Appendix of Petition and Appeal, filed 10/30/09
No.09-5299 09-cv-01544
Appendix -documentation of Petition’s, Appeal’s points2) (#1) Confirmation hearings; Republicans seek assurances that new leaders at the Justice Department will not prosecute former government officials over national security abuses;
Holder Says He Will Not Criminalize Policy Differences -
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/24/AR2009012401856.html?sid=ST2009012402392(#1A) It's official: No U.S. prosecution of Bush officials
http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/04/its-official-no-us-prosecution-of-bush-officials/(#1B) Obama Resisting Push for Interrogation Panel
Mr. Obama said a special inquiry would steal time and energy from his policy agenda, and could mushroom into a wider distraction looking back at the Bush years,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/us/pohttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/us/politics/24cong.html(#2) The United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment sets out in clear language the nature of torture., and obligations of governments to prevent and prosecute those responsible for the crime, to provide training and education
http://www.irct.org/what-is-torture/convention-against-torture.aspx3.) (#3) news reports, quoting unnamed sources, say that if Holder decides in the coming weeks to authorize a criminal investigation it would be
limited to the “few bad apples” at the CIA who exceeded interrogation limits set by Justice Department attorneys in memos that authorized brutal acts of torture against suspected terrorists.
http://pubrecord.org/law/2948/holder-torture-probe-would-likely/However, such a decision would both legitimize the flawed memos of Justice Department attorneys by using them as the standard to determine prosecutable criminality, and would treat the Bush administration staff as a “protected, privileged class” granting impunity to those in the Bush administration who were using torture as a means to further advance their criminal conspiracy. The United States is a nation of laws under our esteemed Constitution and by extension of the Supremacy clause, the ratified Geneva Treaties, not a nation of memos.
4) (#4) Plaintiff notes that the defendant himself has acknowledged that water-boarding is torture, although the procedure is allowed under the guidelines in the infamous "Bybee Memo.” “Enforcing the nation's laws should not be a political decision," said ACLU executive director Anthony Romero,
"These memos provide yet more incontrovertible evidence that Bush administration officials at the highest level of government authorized and gave legal blessing to acts of torture that violate domestic and international law," he says. “Through these memos, Justice Department lawyers authorized interrogators to use the most barbaric interrogation methods, including methods that the US once prosecuted as war crimes" http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0417/p02s04-usgn.html
In addition to waterboarding, the 2002 Bybee memo authorized slapping, pushing, confinement in a small, dark space, painful stress positions, and sleep deprivation for up to 11 days. It also approved a request to lock Abu Zubaydah in a confinement box with an insect.
JURIST Contributing Editor
Jordan Paust of the University of Houston Law Center says that far from providing real legal cover for CIA harsh interrogations, the newly disclosed second Bybee memo is a "smoking gun" providing further evidence of serial criminality and demonstrating beyond reasonable doubt why a memo writer is reasonably accused of complicity whether or not he knew that certain conduct would be “torture”.... http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2009/04/second-bybee-memo-smoking-gun.php
(#4A)This is an effort by a number of people to demand the investigation and indictment of those who organized the recent U.S. wave of torture around the world.
http://mikeely.wordpress.com/2009/09/12/tortured-logic/This video’s self-description: “reading directly from a memo authored by Jay Bybee, former head of the Justice Departments Office of Legal Counsel under the Bush administration“.
The memo was released in April as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the ACLU.“
http://www.aclu.org/torturedlogic/(#4B)… lawyers were colluding with administration officials in setting policy, rather than providing objective legal analysis. Already, extensive evidence exists, including Yoo’s own writings, showing that he participated in high-level administration meetings to discuss and set policy.
For instance, in his 2006 book War by Other Means, Yoo describes his involvement in frequent White House meetings regarding what “other means” should receive a legal stamp of approval. Yoo, who was a deputy assistant attorney general assigned to the powerful Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department, wrote:
“As the White House held its procession of Christmas parties and receptions in December 2001, senior lawyers from the Attorney General’s office, the White House counsel’s office, the Departments of State and Defense and the NSC [National Security Council] met a few floors away to discuss the work on our opinion. …”
“This group of lawyers would meet repeatedly over the next months to develop policy on the war on terrorism. We certainly did not all agree, nor did we always get along, but we all believed that we were doing what was best for the nation and its citizens.”
“Meetings were usually chaired by Alberto Gonzales,” who was then White House counsel and later became Bush’s second Attorney General. Yoo identified other key players as Timothy Flanigan, Gonzales’s deputy; William Howard Taft IV from State; John Bellinger from the NSC; William “Jim” Haynes from the Pentagon; and David Addington, counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney.
