate in a discussion of policies concerning detainees in taken as part of our contingency operation on man-caused disasters. He has declined - and his letter to that Attorney General Holder to that effect is a must read:

This letter is respectfully submitted to inform you that I must decline the invitation to participate in the May 4 roundtable meeting the President’s Task Force on Detention Policy is convening . . .

The invitation email . . . indicates that the meeting is part of an ongoing effort to identify lawful policies on the detention and disposition of alien enemy combatants—or what the Department now calls “individuals captured or apprehended in connection with armed conflicts and counterterrorism operations.” . . . [I]t is quite clear—most recently, from your provocative remarks on Wednesday in Germany—that the Obama administration has already settled on a policy of releasing trained jihadists (including releasing some of them into the United States). Whatever the good intentions of the organizers, the meeting will obviously be used by the administration to claim that its policy was arrived at in consultation with current and former government officials experienced in terrorism cases and national security issues. I deeply disagree with this policy, which I believe is a violation of federal law and a betrayal of the president’s first obligation to protect the American people. Under the circumstances, I think the better course is to register my dissent, rather than be used as a prop.

Moreover, in light of public statements by both you and the President, it is dismayingly clear that, under your leadership, the Justice Department takes the position that a lawyer who in good faith offers legal advice to government policy makers—like the government lawyers who offered good faith advice on interrogation policy—may be subject to investigation and prosecution for the content of that advice, in addition to empty but professionally damaging accusations of ethical misconduct. Given that stance, any prudent lawyer would have to hesitate before offering advice to the government. . . .

. . . We have already released too many jihadists who, as night follows day, have resumed plotting to kill Americans. Indeed, according to recent reports, a released Guantanamo detainee is now leading Taliban combat operations in Afghanistan, where President Obama has just sent additional American forces.

The Obama campaign smeared Guantanamo Bay as a human rights blight. Consistent with that hyperbolic rhetoric, the President began his administration by promising to close the detention camp within a year. The President did this even though he and you (a) agree Gitmo is a top-flight prison facility, (b) acknowledge that our nation is still at war, and (c) concede that many Gitmo detainees are extremely dangerous terrorists who cannot be tried under civilian court rules. Patently, the commitment to close Guantanamo Bay within a year was made without a plan for what to do with these detainees who cannot be tried. Consequently, the Detention Policy Task Force is not an effort to arrive at the best policy. It is an effort to justify a bad policy that has already been adopted: to wit, the Obama administration policy to release trained terrorists outright if that’s what it takes to close Gitmo by January.

Obviously, I am powerless to stop the administration from releasing top al Qaeda operatives who planned mass-murder attacks against American cities—like Binyam Mohammed (the accomplice of “Dirty Bomber” Jose Padilla) whom the administration recently transferred to Britain, where he is now at liberty and living on public assistance. I am similarly powerless to stop the administration from admitting into the United States such alien jihadists as the 17 remaining Uighur detainees. According to National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair, the Uighurs will apparently live freely, on American taxpayer assistance, despite the facts that they are affiliated with a terrorist organization and have received terrorist paramilitary training. Under federal immigration law (the 2005 REAL ID Act), those facts render them excludable from the United States. The Uighurs’ impending release is thus a remarkable development given the Obama administration’s propensity to deride its predecessor’s purported insensitivity to the rule of law.

I am, in addition, powerless to stop the President, as he takes these reckless steps, from touting his Detention Policy Task Force as a demonstration of his national security seriousness. But I can decline to participate in the charade. . . .

Read the entire letter. I think Mr. McCarthy covers all relevant bases above. As was immediatly apparent the moment Obama greenlighted the criminal investigation into the OLC attorney's, it was a decision that will have wide ranging impact. Consider McCarthy's decision the opening salvo. Further, McCarthy makes clear that he will not take part in Obama-style bipartisanship - i.e., Obama makes a decision that he will not alter, then reaches out to the opposing side to either have the decision bless or to at least give a patina of bipartisan effort on his part. At any rate, an excellent read from Mr. McCarthy.

Read More...

Summary only...

More Tortured Thinking

The issue of waterboarding has been brought to a head by Obama's release of the OLC memos on enhanced interrogation and his green lighting of a criminal investigation aimed at the OLC attorneys for rendering those opinions. There have been several articles out today that weigh in on aspects of this controversy. Before addressing them, I wanted to note Obama's intemperate remarks at his 100 day press conference. When asked about the legality of waterboarding, he weighed in that he thought it was "illegal." Given that there is now an ongoing criminal investigation to determine that issue, the President weighing in on it during the pendency of that investigation is, at the very least, unethical. Beyond that, as the WSJ notes, the careful wording of Obama's answers to questions on waterboarding strongly suggest that Dick Cheney, who claims that the information resulting from waterboarding was invaluable, is correct.

Charles Krauthammer, writing at the Washington Post, defends the use of waterboarding as a highly effective and necessary tool to retain in our arsenal, even if very sparingly used. He also has harsh criticism for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi who is doing all she can in an attempt to deny her role in the waterboarding saga. This from Mr. Krauthammer:

"We have people walking around in this country that are alive today because this process happened," asserts Blair's predecessor, Mike McConnell. Of course, the morality of torture hinges on whether at the time the information was important enough, the danger great enough and our blindness about the enemy's plans severe enough to justify an exception to the moral injunction against torture.

Judging by Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress who were informed at the time, the answer seems to be yes. In December 2007, after a report in The Post that she had knowledge of these procedures and did not object, she admitted that she'd been "briefed on interrogation techniques the administration was considering using in the future."

Today Pelosi protests "we were not -- I repeat -- were not told that waterboarding or any other of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used." She imagines that this distinction between past and present, Clintonian in its parsing, is exonerating.

On the contrary. It is self-indicting. If you are told about torture that has already occurred, you might justify silence on the grounds that what's done is done and you are simply being used in a post-facto exercise to cover the CIA's rear end. The time to protest torture, if you really are as outraged as you now pretend to be, is when the CIA tells you what it is planning to do "in the future."

But Pelosi did nothing. No protest. No move to cut off funding. No letter to the president or the CIA chief or anyone else saying "Don't do it."

