Obama Advisers Say No Charges Against Those Who Authorized Torture

Posted on April 8, 2010 by abby

TRUTHOUT– Barack Obama’s incoming administration is unlikely to bring criminal charges against government officials who authorized or engaged in harsh interrogations of suspected terrorists during the George W. Bush presidency. Obama, who has criticized the use of torture, is being urged by some constitutional scholars and human rights groups to investigate possible war crimes by the Bush administration.

Two Obama advisers said there’s little – if any – chance that the incoming president’s Justice Department will go after anyone involved in authorizing or carrying out interrogations that provoked worldwide outrage.

The advisers spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans are still tentative. A spokesman for Obama’s transition team did not respond to requests for comment Monday.

Additionally, the question of whether to prosecute may never become an issue if Bush issues pre-emptive pardons to protect those involved.

Obama has committed to reviewing interrogations on al-Qaida and other terror suspects. After he takes office in January, Obama is expected to create a panel modeled after the 9/11 Commission to study interrogations, including those using waterboarding and other tactics that critics call torture. The panel’s findings would be used to ensure that future interrogations are undisputedly legal.

“I have said repeatedly that America doesn’t torture, and I’m going to make sure that we don’t torture,” Obama said Sunday on CBS’ “60 Minutes.” “Those are part and parcel of an effort to regain America’s moral stature in the world.”

Obama’s most ardent supporters are split on whether he should prosecute Bush officials.

Asked this weekend during a Vermont Public Radio interview if Bush administration officials would face war crimes, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy flatly said, “In the United States, no.”

“These things are not going to happen,” said Leahy, D-Vt.

Robert Litt, a former top Clinton administration Justice Department prosecutor, said Obama should focus on moving forward with anti-torture policy instead of looking back.

“Both for policy and political reasons, it would not be beneficial to spend a lot of time hauling people up before Congress or before grand juries and going over what went on,” Litt said at a Brookings Institution discussion about Obama’s legal policy. “To as great of an extent we can say, the last eight years are over, now we can move forward – that would be beneficial both to the country and the president, politically.”

But Michael Ratner, a professor at Columbia Law School and president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said prosecuting Bush officials is necessary to set future anti-torture policy.

“The only way to prevent this from happening again is to make sure that those who were responsible for the torture program pay the price for it,” Ratner said. “I don’t see how we regain our moral stature by allowing those who were intimately involved in the torture programs to simply walk off the stage and lead lives where they are not held accountable.”

In the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, the White House authorized U.S. interrogators to use harsh tactics on captured al-Qaida and Taliban suspects. Bush officials relied on a 2002 Justice Department legal memo to assert that its interrogations did not amount to torture – and therefore did not violate U.S. or international laws. That memo has since been rescinded.

At least three top al-Qaida operatives – including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed – were waterboarded in 2002 and 2003 because of intelligence officials’ belief that more attacks were imminent. Waterboarding creates the sensation of drowning, and has been traced back hundreds of years and is condemned by nations worldwide.

Bush could take the issue of criminal charges off the table with one stroke of his pardons pen. Whether Bush will protect his top aides and interrogators with a pre-emptive pardon – before they are ever charged – has become a hot topic of discussion in legal and political circles in the administration’s waning days. White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto declined to comment on the issue.

Under the Constitution, the president’s power to issue pardons is absolute and cannot be overruled.

Pre-emptive pardons would be highly controversial, but former White House counsel Arthur B. Culvahouse Jr. said it would protect those who were following orders or otherwise trying to protect the nation.

“I know of no one who acted in reckless disregard of U.S. law or international law,” said Culvahouse, who served under President Ronald Reagan. “It’s just not good for the intelligence community and the defense community to have people in the field, under exigent circumstances, being told these are the rules, to be exposed months and years after the fact to criminal prosecution.”

The Federalist Papers discourage presidents from pardoning themselves. It took former President Gerald Ford to clear former President Richard Nixon of wrongdoing in the 1972 Watergate break-in.