What Yoo’s book and other evidence make clear is that the lawyers from the Justice Department’s OLC weren’t just legal scholars handing down opinions from an ivory tower; they were participants in how to make Bush’s desired actions “legal” even if the arguments were professionally flawed.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/detainees/story/38886.html5) (#5)The White House orders the FBI to hand Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi over to the CIA. Soon after, Ibn al-Libi is flown to a site in Egypt. [
Newsweek, 6/21/2004 http://www.newsweek.com/id/54093;
Washington Post, 6/27/2004 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8534-2004Jun26.htmlSenior administration officials kept insisting the interrogators weren't pushing hard enough,
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66622.html(#6)Al-Libi is subjected to a series of increasingly harsh techniques
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1209-07.htm , including at least one, waterboarding, that is considered torture.
http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=torture,_rendition,_and_other_abuses_against_captives_in_iraq,_afghanistan,_and_elsewhere&startpos=200#amid0302tentechniquesReputedly, he is finally broken after being waterboarded and then forced to stand naked in a cold cell overnight where he is repeatedly doused with cold water by his captors. In order to avoid harsh treatment he will also provide false information to the Egyptians, alleging that Iraq trained al-Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases. [
ABC News, 11/18/2005 http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1322866 ;
New York Times, 12/9/2005] http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1209-07.htm
New York Times, November 6, 2005 By
DOUGLAS JEHL http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/washington/10detain.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=&st=nyt ,
http://www.newsweek.com/id/196818(#7) Report Warned Bush Team About Intelligence skepticism regarding Ibn Libi's tortured account, still President Bush, Vice President
Dick Cheney,
Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi's information as "credible" evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/politics/06intel.html?pagewanted=print(#8) The use of abusive interrogation —widely considered torture —as part of Bush's quest for a rationale to invade Iraq came to light as the Senate issued a major report tracing the origin of the abuses. Former Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson
wrote, “So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney’s office that their detainee “was compliant” (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP’s office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods,” Wilkerson added. “The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa’ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, “revealed” such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.”
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/05/14/ex-bush-official-says-torture-approved-in-effort-to-tie-iraq-to-al-qaeda/Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War ,
Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 121] Vincent Cannistraro, former head of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center, will later say: “He’s carried off to Egypt... And we know that he’s going to be tortured.... http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/darkside/etc/script.html
(#9)
Report Warned Bush Team About Intelligence Suspicions - New York Times WASHINGTON, Nov. 5 - A high Qaeda official in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that
Iraq trained Al Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to newly declassified portions of a Defense Intelligence Agency document.
The document, an intelligence report from February 2002, said it was probable that the prisoner, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, "was intentionally misleading the debriefers" in making claims about Iraqi support for Al Qaeda's work with illicit weapons. (he was making stuff up to get his torturers to stop tormenting him.) www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/politics/06intel.html -
Similar(#9A) A strong case can be made that VP Dick Cheney and President Bush led a conspiracy of certain members of his administration to commit fraud and perjury with intent to deceive in his State of the Union address on January 28th, 2003 regarding Iraq's acquisition of special aluminum tubing purported to be used in nuclear processing, the purported attempt by Iraq to purchase enriched uranium, the purported possession of huge stocks of WMD, that is, chemical weapons, and the purported "immanent threat" Iraq posed to the United States. Charges: Violations of 18 USC section 1031, MAJOR FRAUD ACT of 1988, Violations of 18 USC section 1001, FRAUD AND FALSE STATEMENTS Violated, 18 USC Section 1002, POSSESSION of FALSE PAPERS to DEFRAUD the UNITED STATES Violated 18 USC section 371, CONSPIRACY TO COMMIT OFFENSE OR TO DEFRAUD UNITED STATES Violations of The MAJOR FRAUD ACT of 1988, 18 USC section 1031 : That former US VP Dick Cheney and former President Bush, in collusion with others, did instigate and perpetuate a conspiracy to commit fraud on the people and government of the United States by fraudulently and deceptively manipulating information presented to the public and in a joint session of Congress in a State of the Union address January 28th, 2003 as well as in testimony given to Congress in Congressional hearings both public and private, including accusations known to be dubious or false about Iraqi attempts to procure uranium according to numerous reports including: January 12, 2003 - The State Department INR(bureau of Intelligence and Research) expresses concerns to the CIA that the Iraq-Niger documents are forgeries. (INR memo, p. 3) January 13, 2003 -The chief INR Iraq nuclear analyst circulates an e-mail to intelligence community analysts warning that "the uranium purchase agreement probably is a hoax." (SSCI). (#9B) President Bush also claimed in the 2003 State of the Union address(