On the contrary, notes Porter Goss, then chairman of the House intelligence committee: The members briefed on these techniques did not just refrain from objecting, "on a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda."

More support, mind you. Which makes the current spectacle of self-righteous condemnation not just cowardly but hollow. It is one thing to have disagreed at the time and said so. It is utterly contemptible, however, to have been silent then and to rise now "on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009" (the words are Blair's) to excoriate those who kept us safe these harrowing last eight years.

Read the entire article.

Then there is this from the President of the Foreign Relations Council, Richard Haass, discussing the implications of Obama's decision to greenlight a criminal investigation of the OLC attorneys. As Mr. Haass notes, and as I have previously noted on this blog, that decision will have a profound negative impact on our intelligence gathering capabilities far into the future. This from Mr. Haass:

Calls are mounting to establish some sort of inquiry -- a special prosecutor, a congressional investigation, a truth commission -- to determine if the Bush administration lawyers who argued that waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques could be employed in the aftermath of 9/11 should be prosecuted.

At the center of the frenzy are four detailed legal analyses. The memos, written by Justice Department lawyers in 2002 and 2005 and recently declassified and released, read as you would expect them to. The individuals writing them were reflecting their own interpretation of the law, their own policy views, and quite possibly the policy preferences of their bosses.

The subject matter lent itself to debate. Law tends to be more gray than black and white.

The memos make the case that what is not explicitly banned is permitted. What comes to mind is the difference between tax evasion and avoidance. The former is illegal whereas the latter is not. The lawyers were making an aggressive case for the terrorism equivalent of avoidance.

. . . The issue is whether those who argued that such techniques were not illegal -- and therefore should be available -- ought to be tried.

They should not. To begin with, prosecution of Justice Department officials would have a chilling effect on future U.S. government officials. Few would be brave or foolhardy enough to put forward daring proposals that one day could be judged illegal. Putting things down in writing is a useful intellectual exercise that is also central to good decision-making. With the threat of prosecution, serious memos on controversial matters will increasingly become the exception rather than the rule.

Prosecution would also set a terrible precedent. One would have thought today's politics sufficiently partisan and poisonous without adding legal threats to the mix. Even knowing this was a possibility would discourage people from entering government in the first place. . . .

Read the entire article. The damage the Obama presidency portends for our nation will be long lasting indeed, I think.

Related Posts:

Words Have Meaning Rick (analyzing the legal status of waterboarding)

Ex-CIA Agent Michael Scheuer Flays Obama

The Moral, Legal & Prudential Considerations Surrounding Waterboarding

The Ticking Time Bomb & Coerecive Interrogation

Moral Confusion At The Rightwing Nuthouse

Read More...

Summary only...

Moral Confusion At The Rightwing Nuthouse

Rick Moran at Rightwing Nuthouse does wonderfully when blogging on the Republican Party and political issues. Indeed I have learned a great deal through reading his insightful posts on political issues and I include him in my daily reads. But that said, when Rick goes off the reservation, as has been known to happen in the past and as he does now on the issue of torture, he goes off in a rocket.

His most recent was a post arguing the moral parameters of "torture" in light of the our use of waterboarding. Rick is an absolutist on the issue. Thus for him, there is that rare degree of moral clarity that we who are not of the far left are rarely if ever are able to attain. Rick is emotionally tied to the notion that no reasonable person reading the law could conclude that waterboarding fails to meet the legal standard for "torture." He never articulates why the OLC attorneys got it not merely wrong, but criminally wrong. But I am not going to rehash that issue. I posted on it here.

I also went through the legal, moral and prudential issues surrounding waterboarding in the post below. Rick went through them also in his post here, using arguments that ranged from just plain wrong to arguments that were insipid. Since one of the Watcher's Council members thought enough of Rick's post to nominate it this week, I can't help myself from pointing out some of the inconsistencies.

Rick's primary argument on the morality of waterboarding is that waterboarding is illegal, that we have a moral imperative to follow the law, and therefore, waterboarding is immoral. Somehow I don't think that Henry David Thoreau would agree with Rick's logic. Rick conflates morality and the law - but the two are hardly synonomous. To paraphrase Thoreau from his seminal essay, Civil Disobedience, morality is proactive - a truly moral person will attempt to act in conformance with his beliefs at all times, irrespective of laws or consequence. On the other hand, laws are nothing more than those rules we set to order society. Though it is beyond argument that many laws arise out of our collective morality, those laws in no way enshrine a moral code. It is quite possible to act morally and transgress the law just as it is possible to act immorally and stay within its letter.

For example, the law does not create an affirmative duty on the part of citizens to help others in need. In 1964, Kitty Genovese was raped and murdered on a NYC street - an act witnessed by at least twelve people, none of whom intervened. Did they act morally?

Suppose I perceive an imminent threat of serious injury or death to my daughter from her boyfriend. I kill him. If I did so when he was in the midst of attacking her, the law says that what I did was legal. But if I still believed the threat real and attacked him long before he got to my daughter's location, such a defense becomes tenuous at best. My moral imperative did not change, what changed was merely what the law accepts as a legal defense.

How about Mohamed Ali, the great boxer. He broke the law by refusing to be drafted into the military during the Vietnam War. He did so on grounds of his moral belief that the war was wrong and he willing accepted his punishment for breaking the law. So did he act immorally.

The long and short is that Rick's argument conflating the legal question of torture with the moral one is not a coherent or viable argument. But Rick isn't done. He has a few other similarly flawed arguments. According to Rick, we should never use waterboarding because

. . . it is an absolute impossibility to know that “using waterboarding against a known terrorist may well elicit information” that could prevent an attack. That is sophistry on a stick.

Whoa. Where did that bit of unrealistic absolutism come from? If we take Rick's logic to its natural conclusion, we could never act unless we were absolutely convinced of all particulars in the first place. If that level of surety is required, then we can close down all intelligence operations. And indeed, if we tried to live our lives with that degree of surety, we would be never be able to leave the house.