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Obama Signs Patriot Act Extension

Posted on April 6, 2010 by abby

FOX NEWS– President Barack Obama has signed a one-year extension of several provisions in the nation’s main counterterrorism law, the Patriot Act.

Provisions in the measure would have expired on Sunday without Obama’s signature Saturday.

The act, which was adopted in the weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, expands the government’s ability to monitor Americans in the name of national security.

Three sections of the Patriot Act that stay in force will:

–Authorize court-approved roving wiretaps that permit surveillance on multiple phones.

–Allow court-approved seizure of records and property in anti-terrorism operations.

–Permit surveillance against a so-called lone wolf, a non-U.S. citizen engaged in terrorism who may not be part of a recognized terrorist group.

Obama’s signature comes after the House voted 315 to 97 Thursday to extend the measure.

The Senate also approved the measure, with privacy protections cast aside when Senate Democrats lacked the necessary 60-vote supermajority to pass them. Thrown away were restrictions and greater scrutiny on the government’s authority to spy on Americans and seize their records.

Photo by D.C. Atty, flickr

It’s Obama’s War Now

Posted on April 3, 2010 by abby

COUNTERPUNCH– There are now at present some 68,000 U.S. troops and 42,000 allied forces occupying Afghanistan, in league with the Northern Alliance warlords and the corrupt and feeble Karzai regime in Kabul. President Obama clearly wishes to increase the figure and will announce before an audience of West Point cadets Tuesday that he will add over 30,000 more while pushing the Europeans to add 10,000. This will bring the total number of occupation forces to around the level of the Soviet deployment at its peak in the 1980s.

The Soviets were trying to protect the secular government in Afghanistan and to discourage Islamic fundamentalism, a potential threat to the neighboring Soviet Central Asian republics such as Uzbekistan. What is Obama trying to do?

Because make no mistake about it, this is Barack Obama’s war now. With this announcement he will have personally increased the force in Afghanistan by over 50,000 troops in response to appeals from his generals.

Obama’s mantra about the conflict in Afghanistan is that it is a “war of necessity.” But this is really just a version of the neocon “War on Terror” trope, which is to say that it implies that it is the natural, reasonable retaliatory response to the 9-11 attacks. (They started it, after all, so we have to take the war to them.)

But neocon strategy has always required the simplistic conflation of disparate phenomena, and the exploitation of public ignorance and fear, in the execution of policy. Who are they, after all? The invasion of Iraq required the Big Lie that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9-11. The earlier invasion of Afghanistan required the clever sleight-of-hand by which the mainly Saudi Arab but international al-Qaeda was equated with the purely Afghan Taliban. “We don’t distinguish between terrorists and the governments that support them,” Bush declared.

This was almost a boast that the U.S. would be boldly ignorant as a matter of public policy, and a warning to the empirical rationalists of the world that the White House was in the grip of truly simplistic minds and would indeed shamelessly exploit popular Islamophobia as they pleased even as they made elaborate public gestures in support of religious tolerance. (The calculated message was: Be scared, world, because we’ve got cowboys in power, and hell, we can get kinda crazy when we’re pissed!)

The fact is, there was and is a difference between al-Qaeda, an international jihadist organization that wants to reestablish a global Caliphate and confront the U.S., and the Taliban, which wanted to stabilize Afghanistan under a harsh interpretation of the Sharia but maintain a working relationship with the U.S. And now, eight years after being toppled, the Taliban are back with a vengeance, demonstrating that they have a real social base. Moreover a Pakistani Taliban has emerged across the border as a direct consequence of the U.S. invasion.

Any number of intelligence reports have pointed out the obvious: more troops just breed more “insurgency.”

Obama’s national security advisor, Gen. James Jones, has stated clearly, “The Al Qaeda presence [in Afghanistan] is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies.” If there had been a “necessity” to destroy al-Qaeda in Afghanistan that matter has been taken care of. What does Obama think necessary to achieve now?