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/01/28/sotu.transcript/) that all intelligence agencies had determined that Iraq was trying to purchase aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear centrifuges(“Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.” . He said this despite a January 10, 2003, Senior Executive Memorandum given to Rice, Cheney, and dozens of other high-level Bush administration policy makers on the aluminum tubes issue emphasizing that the INR, DOE and the IAEA all believed that the aluminum tubes procured by Iraq were for conventional weapons, as well as other reports stating that the aluminum tubes in question were probably NOT for nuclear purposes. So, President Bush and others knew or should have known the charges about the aluminum tubes and about Iraqi attempts to buy uranium were false, or at least, misleading. What Bush Was Told About Iraq By Murray Waas, National Journal,© National Journal Group Inc.,Thursday, March 2, 2006
http://www.nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2006/0302nj1.htmFormer President Bush and his administration was presenting these issues about the purported attempts of uranium purchases and about the purchase of aluminum tubing as supposedly solid proofs that Iraq had an ongoing nuclear program and as reasons to go to war with Iraq, although the record clearly shows that the Bush administration was not at all certain of the veracity of these claims because of reports given to them that both claims were bogus, that is to say very dubious or untrue, and history shows that assessment was correct. However the record seems to show that the Bush administration was determined to bring the US to war with Iraq even if it mean lying to Congress and the American people about these issues and defrauding the US government. The purpose of this conspiracy of fraud was, among other things, to enrich the Halliburton Corporation, for which Cheney had been CEO and of which he still has vested interest in and enrich, as well as defense contractors and oil companies, chief donors to his election campaigns. President Bush had stated that he wanted to be a war-time President to help push his legislative agenda. . (#9C) President Bush's infamous 16 words, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," was a disingenuous, misleading statement, and he and his staff knew it. And President Bush repeated the claim that Iraq's Aluminum tubes were for nuclear centrifuges without acknowledging that the INR, DOE and the IAEA all believed that the aluminum tubes procured by Iraq were for conventional weapons What Bush Was Told About Iraq, 2006-03-03By Murray Waas, National Journalhttp://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/8440, with the intent of terrorizing the American people and US Congress to justify waging war against Iraq. And thereby risking and wasting American blood(some 4,500 US soldiers killed thus far) and treasure(estimated to cost the +US $1.5 Trillion) in a pre-emptive war which was not necessary.(No WMD, no eminent threat to US or its allies). Yet Cheney and Bush's friends and donors in defense contractors including Halliburton, a company VP Cheney has vested interest, in benefited tangibly and substantially. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil and Terrorism expert Richard Clarke saw, in the White House, pre-9/11 maps of Iraq with its oil fields divvied up between the oil companies (Iraqi Oil fields
http://www.judicialwatch.org/IraqOilMap.pdf,
http://www.judicialwatch.org/IraqOilFrgnSuitors.pdf which reveals a motive for the plot to fraudulently mislead the United States and reveals that it had been developing since at least the beginning days of the Bush administration in the Spring of 2001. (#9C) Yet the January 28th, 2003 speech by Bush was a State of the Union address mandated by Article 2, section 3 of the US Constitution, before a joint session of Congress and was accordingly solemnly received and considered worthy and the truthful fulfillment of a Presidential duty. Arguably, President Bush was under his Presidential oath of office: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.", as he gave his Constitutionally mandated State of the Union Address before a joint session of Congress as well as many millions of Americans and any misstatements or misrepresentations in his 2003 State of the Union address are fraudulent, perjuries and felonious. And especially villainous, as it led to the deaths or maiming of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, innocent civilians as well as soldiers, and the death or maiming of many thousands of US soldiers. In any event, lying to Congress is against the law whether or not one is under oath. It wasn't until July 9th, 2003, over three months since the war had started, that Presidential spokesman Ari Fleisher acknowledged that "it's now known what was not known by the White House prior to the speech. This information should not have risen to the level of a Presidential speech." Yet as I've delineated above, the White House DID, in fact, know about the dubious nature of the claims about Iraq prior to the State of the Union speech(and there is extensive, documented evidence to prove the White House was made aware of the dubious nature of these claims well before the January 28th, 2003, State of the Union address). The State of the Union speech was given on January 28th and the war started on March 20th, after President Bush warned the UN Inspectors to leave Iraq. There was plenty of time for the administration to stop the headlong rush to war as the truth about the spurious nature of the allegations against Iraq was revealed. Part of the proof that the Bush administration did not care about the veracity of the accusations it made against Iraq in the 2003 State of the Union address is that although there was much public discourse in the months after the President's address about the many reports which revealed the accusations against Iraq therein to be spurious, the Bush administration proceeded relentlessly with the war against Iraq. UN weapons inspectors were on the ground in Iraq, doing a good and thorough job until the Bush administration warned them to get out before the US bombardment of Iraq began in 3/03. (#9E) The deceptions included in