MEDIA ROOTS – As cloaks of legal strategy currently shield President Obama from investigation, criminals of the previous administration remain legally unscathed after having clearly flaunted international law.
In the United Kingdom, Australia, Canadian, Italy, and Spain, lawsuits were filed by citizens of those countries who claimed that their country worked with the U.S. to rendition them. Many settlements and pay-outs were issued by countries abroad who admitted complicity in a violation of that person’s rights. Not only were lawsuits filed outside of the U.S., but actual criminal proceedings moved forward in Spain, Italy, and the United Kingdom. However, in the U.S., no such payouts or settlements have occurred due to the continued legal shielding and censorship that has taken place.
In April 2009, Spanish courts decided to move forward with a criminal investigation of Alberto Gonzales and others who were complicit in the torture regime including John Yoo and Jay Bybee, authors of the torture memos. The case revolved around five Spanish citizens who were tortured at Guantanamo Bay. Spain made clear in public statements that they would cease their investigation immediately if the United States decided to launch an inquiry of their own. But the U.S. has no intention of doing so.
After a Wikileaks diplomatic cable leak showed that after the fact, the U.S. had issued a veiled threat of intimidation saying the investigation “would not be understood or accepted in the U.S. and would have an enormous impact on the bilateral relationship,” Spain caved and dropped the case. The Spanish government made a compromise to remain allies with the United States, not wanting any disruption in the relationship between the two nations.
In November of 2009, a court in Italy found twenty two CIA agents guilty of the 2003 kidnapping of an Italian citizen. He was sent to Egypt by the CIA, after being essentially kidnapped to be tortured by Egyptian authorities, infamously referred to as the art of ‘rendition’ aka exporting torture. One CIA agent in particular was sentenced to an eight year prison term by the Italian judges. The United States refused to extradite any of the CIA agents who were found guilty, and instead the White House expounded with “we are disappointed by the verdicts against the Americans”.. “for their alleged involvement”. Currently in Italy the subpoenas are still legally viable, so surely none of the accused CIA agents will ever be safe stepping foot into Italian territory.
In mid 2009, Binyan Mohammed of Great Britain spent six years at Guantanamo. He claims to have incurred genital mutilation among other forms of physical abuse, and was successful in appealing to a British court to hand over documents proving his claims; documents that were in the possession of UK intelligence that showed notes taken by British authorities detailing his ‘enhanced interrogations.’ Right before the British court was to publicly release a summary of the notes in question, they were threatened by the British government not to do so. It was learned later that the British government received a direct threat of sanction from the US government under Obama. The U.S. specifically told them that if the notes were released and the trial was allowed to move forward, the U.S. would withhold vital intelligence information to the UK that could harm their national security. The British judges released a statement saying, “we did not consider that a democracy governed by the rule of law would expect a court in another democracy to suppress a summary of the evidence contained in reports by its own officials or officials of another state where the evidence was relevant to allegations of torture … politically embarrassing though it might be.”
According to the Obama / Biden campaign website, they claim to have a Plan to Change Washington in which “the Bush administration has invoked a legal tool known as the ‘state secrets’ privilege more than any other administration to get cases thrown out of court.” Surprisingly, during Obama’s first years as president, his lawyers evoked the state secret privilege just as much if not more than the previous administration to get cases (mostly involving torture and law breaking under George W. Bush) thrown out of civilian and criminal courts.
Since the NSA wiretapping scandal, the only legal immunity on paper was for the private corporations that took part in it. They could not be sued due to Obama’s ‘telecom immunity‘ bill. However, this still left open the possibility that the U.S. government could still be sued for its illegal surveillance activities, so the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an online activist group, brought forward a lawsuit. The first response to the lawsuit from Obama’s lawyers amounted to a duplication of the Bush evocation of state secrets. To what can only be described as Kafka-esque circular logic, they said the entire NSA program was a vital state secret that could not be examined in a court and that no government officials could be held accountable even if the spying was knowingly illegal because they would have to willfully disclose what they know.
In reaction to Obama throwing the EFF’s lawsuit out of court, the EFF wrote “Obama’s DOJs new arguments are worse than Bush.”
Indeed, Obama’s use of the State’s Secret Privilege has not just been to continue covering up Bush crimes, but also to his own ‘bending’ of U.S. law. In September of 2010, Anwar Alwaki’s father, when he was informed that his son was due for ‘extra judicial’ assassination tried to file a lawsuit against the US government with the help of the ACLU. Obama once again evoked the states secret privilege and had the case thrown out of court on the grounds that it would “require the disclosure of highly sensitive national security information concerning alleged military and intelligence actions overseas.”