In the real world, we of necessity have to act on probabilities based on our assessment of all the information reasonably known at the time. That is the way intelligence professionals operate. Its the way our jury system operates. Indeed, that is the way most everything in this world operates. Rick's argument is utopian nonsense.

Another argument Rick makes concerns the "ticking time bomb theory." Many who justify the use of waterboarding do so on the premise that the information it is believed the terrorist possesses is, one, necessary to stop or interdict ongoing plots that may be executed in foreseeable future and, two, lesser methods of interrogation have not worked to get the terrorist to reveal this information. Rick goes off the rails on this proposition, engaging in the bizarre argument that the ticking time bomb scenario is a complete falsehood.

I won't bother to go through Rick's tortured logic on this. There is no need. Try this - reflecting back on what we know today, on September 10, 2001, how would you describe the 9-11 hijackers? Were they a ticking time bomb? In retrospect they clearly were. And the CIA knew it, they just did not know the particulars. Indeed, the CIA Director briefed Bush on an imminent attack approximately two months before 9-11, if I recall correctly. Given that scenario, if we had a high level al Qaeda agent then in custody who might have had information of the attacks, using Rick's logic, we still would have had no justification to use coercive interrogation on him because we did not know with absolute surety that an attack would occur. That's ridiculous.

But Rick goes even farther afield with the claim that not only is the "ticking time bomb" scenario a false premise, but there is no evidence of such a scenario having occurred in all of recorded history. Let's assume arguendo that Rick is correct, what Rick neglects to reflect upon is that we live in an age vastly different than all of recorded history.

Now, for the first time in history, a single person or a small group with access to nuclear or biological materials can cause the death of thousands or millions in a single act. A single individual intentionally infected with small pox could enter the U.S. and give rise to a pandemic. We know that al Qaeda has tried to gain access to such material and that they have experimented with chemical weapons. They have sought materials for a so called "dirty bomb" used to spread a highly radioactive dust over a large area, rendering a large section of a city uninhabitable or shutting down a port for years. And that doesn't even begin to consider all of the lesser mayhem that terrorists can cause with the inventive use of whatever is at hand - i.e., planes, etc.

Lastly, according to Rick, there was no need to use waterboarding because

Professional interrogators are masters of putting psychological pressure on a subject without coercive or “enhanced” interrogation techniques."

This brings up an interesting side issue regarding the law. Rick refers to a 2004 article in City Journal that discusses how military interrogators overcame the refusal of the vast majority of al Qaeda detainees to provide information. Its a great article. Many of the techniques found effective, though far below the threshold of waterboarding, none the less mimic some of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" used by the CIA, including laying on of hands, the use of stress positions, etc.

With all of that in mind, if you are going to redefine "torture" to encompass things that cause no injury and no physical pain and that do not involve anything but momentary suffering that ends when you stop the interrogation technique, then where is the clear line that we cannot cross? If, as Rick would have us do, we are now defining down "torture" to read the brief period of panic that waterboarding causes to be tantamount to "severe [mental] pain and suffering," then what in the legal definition of "torture" is there to tell me that "psychological pressure" over a period of days and weeks is not tantamount to "severe [mental] pain and suffering." Or what is there to tell me that the mere fact of confinement without knowing when I might be released does not rise to this new level of "severe [mental] pain and suffering." Inquiring minds want to know.

At any rate, Rick's arguments on the moral parameters of torture as they apply to waterboarding are absolutist and just off the rails. The jury is still out, of course, on the prudential issues - i.e., whether waterboarding as used gave us reliable information that could not timely be gotten otherwise. If you are keeping an open mind on this, then those are the bits of information you are waiting on. If you are like Rick, your mind was made up long ago on the basis of emotion. No facts are necessary on this issue.

Read More...

Summary only...

Ex-CIA Agent Michael Scheuer Flays Obama

I made the argument in a Words Have Meaning that the OLC attorneys did colorable legal work in assessing that waterboarding is not torture under the legal definitions of that term. Further, Congress was briefed on the program. Given those two facts, and particularly in light of the latter, no criminal investigation aimed at the OLC attorneys could possibly be justified. Rather, this is being done wholly out of a desire to criminalize political disagreements. Further, the day Obama decided to open the fence to a criminal investigation of the OLC attorneys, he did incalculable harm to our ability to gather intelligence for years to come, if not decades. I can foresee no attorney in the OLC giving the CIA a legal opinion green lighting a politically sensitive operation in the foreseeable future, irrespective of what the law allows.

Outside of the legal context, in Torture, Persecution and Morality, I argued that the moral high ground Obama claimed in labeling enhanced interrogation torture and putting it off limits was sheer preening for his own personal aggrandizement. It was an act of political theatre, moral cowardice, and suicidal naivete. I had planned to enlarge on these arguments in a future post, but former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer (of all people) has done a phenomenal job of flushing out these precise arguments in a brutal WaPo opinion piece. I would add that Scheuer also identifies a gaping and unforgivable weakness that I have been blogging on for two years. That is, as I said most recently in the post What You Don't Know About Salafism Could Kill You, that our government has utterly failed in its affirmative duty to educate the public as regards to militant Islam.

At any rate, Scheuer begins by setting up a scenario where we have captured bin Laden. Over tea with the CIA interrogator, bin Laden tells us that he knows when and where nuclear strikes will occur on American cities, but then refuses to say any more. In fact, he does so despite some very stern looks from his CIA interrogator. Picking up from there . . .:

. . . the CIA director can only shrug when the president asks: "What can we do to make Osama bin Laden talk?"

Americans should keep this worst-case scenario in mind as they watch the tragicomic spectacle taking place in the wake of the publication of the Justice Department's interrogation memos. It will help them recognize this episode of political theater as another major step in the bipartisan dismantling of America's defenses based on the requirements of presidential ideology. George W. Bush's democracy-spreading philosophy yielded the invasion of Iraq and set the United States at war with much of the Muslim world. Bush's worldview thereby produced an enemy that quickly outpaced the limited but proven threat-containing capacities of the major U.S. counterterrorism programs -- rendition, interrogation and unmanned aerial vehicle attacks.