the 2003 State of the Union address also violated 18 USC section 1001, FRAUD AND FALSE STATEMENTS in several ways. For instance, lying about non-existent uranium purchases would "falsify, conceal or cover up a material fact " that the purchase never occurred. Lying also obviously violates section 2 of the statute: "makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation". Knowing reliance upon the forged documents would violate section 3 of the statute: "uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry". The letter obtained by Italian intelligence and later by British intelligence that purported to show that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Niger had long been considered by many to be a crude forgery, yet when same letter came to the attention of British intelligence, some in the White House conspiracy pretended that the forged letter had suddenly acquired credibility and let it be included in the final draft of the 2003 State of the Union address. The claims President Bush made in the 2003 State of the Union address regarding Iraq purchase of aluminum tubes suitable for uranium processing was contrary to what a report from the Department of Energy, in early January of 2203, asserted regarding the tubes. And President Bush claimed UN Inspectors believed Iraq had huge Sock-piles of WMD, which is a complete misrepresentation of United Nations reports Instead, U.N. inspectors expressed doubt, stating they had dismantled Iraq's key weapons-making facilities and destroyed most existing WMD. A September 2002 report by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) said: "There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing or stockpiling chemical weapons, or whether Iraq has - or will - establish its chemical warfare production facilities."
(#9F) Evidence, -The Downing Street Memo Proof Bush Fixed The Facts, by Ray McGovern May 04, 2005 "Intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy." a briefing by Richard Dearlove, then head of Britain's CIA equivalent, MI-6. Fresh back in London from consultations in Washington, Dearlove briefed Prime Minister Blair and his top national security officials on July 23, 2002, on the Bush administration's plans to make war on Iraq. In emotionless English, Dearlove tells Blair and the others that President Bush has decided to remove Saddam Hussein by launching a war that is to be "justified by the conjunction of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction." Period. What about the intelligence? Dearlove adds matter-of-factly, "The intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy." At this point, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw confirms that Bush has decided on war, but notes that stitching together justification would be a challenge, since "the case was thin." Straw noted that Saddam was not threatening his neighbors and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.In the following months, "the case" would be buttressed by a well-honed U.S.-U.K. intelligence-turned-propaganda-machine. The argument would be made "solid" enough to win endorsement from Congress and Parliament by conjuring: -Aluminum artillery tubes misdiagnosed as nuclear related; -Forgeries alleging Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium in Africa; -Tall tales from a drunken defector about mobile biological weapons laboratories; -Bogus warnings that Iraqi forces could fire WMD-tipped missiles within 45 minutes of an order to do so; -Dodgy dossiers fabricated in London; and -A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate thrown in for good measure. All this, as Dearlove notes dryly, despite the fact that "there was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action." Another nugget from Dearlove's briefing is his bloodless comment that one of the U.S. military options under discussion involved "a continuous air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi "casus belli"—the clear implication being that planners of the air campaign would also see to it that an appropriate casus belli was orchestrated.
6.) (#10)
OF LAW AND MORALS -As David Luban of Georgetown has argued, regarding the legal reasoning in the torture memos “They read as if they were reverse engineered to reach a pre-determined outcome: approval of waterboarding and the other CIA techniques. The memo's authors were obviously looking for a standard of torture so high that none of the enhanced interrogation techniques would count. But legal ethics does not permit lawyers to make frivolous arguments merely because it gets them the results they wanted.
I have called the interrogation memos a legal train wreck.”
http://www.slate.com/id/2218290/The disgrace of secret law by Christopher Kutz, U.C. Berkeley School of Law
http://www.law.yale.edu/documents/pdf/Intellectual_Life/Kutz_RepugnanceofSecretLaw.pdf(#11)If the perpetrators and commanders of this are “not subject to prosecution,” that would set a terrible precedent for the future http://rwor.org/a/164/torture-en.html
“What sets us apart from our enemies in this fight… is how we behave. In everything we do, we must observe the standards and values that dictate that we treat noncombatants and detainees with dignity and respect. While we are warriors, we are also all human beings” -- General David Petraeus ,http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/blog/hrfblog/2009/02/general-petraeus-sets-us-apart-from-our.html
11) (#12) 56 MEMBERS OF CONGRESS agree: "Dear Mr. Attorney General: "We are writing to request that you appoint a special counsel to investigate whether the Bush Administration's policies regarding the interrogation of detainees have violated federal criminal laws. There is mounting evidence that the Bush Administration has sanctioned enhanced interrogation techniques against detainees under the control of the United States that warrant an investigation …information indicates that the Bush Administration may have systematically implemented, from the top down, detainee interrogation policies that constitute torture"
http://afterdowningstreet.org/node/39727142 Organizations Agree With Leading Senators and Congress Members: The Crimes of Bush, Cheney, and Other Top Officials Must Be Prosecuted.