A little over a year later, Anwar Awlaki was unlawfully assassinated in a drone strike along with his 16 year old son.
Since Obama took office, two courts ruled that the NSA policy of wiretapping without a court order was illegal. When the cases gained notoriety in the press, the Obama administration evoked state secrets yet again. In one instance, the court rejected the excuse. Regardless, the Obama administration’s Justice Department refused to hand over documents in violation of a court order.
While writing this article, oral arguments were heard in Clapper v. Amnesty, a new Supreme Court case that involves the ACLU vs the U.S. government NSA program that removes the need for a court order previously required to conduct surveillance. Good news has come out of the proceedings so far, where many Justices have spoken out against the circular logic the government has used in its defense. The argument being that the ACLU and no American citizens have ‘standing’ since they cannot prove they have been the target of NSA surveillance. The inherent problem with this logic is that nobody can prove it since the government keeps it completely secret. This is the very point Justice Sotomayor raised when she interrupted Solicitor General Donald Verril by asking “General, is there anybody who has standing?”
The answer is technically no, since no one can get the government to admit its role in said surveillance even if asked to do so by a court. The case goes back into court on December 14th, and Media Roots will be in the thick of it to report on the verdict once it’s announced.
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Written by Robbie Martin for Media Roots
Photos provided by Dick Swanson, White House photographer used under public domain
MEDIA ROOTS – With eight years of scandal, contempt and two illegal ground wars deep, a strong anti-bush sentiment was pervasive among American citizens leading up to the 2008 presidential elections. During Obama’s campaign for President, he made it clear that water boarding was torture, and that Bush administration officials broke the law with their counter terrorism torture strategies.
But if there’s one thing that’s clear from the last four years, it’s that talk is cheap. And as the 2012 Presidential elections inch closer, Media Roots takes a look back at the Bush administration’s illegal torture program, its exposure to the public with the Abu Ghraib scandal and what Obama’s subsequent cover-up of Bush era war crimes did to erode the fabric of our society.
The torture program was not some US foreign policy fluke gone awry. Instead, ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ was architecture that was systematically instituted by the Bush administration at the highest levels.
The policies that the Obama administration has been under fire for can be seen as trivial when compared to the ongoing coverup of blatant war crimes by the former administration. Now that torture and war crimes have been normalized, both 2012 presidential candidates will be sure to continue the same trajectory of utter impunity for the rule of law.
ABU GHRAIB TORTURE
If US Army Staff Sergeant Sabrina Harman didn’t take any pictures while serving as a guard at Abu Ghraib prison, it’s possible that the world would have never known the extent to which our military and CIA implemented torture on a systematic level in their interrogations of suspected ‘terrorists’. The ensuing witch hunt resulted in charges pressed against only low level military personnel, which backed up the White House’s claim that they were ‘bad apples’ who went above and beyond ‘standard operating procedure.’ From the words of many who served sentences as a result of the leak, it was indeed ‘standard operating procedure’ to employ these techniques as a means of ‘softening up’ the prisoners.
As a brutal prelude to CIA interrogations, inexperienced 20-something soldiers were paired up with mostly innocent Iraqi males swept off the streets, and encouraged to do whatever they could to ‘get them to talk.’ What the Bush administration instructed the military to carry out was essentially a real life version of the Stanford Prison Experiment. The CIA would later torture these detainees, sometimes resulting in grave injury or death. The difference is that no video or photos have surfaced that depict what was in store for those detainees once they were in the custody of the CIA.
Was this violence truly, as the White House claimed, the isolated work of a few ‘bad apples’ at Abu Ghraib? Did low-level soldiers independently conspire to dehumanize and torture detained suspects in the heat of battle? Looking at all of the available information makes it nearly impossible to accept the validity of the White House’s claims. Taken together with statements and supporting legal documentation, it appears to illuminate a widespread policy of psychological and physical torture for supposed ‘intelligence gathering.’ At least two other scenarios outside of Iraq imply that it was an official policy, and the claims of ‘gitmo-izing’ other prisons also imply that Guantanamo Bay was a sort of testing ground for the implementation of these extra-legal policies.