Now, in a single week, President Obama has eliminated two-thirds of that successful-but-not-sufficient national defense troika because his personal ideology -- a fair gist of which is "If the world likes us more we are more secure" -- cannot tolerate harsh interrogation techniques, torture or coercive interviews, call them what you will. Surprisingly, Obama now stands alongside Bush as a genuine American Jacobin, both of them seeing the world as they want it to be, not as it is. Whereas Bush saw a world of Muslims yearning to betray their God for Western secularism, Obama gazes upon a globe that he regards as largely carnivore-free and believes that remaining threats can be defused by semantic warfare; just stop saying "War on Terror" and give talks in Turkey and on al-Arabiyah television, for example.

Americans should be clear on what Obama has done. In a breathtaking display of self-righteousness and intellectual arrogance, the president told Americans that his personal beliefs are more important than protecting their country, their homes and their families (emphasis added). The interrogation techniques in question, the president asserted, are a sign that Americans have lost their "moral compass," a compliment similar to Attorney General Eric Holder's identifying them as "moral cowards." Mulling Obama's claim, one can wonder what could be more moral for a president than doing all that is needed to defend America and its citizens? Or, asked another way, is it moral for the president of the United States to abandon intelligence tools that have saved the lives and property of Americans and their allies in favor of his own ideological beliefs?

Before enthroning Obama's personal morality as U.S. defense policy, of course, some dirty work had to be done. Last Sunday, Obama's hit man and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel led the charge by telling the American people that the interrogation techniques are a major recruiting tool for al-Qaeda and its Islamist partners. Well, no, Mr. Emanuel, that is not at all the case. The techniques surely are not popular with our foes and their supporters -- should that be a concern in any event? -- but they do not even make the Islamists' hit parade of anti-U.S. recruiting tools. . . . Still, Emanuel's statement surely sounded plausible to Americans who have received no education about our Islamist enemy's true motivation from Obama, George W. Bush, Clinton or George H.W. Bush.

Next, the president used his personal popularity and the stature of his office to implicitly identify as liars those former senior U.S. officials who know -- not "argue" or "contend" or "assert" but know -- that the interrogation techniques have yielded intelligence essential to the nation's defense. The integrity, intellect and reputations of Judge Michael Mukasey, Gen. Michael V. Hayden and others have now been besmirched by Obama because their realistic worldview and firsthand experience do not mesh with the president's desire to install his personal "moral compass" as the core of U.S. foreign and defense policy. And after visiting CIA headquarters last week, the president made it clear that he rejected statements surely made by CIA officers who risked their careers to tell him how many successful covert operations against al-Qaeda have flowed from interrogation information. As with all Jacobins, Obama cannot allow a hard and often brutal reality -- call it an inconvenient truth -- to impinge on his view of how the world should and must be made to work.

And so as the Justice Department memos farce plays out over the coming weeks, Americans can be confident that both parties will play politics to the hilt while letting the nation's safety take the hindmost. . . .

Americans and their country's security will be the losers. The Republicans do not have the votes to stop Obama, and the world will not be safer for America because the president abandons interrogations to please his party's left wing and the European pacifists it so admires. Both are incorrigibly anti-American, oppose the use of force in America's defense and -- like Obama -- naively believe that the West's Islamist foes can be sweet-talked into a future alive with the sound of kumbaya.

So if the above worst-case scenario ever comes to pass, Americans will have at least two things from which to take solace, even after the loss of major cities and tens of thousands of countrymen. First, they will know that their president believes that those losses are a small price to pay for stopping interrogations and making foreign peoples like us more. And second, they will see Osama bin Laden's shy smile turn into a calm and beautiful God-is-Great grin.

Very well said Mr. Scheuer. Do read the entire article.

Read More...

Summary only...

Obama: Releasing Memos & Degrading Our National Security

Obama's decision to release the legal memos on interrogation techniques prepared by OLC lawyers during the Bush Administration was a wrong-headed move meant by Obama to, one, show his moral superiority to the world, and two, to satisfy his radical base who have been clamoring for years to prosecute Bush and his administration, ostensibly for war crimes, etc. It comes at a cost of the severely degrading of our national security and, with Obama's decision to allow persecution of the OLC lawyers, has opened a Pandora's Box that could well tear this nation apart.
___________________________________________________

On Thursday last, ostensibly in response to a lawsuit filed by one of the most destructive forces in American society, the ACLU, President Obama ordered the Justice Dept. to withdraw its state-secrets objections to the release of four memos from the Bush years. These memos were drafted by the Office of Legal Counsel in response to queries from the CIA as to whether certain interrogation techniques were lawful under U.S. law and our treaty obligations.

To be clear, the government was under no true compulsion to release these memos. The State Secrets defense would have worked in this case, even if the lower Court had ruled otherwise. Such a ruling never would have survived appeal, one, because the material's release would work harm to our national security and, two, because procedurally, the appropriate members of Congress had been briefed and given their approval to the program. Obama's claim that the lawsuit justified release of the memos was an utter canard. Further, Obama ordered the release of these memos over the strong objection of five current and former intelligence chiefs.

So why do it?

Clearly, Obama was trying to establish his moral superiority with the chattering classes throughout the world. He is and was explicit about that. The NYT reported that Obama "condemned what he called a “dark and painful chapter in our history” and said that the interrogation techniques would never be used again." There has been other similar moral preening since. The NYT Times also reported:

. . . Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, cautioned that the memos were written at a time when C.I.A. officers were frantically working to prevent a repeat of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing,” said Mr. Blair in a written statement. “But we will absolutely defend those who relied on these memos.”

Apparently, the respect afforded Obama by Le Monde journalists takes precendce in his mind over American national security and the safety of its citizens. That is a luxury, if not a fantasy, that Obama can revel in simply because we have been successful in interdicting terrorist attacks since 9-11.

I think it reasonable to speculate that Obama also took this move - releasing the memos but saying initially that no one would be prosecuted over them, either at CIA or OLC - as a bone to quiet his radical base. He grossly miscalculated. It only increased their lust for blood, but more on that later.