http://backbonecampaign.org/Blog.cfm?ID=164 http://prosecutebushcheney.orgUN Calls for prosecution of Bush Officials . "the Obama administration is violating terms of the U.N. Convention Against Torture by effectively granting amnesty to CIA interrogators. “
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/9605488/UN_Calls_for_prosecution_of_Bush_Officials/14) (#13) The Pentagon says 137 military members have been disciplined or face courts-martial for abusing detainees.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/06/politics/06abuse.html(#14)Senate probe blames top Bush officials for abuses Roy Gutman and Jonathan S. Landay McClatchy Newspapers- Senator Levin, Chairman of the Armed Services Committee said,
"Attempts by senior officials to pass the buck to low-ranking soldiers while avoiding any responsibility for abuses are unconscionable. The message from top officials was clear; it was acceptable to use degrading and abusive techniques against detainees." " said Sen. Carl Levin, “The abuse of detainees in U.S. 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 authorized their use against detainees. Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.” Senate probe blames top Bush officials for abuses
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/staff/jonathan_landay/v-print/story/57631.html15) (#15) GOP leaders seek pledge ex-officials will avoid charges. At his Senate confirmation hearing Jan. 15, Holder said that he was not interested in "criminalizing policy differences."
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2009/01/26/cia_tape_case_a_vignette_of_debate_stalling_holder_confirmation/(#16) Holder has named longtime prosecutor John H. Durham, who has parachuted into crisis situations for both political parties over three decades, to open an early review of nearly a dozen cases of alleged detainee mistreatment at the hands of CIA interrogators and contractors. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/24/AR2009082401743.html
news reports, quoting unnamed sources, say that if Holder decides in the coming weeks to authorize a criminal investigation it would be
limited to the “few bad apples” at the CIA who exceeded interrogation limits set by Justice Department attorneys in memos that authorized brutal acts of torture against suspected terrorists.
http://pubrecord.org/law/2948/holder-torture-probe-would-likely/16) (#17) Published on Monday, May 18, 2009 by
Salon.comThe 13 People Who Made Torture Possible; The Bush administration's Torture 13. They authorized it, they decided how to implement it, and they crafted the legal fig leaf to justify it.
by Marcy Wheeler
The Torture 13 exploited the federal bureaucracy to establish a torture regime in two ways. First, they based the enhanced interrogation techniques on techniques used in the U.S. military's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) program. (The program -- which subjects volunteers from the armed services to simulated hostile capture situations -- trains servicemen and -women to withstand “harsh interrogation” techniques banned by US military code, US statutory law and International law, enshrined in the Geneva accords and the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, of which the US is a signatory to.)
The prosecutorial discrimination of the Attorney General Eric Holder is a tacit extension of the previous administration’s prosecutorial discrimination, by class, favoring Bush White House officials by turning a blind eye to their felonious criminal enterprise, including torture, and in the impunity it grants Bush administration officials the Islamic victims of torture experience more discrimination in the prosecutorial decision-making process. The precedence in Wayte v. US is clear. The remedy of the Court to correct this selective discrimination is to let Prosecutor Durham turn a scrutinizing eye to the whole criminal enterprise of the Bush administration, of which the criminal torture was just a part.
17) (#18) Torture Trail Seen Starting with Bush -A bipartisan congressional report traces the U.S. abuse of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib to President George W. Bush’s Feb. 7, 2002, action memorandum that excluded “war on terror” suspects from Geneva Convention protections. The Senate Armed Services Committee’s
report http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/supporting/2008/Detainees.121108.pdf said Bush’s memo opened the door to “considering aggressive techniques,” which were then developed with the complicity of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Bush’s National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and other senior officials. Bush's Feb. 7, 2002, memo prompted Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who became the top commander in Iraq, to institute a “dozen interrogation methods beyond” the Army's standard practice under the convention, www.consortiumnews.com/2008/121208a.html -
Cached -
Similar(#19) Of the 79 courts-martial (for abuse), 54 resulted in convictions. Of these, 40 soldiers were sentenced to prison time averaging four months,
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0427-05.htm(#20)Torture Trail Seen Starting with Bush; President Bush told an ABC News reporter during an interview that he approved meetings of the NSC’s Principals Committee to discuss specific interrogation techniques the CIA could use against detainees. The Principals Committee included Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General Ashcroft as well as Rumsfeld and Rice.