I imagine he will argue that the Taliban must not be allowed to return to power. But doesn’t that mean implicitly acknowledging that they have genuine roots in Afghan, particularly Pashtun society? The best military estimates put the number of Taliban militants at no more than 25,000, with fully-armed fighters around 3,000. There are about 100,000 soldiers in the Afghan National Army (ANA) in addition to all the foreign occupying troops. ANA forces are often described as of “poor quality,” meaning they are illiterate, and mainly attracted by the money. But the Talibs are also generally illiterate and many of them fight largely for the pay as well. Why is it whole provinces like Nuristan have come under Taliban control despite all the counterinsurgency manpower?

Why in attempting to “secure” Helmand province in an anti-Taliban offensive over the summer did the U.S. forces discover that their ANA allies included almost no Pashtuns but were disproportionately Tajiks? Why were U.S. forces unable to dislodge the Taliban from Marjeh, a city of about 50,000 people and hub of the opium trade?

The problem isn’t too few forces. Were that the case the increasing number of forces over the last several years would have produced a better, not worse, security situation. The problem is the premise that imperialists can re-colonize a country under the pretense of counter-terrorism, counter-insurgency or liberation in the face of mass resistance.

Continue reading about Obama’s War.

Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch’s merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades. He can be reached at: [email protected]

Is Obama’s Civil Liberties Record Understandable?

Posted on April 2, 2010 by abby

November 27. 2009

SALON– Earlier this week, Kevin Drum said that “nine times out of ten” Obama’s policies are “pretty much what [he] expected” but that “the biggest one-time-out-of-ten where he’s not doing what [he] expected is in the area of detainee and civil liberties issues.” Similarly, Andrew Sullivan cited “accountability for war crimes and civil rights” as among the very few issues on which he finds fault with Obama. Matt Yglesias objects to those observations as follows:

Both Kevin Drum and Andrew Sullivan say they think most people are too hard on Obama, but express disappointment at his record on civil liberties issues. I agree that the civil liberties record hasn’t been exactly what I would have wanted, but I’m continually surprised that people are disappointed in this turn. Of all the things for an incumbent President of the United States to take political risks fighting for, obviously reducing the power of the executive branch is going to be dead last on the list. If you want to see civil liberties championed, that’s going to have to come from congress.

It’s interesting how what was once lambasted as “Constitution-shredding” under George Bush is now nothing more than: Obama’s “civil liberties record hasn’t been exactly what I would have wanted.” Also, the premise implicitly embedded in Matt’s argument is the standard Beltway dogma that there would be serious political costs from reversing the Bush/Cheney abuses of the Constitution and civil liberties. The success of Obama’s campaign — which emphatically and repeatedly vowed to do exactly that — ought to have permanently retired that excuse.

Key Members of Obama’s Aministration

Posted on March 30, 2010 by abby

RTE NEWS– Here are people Barack Obama has chosen for key posts in his administration after he takes office on 20 January.

Secretary of State– New York Senator Hillary Clinton, Mr Obama’s former Democratic Party rival for the White House, was named to the top diplomatic post. The move is seen as part of Mr Obama’s effort to rebuild the country’s reputation abroad. Aides have said Mr Obama admires Ms Clinton’s work ethic and also believes the former first lady’s star power would boost his vision of improving the country’s global standing.

Secretary of Defense- Current Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, named by President George W Bush in late 2006, is considered a moderate voice on the Republican’s national security team and embodies an important signal of continuity. Mr Obama had said early on he would include Republicans in his Cabinet and the 65-year-old Mr Gates has been lauded by members of both parties since taking over the Pentagon from Donald Rumsfeld.

Treasury Secretary- Timothy Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, is Mr Obama’s choice for the Treasury Department, making him Mr Obama’s point person in dealing with the economic crisis. Mr Geithner has helped lead efforts to stabilize financial markets and argued that banks crucial to the global financial system should operate under a unified regulatory framework.

Homeland Security- Janet Napolitano, the Democratic Governor of Arizona, was named to head the US Homeland Security Department, a sprawling agency formed to bolster civil defence following the 11 September attacks.

National Economic Council- Lawrence Summers, 53, has been chosen to head the council. He was treasury secretary for the final 1-1/2 years of the Clinton Administration and has been a senior adviser to Mr Obama for several months, helping to guide his response to the financial meltdown.