All of this raises a series of issues. Specifically, this will do untold harm to our nation's security by degrading the effectiveness of intelligence efforts and creating an incredibly risk averse legal class. I am speaking here of the kind of legal class in that gave us the Jamie Goerlick's infamous Chinese Wall. Further, and amazingly, it presumes that we are now safe from terrorist attack. Three, it was and is a very selective release of information. Four, it ignores the role of Congress in this process. And lastly, it has truly opened a Pandora's Box, given Obama's threat to cross the Rubicon and pursue prosecution of the OLC lawyers. That is the criminalization of political differences - something unknown in this country.

As to the effect this release of memos has had on the CIA, there was this from left wing commentator David Ignatius:

At the Central Intelligence Agency, it's known as "slow rolling." That's what agency officers sometimes do on politically sensitive assignments. They go through the motions; they pass cables back and forth; they take other jobs out of the danger zone; they cover their backsides.

Sad to say, it's slow roll time at Langley after the release of interrogation memos that, in the words of one veteran officer, "hit the agency like a car bomb in the driveway." President Obama promised CIA officers that they won't be prosecuted for carrying out lawful orders, but the people on the firing line don't believe him. They think the memos have opened a new season of investigation and retribution.

The lesson for younger officers is obvious: Keep your head down. Duck the assignments that carry political risk. Stay away from a counterterrorism program that has become a career hazard. . . .

Read the entire article. But Ignatius speaks only of the non-legal members of the CIA. What of the lawyers who have to decide whether something proposed by the CIA is legal and give guidance to the agency. Any lawyer who would willingly even render an opinion in such an instance now would be the penultimate fool. Make no mistake, the witch hunt just unleashed by Obama will turn our intelligence agencies and their legal advisors into the most risk averse organization on this planet. Our ability to gather intelligence from here forward is now seriously compromised. No need to take my word for that, you can take the former CIA Director's, Gen. Hayden. Further, we are likely to see legal advice of the kind provided by Jamie Goerlick that, in an effort to cover her legal ass, was a direct cause of the intelligence failures of 9-11.

A second issue raised is what this means for the terrorism threat. The irony of the remarks by the Obama Administration upon release of the memos and their implication is plumbed by Bill Kristol in an excellent essay at the Weekly Standard:

So: We were once in danger. Now we live in "a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009." Now, in April 2009, Obama's Director of National Intelligence seems to be saying, we're safe.

Good news, if true. And it would be an amazing tribute to the preceding administration's efforts in the war on terror--efforts that Democrats have been saying for years were making us less safe. Apparently, the old policies worked. The threat from al Qaeda has gone. We now have the luxury of "reflection," as President Obama put it in his statement, the luxury of debating and deploring what we did back in the bad old days when there was a war on. After all, "we have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history."

Leave aside how dark and painful the chapter really was. The question is, Is it over? Is the chapter in which we had to focus on preventing further attacks really through? Isn't there still a war against the jihadists on?

Of course Blair and other senior Obama officials have elsewhere suggested that the terror threat remains real, and even urgent. Why else the maintenance of the Bush era surveillance program? Why else the decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, and to deploy more Predator strikes into Pakistan?

But can we then afford Obama's "dark and painful chapter" attitude, exemplified by his forgoing certain interrogation techniques in the present and future, and his exposing and deploring what was done in the past? Can we afford an intelligence director who tries to excuse his boss by telling us we are now safe?

Read the entire article. Those questions posed by Mr. Kristol are very pertinent indeed.

As we now know, this release of information by Obama - with some very pertinent redactions - was very selective indeed. While he released information on the interrogation tactics and decried them as of little value, he withheld information on the intelligence garnered as a result of those interrogation techniques. Other information released in the past week has been subject to similar careful editing, though the Obama administration has claimed inadvertence. Stephen Hayes, also writing at the Weekly Standard, takes note and sees therein the deliberate politicizing of intelligence:

I suppose, that a series of fortunate coincidences has resulted in the public disclosure of only that information that will be politically helpful to the Obama administration. It is also possible that Dick Cheney has taken up synchronized swimming in his retirement.

Read the entire article.

In order to evaluate the enhanced interrogation program in the public square, it is of obvious importance that we know 1) what, if any ill effects those subject to these techniques suffered, 2) the value of information gleaned from use of these techniques, and 3) whether the information could have been extracted without use of the techniques. As to bullet one, none of the people on whom these techniques were used have complained of any lasting effect of which I am aware. As to bullets two and three, by just about every account I have read, from George Tenet to Michal Hayden and even to the current intelligence chief - an avowed opponent of the program - the information gleaned from use of these techniques saved countless innocent American lives by allowing the breakup of plans to attack in Los Angles and New York. The New York Times today claims that its impossible to say whether the information saved lives. I seriously doubt that, but will await release of unredacted documents and further information before making a final decision.

Yet another issue, in light of Obama's green lighting of prosecution of the OLC attorneys for rendering legal opinions in this matter, is the role of Congress. Representative Peter Hoeksta notes in the WSJ today that members of both parties were repeatedly briefed on the enhanced interrogation tactics employed on three select detainees and that nary an eye - including Nancy Pelosi's eye - was batted. As Rep. Hoekstra notes, regarding calls for an investigation, it must assess Congressional approval of the program, it must include a full review of the information gleaned as a result of the program, and lastly:

An honest and thorough review of the enhanced interrogation program must also assess the likely damage done to U.S. national security by Mr. Obama's decision to release the memos over the objections of Mr. Panetta and four of his predecessors. Such a review should assess what this decision communicated to our enemies, and also whether it will discourage intelligence professionals from offering their frank opinions in sensitive counterterrorist cases for fear that they will be prosecuted by a future administration.

Perhaps we need an investigation not of the enhanced interrogation program, but of what the Obama administration may be doing to endanger the security our nation has enjoyed because of interrogations and other antiterrorism measures implemented since Sept. 12, 2001.

Somehow I doubt the far left now holding the reins of power in Washington will be amenable to any of those areas of inquiry. Read Rep. Hoeksta's entire article.

Lastly, when Obama announced his decision to release these memos, he likewise indicated that he did not intend for anyone to be prosecuted for them. As Hot Air notes, like virtually all Obama pronouncements of principle, this one came with an expiration date. By Monday, no doubt in response to vociferous urging from his radical far left base, Obama announced open season for prosecution of the lawyers who drafted the legal memos approving of the enhanced interrogation techniques.