(#21) President Bush told an ABC News reporter that he approved meetings of the NSC’s Principals Committee to discuss specific interrogation techniques the CIA could use against detainees. The Principals Committee included Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft as well as Cheney and Rice. http://www.humanrightsfirst.info/pdf/06221-etn-hrf-dic-rep-web.pdf
(#22) an investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee found that Bush and Cheney didn’t simply buy into faulty intelligence but knowingly misled Congress and the public about the threat that Iraq posed to the United States in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/121608a.html(#22A) Conyers called on Holder “to appoint a special counsel to review the Bush administration abuses of power and misconduct. A criminal probe—he’s got to do that.” Conyers added that “All the breadcrumbs, as we call them, go right to the White House.”
http://jonathanturley.org/2009/07/25/conyers-calls-for-special-prosecutor-on-alleged-bush-crimes/(#23) Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff of the Department of State during the term of Secretary of State Colin Powell,
“What I am saying is that no torture or harsh interrogation techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator for the entire second term of Cheney-Bush, 2005-2009. So, if we are to believe the protestations of Dick Cheney, that Obama’s having shut down the “Cheney interrogation methods” will endanger the nation, what are we to say to Dick Cheney for having endangered the nation for the last four years of his vice presidency?”
“Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002–well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion–its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa’ida.” http://themoderatevoice.com/32207/former-powell-aide-lawrence-b-wilkerson-the-truth-about-dick-cheney/
19) (#24) Torture Trail Seen Starting with Bushby Jason Leopold December 12, 2008 A bipartisan congressional report traces the U.S. abuse of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib to President George W. Bush’s Feb. 7, 2002, action memorandum that excluded “war on terror” suspects from Geneva Convention protections.The Senate Armed Services Committee’s report (
http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/supporting/2008/Detainees.121108.pdf said Bush’s memo opened the door to “considering aggressive techniques,” which were then developed with the complicity of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Bush’s National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and other senior officials.
http://baltimorechronicle.com/2008/121208Leopold.html(#25) New Details on Torture Deaths By Jason Leopold
In December 2002 – as the Bush administration was ratcheting up its harsh questioning of detainees – several captives died from “abusive” treatment at the hands of U.S. military interrogators in Afghanistan, according to newly declassified Defense Department documents.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/021209b.html(#26) On January 25, 2002, then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales advised George W. Bush in a memo to deny al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners protections under the Geneva Conventions because doing so would "substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act" and "provide a solid defense to any future prosecution."
Two weeks later, Bush signed an action memorandum dated February 7, 2002, addressed to Vice President Dick Cheney, which denied baseline protections to al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners under the Third Geneva Convention. That memo, according to a recently released bipartisan report issued by the Senate Armed Services Committee, opened the door to "considering aggressive techniques," which were then developed with the complicity of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Bush's National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and other senior Bush officials.
"The President's order closed off application of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which would have afforded minimum standards for humane treatment, to al-Qaeda or Taliban detainees," says the committee's December 11 report.
http://www.truthout.org/061709A(#27) “In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions," Gonzales wrote in a legal memo to President Bush on Jan. 25, 2002. Declaring the war-on-terror prisoners exempt from the Geneva Convention, he argued, "substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act."
Acting like a sleazy attorney advising a client on how not to be convicted of an ongoing crime, Gonzales was apparently not worried about irrational foreign courts or high-minded jurists in The Hague, but rather U.S. prosecutors who might enforce federal laws that ban torture of foreign prisoners of war. Indeed, Gonzales made the case for a legal end run around the 1996 War Crimes Act, which mandates criminal penalties, including the death sentence, for any U.S. military or other personnel who engage in crimes of torture.
"It is difficult to predict the motives of [U.S.] prosecutors and [U.S.] independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges based on Section 2441" of the act, Gonzales wrote. "Your determination [that Geneva protections are not applicable] would create a reasonable basis in law that Section 2441 does not apply, which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution."
In light of what we have learned since about the rationalization and use of torture by U.S. interrogators over the last four years, it is difficult to ignore the possibility that Gonzales already had knowledge that such violations had occurred and expected more.
http://articles.latimes.com/2005/jan/04/opinion/oe-scheer420) (#28)
Torture Trail Seen Starting with Bush Feb. 7, 2002, memo prompted Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, Bipartisan congressional report traces the U.S. abuse of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib to President George W. Bush’s Feb. 7, 2002, action memorandum that excluded “war on terror” suspects from Geneva Convention protections.