National Security Advisor- Retired Marine General James Jones, the former top operational commander of NATO, was named by Mr Obama to be his national security adviser. Mr Jones is widely respected by both Democrats and Republicans and has avoided aligning himself with either party but is known to have been a strong critic of the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq war.

CIA Director- Former Clinton White House chief of staff Leon Panetta has received the nod to head the CIA. Mr Panetta, best known for imposing order on President Bill Clinton’s White House during his 1994-1997 stint as chief of staff, has relatively little experience in national security matters. But his choice could appease some liberal activists who have said that Mr Obama’s other picks for key national-security posts are too hawkish.

Attorney General- Eric Holder, a former Justice Department official in the Clinton Administration, will run the Justice Department. Mr Holder has been a senior legal adviser to Mr Obama’s campaign and helped vet his vice presidential candidates.

Secretary of Energy- Steven Chu, director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who shared the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics, is Mr Obama’s choice for secretary of energy. Mr Chu was an early advocate for finding scientific solutions to climate change and guided the Lawrence Berkeley laboratory to become the world leader in alternative and renewable energy research.

Secretary of Interior- Senator Ken Salazar of Colorado, who once practiced as an environmental lawyer, was named to head the Interior Department. The son of Americans of Mexican descent, he will be a key member of Mr Obama’s energy team who would oversee the leasing of federal lands for oil and gas drilling.

Energy, Environment Coordinator- Carol Browner, the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton Administration, was named to a new position coordinating White House policy on energy, climate and environmental issues. The new position was expected to spearhead climate change policy.

Secretary of Health and Human Services- Tom Daschle, a key early supporter and savvy former US Senate leader, was selected by Mr Obama as Secretary of Health and Human Services. The high-profile selection signals that the push to extend health coverage to the 46 million uninsured Americans will be a high priority for Mr Obama.

Secretary of Education- Arne Duncan, head of the Chicago public school system, is Mr Obama’s pick for Secretary of Education. Mr Duncan, a fellow Harvard graduate and long-time friend of Mr Obama’s, has earned a strong reputation at the helm of the country’s third-largest public school district, tackling problems including teacher quality and failing schools.

Secretary of Agriculture- Tom Vilsack, a former governor from the major US farm state Iowa, is Mr Obama’s choice to be agriculture secretary. Mr Vilsack backs tighter farm subsidy rules and new-generation biofuels. One of his major issues as governor was bringing more high-tech agribusiness to Iowa.

Secretary of Transportation- Representative Ray LaHood, a Republican, has been offered the job of transportation secretary. Mr LaHood hails from Mr Obama’s home state of Illinois and is said to have a rapport with the president-elect.

Securities and Exchange Commission- Mary Schapiro, a veteran financial market regulator, is Mr Obama’s pick to head the Securities and Exchange Commission. Ms Schapiro currently leads the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, the largest nongovernmental regulator for all securities firms doing business with the US public. She is a former SEC commissioner and former chairwoman of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Secretary of Labor- California Democratic Representative Hilda Solis, 51, has been chosen to lead the Department of Labor. Ms Solis, who represents a Southern California district made up largely of Hispanic and Asian voters, is among the most liberal members of the US House of Representatives and has taken a lead on both environmental and labour issues.

US Trade Representative- Former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk has been selected to be US trade representative. Mr Kirk, a partner at the Houston-based law firm of Vinson and Elkins, is little known in Washington trade circles and became Mr Obama’s pick after his first choice, Representative Xavier Becerra, a California Democrat and member of the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee, turned down the job.

Director of National Intelligence– Retired Navy Admiral Dennis Blair is Mr Obama’s choice to be the top US intelligence official. As director of national intelligence, Mr Blair would oversee the entire US intelligence apparatus and be responsible for delivering Mr Obama’s daily intelligence briefing. His nomination would keep an experienced military leader in the post. Mr Blair is a four-star admiral and former top US military commander in the Pacific region.

Photo by flickr user Ethan

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