I blogged on my analysis of the legal memos here. I read them in full and with an open mind. I know more than a little about the law. My conclusion regarding the OLC memos was that they present colorable legal arguments that the enhanced interrogation techniques fell short of the legal definition of "torture." I also concluded that there were some weaknesses in the analysis such that reasonable people could disagree. That said, as of yet, I have heard not a single principled argument in disagreement. I emphasize that because quite literally everyone I have seen and heard on the topic has cited no opposing precedent to support their conclusory assertions and labels that the interrogation techniques were unlawful torture. At any rate, what Obama, Soros and the far left want to do now is, as they indicated prior to the election, criminalize their disagreement. I could imagine no greater threat to the fabric of our nation. Even the attempt to do this is going to set off a maelstrom the likes of which we have never seen in this country since, well, 1861 I would have to say.

It does not end there. As I see it, if Obama and his far left base succeed in successfully prosecuting the attorneys over this, then President Obama will have abandoned his most sacred duty - to support and defend the Constitution. That is the day the far left crosses the Rubicon and we cease to be a free nation. The day any one of the OLC attorneys are marched into prison because of a political disagreement can and should be the day a true civil war - one that involves violence - starts in this country. Trust me when I say that up until three days ago, never did I think it the remotest possibility that those words would ever pass my lips.

Read More...

Summary only...

Chickens, Eggs & Coerrcive Interrogation At WaPo

Its an age old conundrum - which came first, the chicken or the egg. It has no identifiable answer because both are necessary for the chicken life cycle. Nonetheless, WaPo has apparently decided it in favor of the chicken. The Wapo is expressing outrage, shock and horror that the CIA considered using coeercive interrogation before asking for a legal opinion from the OLC.

The Chicken: The lead story at the Washington Post is "Harsh Tactics Readied Before Their Approval"

Intelligence and military officials under the Bush administration began preparing to conduct harsh interrogations long before they were granted legal approval to use such methods -- and weeks before the CIA captured its first high-ranking terrorism suspect, Senate investigators have concluded.

Previously secret memos and interviews show CIA and Pentagon officials exploring ways to break Taliban and al-Qaeda detainees in early 2002, up to eight months before Justice Department lawyers approved the use of waterboarding and nine other harsh methods, investigators found.

Ummm, no kidding?

The Egg: What the WaPo fails to do is explain how the lawyers at OLC could ever have been asked to render a legal opinion on these matters if the CIA hadn't considered the coercive interrogation methods first and decided they wanted to use them.

I am reminded of the story of one politician of the last century who is reputed to have used accusatory language in speeches against his opponent to describe wholly normal, benign events with a decidedly sinister twinge. If I recall correctly, one of the lines of his speech was - At college, my opponent MARTICULATED!!!! I see little if any difference between that politician and today's WaPo coverage of the coeercive interrogation techniques.

This article, though far more articulate than that written by the NYT and slightly fisked in my post below, tracks many of the same talking points as the NYT article. The big talking point is the claim that coeercive interrogation methods do not work and are likely to lead to false information. Lacking even the modicum of intellectual honesty displayed by the NYT, WaPo raises this claim in its article but neglects to include claims that such methods were directly responsible for saving American lives.

There are a few other lines from the WaPo article that are noteworthy. One is how they conclude the article, after suggesting that, on one occasion, coeercive interrogation techniques may have been used before the OLC finalized their opinion.

Brent Mickum, one of Abu Zubaida's attorneys in a habeas corpus proceeding in U.S. District Court in Washington, said he believes the Justice Department's Aug. 1, 2002, memo retroactively approved coercive tactics that had already been used.

"If torture occurred before the memo was written, it's not worth the paper it's written on, and the writing of the memo is potentially criminal," Mickum said.

That is a non-sequiter if there ever was one. It is a collateral attack on the legal opinions in an attempt to discredit them without having to address the substance of the opinions. Further, it presupposes that 1) the OLC wrote their memos with the foreknowledge that the tactics were already in use, and 2) wrote their finding specifically to justify the use, ignoring precedents which, as I discussed in a post here, do not apparently exist. Both are spin and pure speculation. The WaPo of course raises none of those issues, merely finishing with the good soundbyte.

There are two final points raised in the article worthy of mention. The first is from Senator Carl Levin who is apparently readying a highly selective witch hunt in Congress and is attempting to somehow shoehorn the coercive interrogation techniques used by the CIA into the "frat party" stunts of some out of control enlisted soldiers at Abu Ghraib:

Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the committee, said the new findings show a direct link between the early policy decisions and the highly publicized abuses of detainees at prisons such as Abu Ghraib in Iraq.

"Senior officials sought out information on, were aware of training in, and authorized the use of abusive interrogation techniques," Levin said. "Those senior officials bear significant responsibility for creating the legal and operational framework for the abuses."

He is right, senior officials were aware - including Senate and House Democratic leadership who were briefed on the coeercive interrogation techniques in 2002. How he is going to get around that is something I am waiting to see.

Lastly, there was this interesting paragraph:

The report shows Pentagon officials reaching out to the military agency for advice on interrogations as early as December 2001 and finding some specialists eager to help. By late 2001, counterterrorism officials were becoming frustrated by the paucity of useful leads coming from interrogations -- a meager showing that was linked, according to one Army major, to interrogators' insistence on "establishing a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq," the report said.

Setting aside for a moment that it attempts to raise the tired canard that there was no link between al Qaeda and Iraq, the fact that there were a "paucity of useful leads" certainly suggests that normal interrogation methods were failing. I am sure we will see much more of this in the days to come.

Read More...

Summary only...

Torture At The Times

That most left wing of rags, the NYT, runs an utterly bizzare lead article today on waterboarding, the purpose of which is to paint waterboarding as actual "torture" beyond the bounds of legitimate debate. They are setting the stage for the show trials against the members of the Office of Legal Counsel, discussed in the post below, who first opined that waterboarding was not "torture" within the legal definition of that term.