“The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of ‘a few bad apples’ acting on their own,” the committee report said. “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 authorized their use against detainees.”, “Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.”
http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/6734-torture-trail-seen-starting-with-bush-.html(#29)
SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE INQUIRY INTO THE TREATMENT OF DETAINEES A bipartisan congressional report traces the U.S. abuse of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib to President George W. Bush’s Feb. 7, 2002, action memorandum that excluded “war on terror” suspects from Geneva Convention protections.The Senate Armed Services Committee’s report, (
http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/pdf/12112008_detaineeabuse.pdf?sid=ST2008121101970&s_pos=list ) (which) said, Bush’s memo opened the door to “considering aggressive techniques,” which were then developed with the complicity of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Bush’s National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and other senior officials.
http://media.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/nation/pdf/12112008_detaineeabuse.pdf?sid=ST2008121101970&s_pos=list21) (#30) WASHINGTON (AP), Col. Janis Karpinski : "The line (of authority) is very clear. It was cloudy for years," Karpinski said. In an interview on CBS's "The Early Show," she pointed to findings that the authorization for harsh interrogation tactics originated "from the very top" in Washington and was given to military people at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and elsewhere. "Scapegoated is the perfect word," she said, "and it's an understatement." Karpinski said the Senate report is "black and white proof" that uniformed servicemen and women were not alone responsible for the abuses.
http://www.necn.com/Boston/Nation/2009/04/22/Army-officer-vindicated-by/1240401509.html(#31) Senate probe blames top Bush officials for abuses "
“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 authorized their use against detainees," said the report's 19-page unclassified executive summary. "Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority." http://www.mcclatchydc.com/staff/jonathan_landay/v-print/story/57631.html
(#32)The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing "war crimes" and called for those responsible to be held to account.
“After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes," Taguba wrote,k "The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account." http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/41514.html
22.) (#33) TORTURING AN IRAQ-AL QAEDA CONNECTION: As McClatchy reported, "[T]he Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime."
Such information -- which doesn't exist -- "would've provided a foundation" for Bush's arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. According to the Armed Services Committee report, former U.S. Army psychiatrist Maj. Charles Burney told Army investigators in 2006 that
"the more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link...there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results." Read more at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-progress-report/the-tortured-past_b_190625.html(#34) MEMORANDUM FOR: The President, FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), SUBJECT: Torture
“This memorandum is VIPS’ first attempt to inform you on a major intelligence issue, as we did your predecessor; thus, some background might be helpful. Five former CIA officers established Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) in January 2003, when we saw our profession being corrupted to justify an attack on Iraq. Since then, our numbers have grown to 70 intelligence professionals, mostly retired, who have served in virtually all U.S. civilian and military intelligence agencies.In our first Memorandum for the President (George W. Bush), dated February 5, 2003, we provided a same-day commentary on Colin Powell’s U.N. speech. We warned the president that “an invasion of Iraq would ensure overflowing recruitment centers for terrorists into the indefinite future [and that] far from eliminating the [terrorist] threat, it would enhance it exponentially.”
For the cheerleading for war had begun—a war that would fit the post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal’s description of a “war of aggression.” Nuremberg defined such a war as “the supreme international crime, differing from other war crimes only in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
No doubt you appreciate better than anyone that the official Department of Justice memoranda you insisted be released last week are a national disgrace. Worse still are the first-hand accounts by young soldiers at Guantanamo of perversions like “rape by instrumentality.” You should be aware that this was a practice adamantly defended by former White House lawyers when Congress attempted to draft legislation expressly prohibiting it. Asked to explain their objection, Bush administration lawyers acknowledged that they were worried that such legislation might subject practitioners to prosecution under state and federal criminal statutes.”
http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t108255.html24.) (#35) Crawford, a retired judge who served as general counsel for the Army during the Reagan administration and as Pentagon inspector general when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense, is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured.
Crawford, 61, said the combination of the interrogation techniques, their duration and the impact on Qahtani's health led to her conclusion.
"The techniques they used were all authorized, but the manner in which they applied them was overly aggressive and too persistent. . . . You think of torture, you think of some horrendous physical act done to an individual. This was not any one particular act; this was just a combination of things that had a medical impact on him, that hurt his health. It was abusive and uncalled for. And coercive. Clearly coercive. It was that medical impact that pushed me over the edge" to call it torture, she said.
“I sympathize with the intelligence gatherers in those days after 9/11, not knowing what was coming next and trying to gain information to keep us safe," said Crawford, a lifelong Republican. "But there still has to be a line that we should not cross. And unfortunately what this has done, I think, has tainted everything going forward."