In Adopting Harsh Tactics, No Inquiry Into Their Past Use is possibly the most poorly written and poorly reasoned article I have read in a long time. In it, the NYT authors throw the kitchen sink at waterboarding in an effort to paint it as torture that should never have been approved. I won't bother to fisk this utterly bizzare piece beyond a few points.

One, the logic at the heart of this piece is more torturous that any act of waterboarding could possibly be. The main thesis of the authors is that forms of waterboarding have been used throughout history to actually torture people by evil or medieval regimes and that waterboarding would never have been approved if Bush, Tennent et. al had known of this history.

One, the authors are just incredibly sloppy in lumping all forms of this technique into a single heading. There is no comparison between many of the forms of "waterboarding" used by historic regimes that involve actual drowning or destruction of throat and lung tissue with the methods adopted by the U.S. See discussion here. Beyond that, what do the "gruesome origins" of this technique have to do with how a safe variant of it was used in the U.S.?

Two, the authors make a huge deal out of the fact that many believe that use of this technique would lead to false confessions. One, it was never used to extract confessions by our CIA, it was used to gather intelligence. Two, by all accounts, it succeeded wonderfully in that capacity. Use of the technique is explicitly credited with thwarting a 9-11 style attack in Los Angeles following information provided by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed under waterboarding. Everyone in the know, from George Tennent on down - and up - is vociferous in their indications that waterboarding KSM was a major key in stopping al Qaeda attacks on the U.S. that would have occurred otherwise. The NYT finally comes around to that fact, but only after mentioning multiple times that waterboarding is an ineffective method of coercive interrogation likely to result in false information. It is surreal.

By far my biggest chuckle from this ridiculous piece of agenda journalism came when I read of how the top Democrats and Republicans were briefed on waterboarding in 2002, with Nancy Pelosi being among that select group. That fact certainly muddles the ground for anyone to prosecute merely those who rendered a legal opinion on waterboarding. Ah but, as the NYT notes, she really was cluseless:

Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who in 2002 was the ranking Democrat on the House committee, has said in public statements that she recalls being briefed on the methods, including waterboarding. She insists, however, that the lawmakers were told only that the C.I.A. believed the methods were legal — not that they were going to be used.

Of that doesn't bend you over in laughter you have no sense of humor. This is the Pelosi variant of Bill Clinton's famous "I didn't inhale." It is beyond any reasonable belief. Its the "I am really a clueless airhead" defense. Hmmmmm, that said, it might work for her.

Oh well, all good for a chuckle as the NYT tries to set the stage for political show trials against those in the Office of Legal Council who wrote the memos providing an opinion of legality for waterboarding. I would imagine the NYT will manufacture an article every day or so on this for the next month at least in order to keep it in the public eye. They just aren't loosing stock value fast enough.

Read More...

Summary only...

Torture, Persecution and Morality

Obama today opened the door for political show trials of those individuals in the Office of Legal Counsel who, when requested by the CIA, rendered a legal opinion that certain proposed methods of interrogation did not constitute torture and were legal under U.S. law and treaties. This is purely and simply the criminalization of political disagreement, far more reminiscent of Stalinist Russia than any period in U.S. history. It highlights the moral cowardice of the left masquerading as moral superiority. It further displays the left's utter disregard for freedom of speech and their intolerance of dissent.
____________________________________________________________


The left, and Obama in particular, have made a huge show of claiming that the coercive interrogation of al Qaeda prisoners to obtain intelligence - not confessions, mind you, but intelligence to protect thousands of innocents against these psychopaths - was immoral and illegal. According to Obama at his speech to the CIA yesterday, the interrogation methods used by the CIA on at least two suspects, Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Abu Zabaydah, were in violation of the letter of the law and the spirit of American "values" - a term he did not define. And according to Obama today, the door is now open for the prosecution of those attorneys who wrote legal opinions finding that the enhance interrogation techniques were lawful. You can find the legal opinions here.

Let's take the moral issue first since this turns morality on its head. Put yourself in the shoes of the President - the person charged with the defense of our nation. Now, let's assume for a moment the following are true:

1. We have captured Prisoner X, a high ranking member of al Qaeda.

2. Prisoner X undoubtedly has knowledge of plans or people who are planning to kill innocent Americans and who will, if given the opportunity, do so on a massive scale.

3. The information Prisoner X possesses has a reasonably high likelihood of allowing the U.S. to thwart those plans.

4. Prisoner X has not provided any intelligence in response to normal methods of interrogation.

5. Prisoner X may well respond to repeated applications of coercive techniques that cause short term pain of moderate intensity, panic and emotional distress, but which a) causes no long term damage; and b) are sufficiently safe that they are used on our own military in training.

6. If you refuse to push the limits of the interrogation beyond the norm into a this moderately gray area based on your conscience, then you are, in all probability, condemning many innocent Americans to die.

Assuming all of the above are true, which is the truly moral position to take in this case?

Is drawing a bright line at the use of coercive techniques truly the most moral option? Many innocent people whom you are sworn to protect will die if you choose not go beyond normal interrogation tactics. On the other side of the balance sheet, do so and you get to go to sleep feeling morally superior. Plus you maintain popularity with the chattering classes of the far left, here and in Europe.

My question is, then, if you choose the bright line and refuse to engage in coercive interrogation, isn't that really just narcissism and utopianism masquerading as morality? Is it in fact a position of supreme moral cowardice?

Please note that every condition I have described above actually applied to Abu Zabaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Numerous CIA officials and, most recently, Dick Cheney have credited the use of those coercive techniques with saving numerous innocent lives. Indeed, there is this today from CNS News:

The Central Intelligence Agency told CNSNews.com today that it stands by the assertion made in a May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that the use of “enhanced techniques” of interrogation on al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) -- including the use of waterboarding -- caused KSM to reveal information that allowed the U.S. government to thwart a planned attack on Los Angeles.

Before he was waterboarded, when KSM was asked about planned attacks on the United States, he ominously told his CIA interrogators, “Soon, you will know.”

According to the previously classified May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that was released by President Barack Obama last week, the thwarted attack -- which KSM called the “Second Wave”-- planned “ ‘to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into’ a building in Los Angeles.”

So where do you think the moral choice lies?

Having addressed the moral issue, let's take a look at the legal one's as expressed in the recent Justice Dept. memo's released by Obama. For those on the left clamoring to destroy the right by using the police powers of our nation - and to whom Obama today gave a green light - the legal opinions rendered by John Yoo, and others are beyond any question criminal. To listen to these people is to believe that there is no room for honest difference of opinion.

Putting aside the conclusory labels of the far left for a moment, and before delving into the legalese, let's apply some common sense to arrive at a working definition of "torture." Its much harder than it seems as you move away from techniques that are obviously torture.

Let's start with the obvious ones. The al Qaeda field manual for torture, liberated by U.S. troops in an April 2007 raid on an al Qaeda safe house / torture chamber, provides some examples along with helpful illustrations. Here are the first two of those illustrations.



Here is a photo of the back of one man found in the al Qaeda safe house who had been subject to a few of these methods:



I'd say that's evidence of actual torture.

There are many more methods of interrogation / punishment in the book - electrocution, breaking of limbs, beating with sticks, flogging, plucking out of eyes, burning with a blow torch or hot iron, etc. I think we can all agree that those fall under any one's definition of "torture." What makes them so?

One, all of the techniques described above are meant to cause extremes of pain. Further, each will result in serious and long lasting injury, with equally long lasting pain and suffering. Lastly, many run a real risk of being fatal to the victim.

If we take away all of those conditions, is it still possible to call something torture?

If I cause you pain by giving you a paper cut, am I torturing you? Clearly I am acting to cause you pain, but if that is not "torture," then where does torture start?

If I keep you awake beyond your bedtime when your tired, would you define that as torture? Clearly I am causing suffering, but at what point does such suffering become tantamount to "torture."

Real people's lives hang on your answers - so do be intellectually honest. Where would you draw the line? What precise conditions would you set to define the line at which permissible coercive interrogation ends and torture begins? That is the vexing question.

The actual law at issue is no more precise in establishing a bright line than the common sense analysis we just went through, though it does track with that analysis. Chapter 18, Section 2340(1) of the United States Code defines torture as:

. . . an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering . . . upon another person within his custody of physical control.

I must admit, I had a real belly laugh reading both the hard left and some of their apologists on this issue who paint the answers to the above question as crystal clear and beyond the scope of any legitimate debate. For example, this from, surprisingly, Rick Moran at Rightwing Nuthouse:

As the Bybee memo proves beyond any reasonable doubt, the Administration was seeking a legal fig leaf in order to skirt that law as well as international treaties of which we are a signatory that clearly defines torture.

This is conclusory - and completely ridiculous. I defy Rick or anyone else on the frothing left to come up with the actual precedent showing this "clear" definition of torture. More so, I defy them to show how this clear precedent - which they all seem able to identify with ease on the left - applies to bring waterboarding or, for that matter, any other technique as described in the memos under the legal definition of "torture."

The bottom line, the detailed legal analysis in those memos appears to me to present sound legal arguments. Like all arguments, by very definition it can also be argued the other way. But, based on those memos, the claim that Yoo and the others at OLC provided deliberately false or fatuous arguments - or, for that matter, that they reasoned backwards to justify a conclusion rather than forward to arrive at one - can only be made by people who are utterly biased at the start - ie., the entire far left - or who have wholly put aside their analytical skills on this one.

For example, to recap for those on another planet for the past few years, waterboarding involves strapping a person down on a board inclined slightly beyond 90 degrees, placing a cloth or piece of plastic over the persons nose and mouth, then pouring water on it. It gives the sensation of drowning, though there is no physical danger and no water actually enters the nose or mouth. It is sufficiently benign that it has been done thousands of times on our own soldiers as part of certain specialized training. Mostly, waterboarding induces a momentary panic that lasts for twenty to forty seconds at a time. So the question then is whether that is inflicting "severe physical or mental pain or suffering." Here is a snippet of some of the reasoning on this found in the Bybee Memo:

Section 1340 defines torture as the inf1iction of severe physical or mental pain or suffering. We will consider physical pain and mental pain seperately. See 18 U.S.C. § 2340(1). With respect to physical pain, we previously concluded that "severe pain" within the meaning of Section 2340 is pain that is difficult for the individual to endure and is of such intensity akin to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, See Section 2340A Memorandum at 6. Drawing upon the TVPA {Terror Victims Prevention Act} precedent, we have noted that examples of acts inflicting severe pain that typify torture are, among other things, severe beatings with weapons such as clubs, and the burning of prisoners. See id at 24. We conclude below that none of the proposed techniques inflicts such pain.
. . . .
As we understand it, when the waterboard is used, the subject's body responds as the
subject were drowning even though the subject may be well aware that he is in fact not drowning. You have inrormed us that this procedure does not inflict actual physical harm. Thus, although the subject may experience the fear or panic associated with the feeling of drowning, the waterboard does not inflict physical pain. As we explained in the Section 2340A Memorandum, "pain and suffering" as used in Section 2340 is best understood as a single concept, not distinct concepts of "pain" as distinguished from "suffering." See Section 2340A Memorandum at 6 n.3. The waterboard, which inflicts no pain or actual harm whatsoever, does
not, in our view inflict "severe pain or suffering." Even if one were to parse the statute more finely to attempt to treat "suffering" as a distinct concept, the waterboard could not be said to inflict severe suffering. The waterboard is simply a controlled acute episode, lacking the connotation of a protracted period of time generally given to "suffering."

Feel free to pick this apart - so long as you do so without simply stating unsupported conclusions.

At any rate, what the released memos show, in excruciating detail, was a very thorough legal analysis of the language of the statute and existing precedents ending in a not unreasonable conclusion that the proposed actions of the CIA, as set forth in detail, did not fall within the legal definition of torture. It is a colorable argument. So how can it possibly be criminal?

The bottom line - it can't be. And if the far left goes ahead with Obama's blessing and, for the first time in America of which I am aware, criminalizes political differences, then this really will be the start of a civil war.

Read More...

Summary only...