In May 2008, Crawford ordered the war-crimes charges against Qahtani dropped but did not state publicly that the harsh interrogations were the reason. "It did shock me," Crawford said. "I was upset by it. I was embarrassed by it. If we tolerate this and allow it, then how can we object when our servicemen and women, or others in foreign service, are captured and subjected to the same techniques? How can we complain? Where is our moral authority to complain? Well, we may have lost it.” articles.latimes.com/2009/jan/14/nation/na-gitmo14
The harsh techniques used against Qahtani, she said, were approved by then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. "A lot of this happened on his watch," she said. Last month, a Senate Armed Services Committee report concluded that "Rumsfeld's authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques for use at Guantanamo Bay was a direct cause of detainee abuse there."
Crawford has not blocked prosecution of the other five detainees. Ultimately, she says, the responsibility for the farrago of illegal detentions and torture rests with President Bush.
Crawford said. "I think the buck stops in the Oval Office."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/13/AR2009011303372.html?hpid=topnews(#36)MEMORANDUM FOR: The President, FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), SUBJECT: Torture
70 intelligence professionals, mostly retired, who have served in virtually all U.S. civilian and military intelligence agencies say,
“You need to know that the vast majority of intelligence professionals deplore “extraordinary rendition” and the other torture procedures that were subsequently ordered by senior Bush administration officials.”
http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t108255.html(#37) In the hours immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, long before anyone was certain who was responsible for them, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld reportedly asked that plans be drawn up for an American assault on Iraq. The following day, in a Cabinet meeting at the White House, Rumsfeld, according to Bob Woodward, insisted that Iraq should be "a principal target of the first round in the war against terrorism." The president reportedly was advised that "public opinion has to be prepared before a move against Iraq is possible" http://s3.amazonaws.com/911timeline/2003/latimes011203.html
(#38) Attorney-general nominee Eric Holder, at his confirmation hearing: "No one is above the law," Holder said, but added that he also didn't "want to criminalize policy differences that exist" between administrations.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2009-01-15-holder-hearing_N.htm(#39)The Rule of Law means that "...no one is above the law", not even England's King John who was required to abide by the law through the Magna Carta.
John Rawls, a Harvard professor, wrote in his seminal book, A Theory of Justice, that the purpose of The Rule of Law is to protect citizens through the regular and impartial administration of public rules. Rawls goes on to point out that "One kind of unjust action is the failure of judges and others in authority to apply the appropriate rule or to interpret it correctly." He observes that injustice does not necessarily come about by revelation of judicial crimes or corruption, but rather through "...subtle distortions of prejudice and bias as these effectively discriminate against certain groups in the judicial process."
http://www.bulletinsfromaloha.org/weekly/2008/1/1/common-law-does-not-make-common-sense.html(#40)Federal assistance to States, local jurisdictions, and Indian tribes to prosecute hate crimes -Authorizes the Attorney General to award grants to state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies for extraordinary expenses associated with the investigation and prosecution of hate crimes.
http://www.washingtonwatch.com/bills/show/111_HR_1913.html(#41)Torturing the Rule of Law
We have fallen a long way in such a short time. Rather than enforce international principles we once pioneered by prosecuting former officials who enabled torture,
our nation today violates those principles with impunity.
Torture harmed our international relations with even allies like Britain, which curtailed cooperation with the CIA because of inhumane detainee treatment. Moreover, as the U.S. Air Force Major whose interrogations found the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq has written, “Torture and abuse became Al Qaida’s number one recruiting tool and cost us American lives.” Criminal prosecution would place the arguments of Bush administration apologists in the context they deserve.
Other costs of avoiding prosecution are less concrete but equally severe. For instance, failing to prosecute, by definition,
erodes the rule of law. Law entails the consistent application of neutral principles across differing contexts. Yet our nation tolerates vast inequalities in prosecution. Between 2006 and 2007, over 320,000 Americans received prison sentences for non-violent offenses. In sharp contrast, among the senior officials responsible for authorizing torture, none have faced even a criminal investigation — let alone charges, prosecution or a sentence.
Hundreds of lawyers across the country recently
wrote the Attorney General and Congress to explain how this unequal justice undermines the legitimacy of our legal system. They wrote, “The severity of systemic disadvantages in the criminal process grows more disturbing — and the system’s legitimacy grows less secure — when violations of our nation’s most fundamental commitments carry no consequences for potential criminals who wield political influence”
http://www.constitutioncampaign.org/blog/?p=55(#42)A former Pakistani diplomat has told the BBC that the US was planning military action against Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban even before last week's attacks.
Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/1550366.stm(#43)The ex-terrorism official dazzles at the 9/11 commission hearings
http://www.slate.com/id/2097750/