While also conceivable that these practices were institutionalized long before the ‘War on Terror’ began, only after 9/11 were they put on paper in such vivid detail and validated by internal lawyers. It seems clear that it was never intended to be revealed to the public, but the torture memos enabled an internal military PR campaign to give the green light for allowing anything “short of killing them” (Army Reservist Lyndie England). In the end, since this is now public knowledge, the fear of potentially being detained without due process and tortured for being radically against American foreign policy (especially if you are a Muslim, or in the wrong place at the wrong time) is a realistic and valid fear that can no longer be minimized or attributed solely to anti-American paranoia.
“Torture didn’t happen in those photographs, that was humiliation, that was softening up, torture happened during interrogations, guys going into interrogation and they’re dead, and they were killed, and they died, that’s where the torture happened and we don’t have photographs of that.” (Sgt. Javal Davis)
As described by the American personnel involved, these photographs do not depict ‘torture’ per se, but rather ‘softening up’. If this kind of extreme violence and humiliation was only an orientation phase for detainees, one can only imagine the horrors that awaited them behind closed doors after they were turned over to CIA interrogators. Firsthand accounts of so-called ‘softening up’ included both physical and psychological torture. Physically, detainees were subjected to the following, among other acts: simulating sexual positions (often nude), being handcuffed to one another, being handcuffed or bound into stress positions, being bitten by dogs, being dressed in women’s undergarments, crawling and dragging their genitals along a freezing, wet concrete floor, being burned with cigarettes, repeated cold showers. Psychological stress was also increased by combining stress positions with threats: soldiers would have prisoners hold onto a set of overhead wires and instruct them to stand on a chair to the point of exhaustion. They were informed that the floor was electrified and that they would receive a deadly shock if they fell out of position. Bear in mind, this is not an exhaustive list of ‘techniques’.
“If they want us to keep him up that’s what we do, they say i want him to be awake, they say he’s dirty i want him to shower a lot.” (Specialist Megan Ambuhl)
“Did any of this seem weird to you?” (Errol Morris)
“Not when you take into account that its helping to save lives, and you see people coming in from the other side of the wire with their body parts missing, and they need to see who’s doing it so they can stop it, and these are your battle buddies.” (Specialist Megan Ambuhl)
It’s not as simple as hoping people would ‘follow orders’ to start committing torture on their own. They used the propagandistic trick of implying that you’re literally doing this for your survival and the survival of your companions so the apathy and amorality seeds are planted easily, their literal will to survive flight or flight instinct is overriding their normal moral compass.
“You could kill people off camera, you can shoot people you can blow their heads off, if it’s on camera you’re done.” (Sgt. Javal Davis)
In one horrifying case, the CIA placed a hooded individual, Manadel al-Jamadi back into his prison cell after a prolonged session of beatings. He was already deceased, and the official cause was recorded as a heart attack and many years later deemed a homicide (the investigation is still ongoing). The corpse was transferred to another room, put on ice and left for low level military personnel to deal with. A level of desensitization could be easily heard in the words of Sabrina Harman in a letter home after she took photographs of herself giving a thumbs up near the body, remarking “how fucking gross, he’s been defrosting for 24 hours.”
She was brought up on charges of evidence tampering, but they were quickly dropped, possibly because “they didn’t want to bring up the dead guy” … “they didn’t want anyone to find out they covered up a murder.”
Faced with public outrage over the leaked photos, the American government had no choice but to promise it would hold accountable those responsible for abusing detainees. The shameful fulfillment of that promise was a handful of inexperienced young soldiers becoming scapegoats and serving sentences for carrying out what overwhelmingly appears to have become standard operating procedure. Punishing soldiers at the lowest levels is the absolute minimum response possible, and was likely intended to quell public anger and outrage over the incidents while protecting the lawyers, advisers and officials higher up in the chain of command, those who deserve investigation for authorizing and encouraging these practices of systematic abuse.
“Sacrifice the little guys, thats how they cover it up.” (Sgt. Javal Davis)
GITMO TORTURE
Even before the Abu Ghraib scandal, rumors poured out of Guantanamo Bay that revealed the extreme and bizarre tactics used by the US military to ‘break down’ prisoners. British journalist Jon Ronson investigated the lengths to which US interrogators and military guards would psychologically torture prisoners via sensory deprivation and overload, e.g., opaque hoods, blackout goggles, solitary confinement boxes, and loud music repeated 24 hours a day. 60 Minutes, CBS news and the outlets later revealed that the prisoner abuses went much further than that. Coined ‘sexing-up’, Muslim prisoners were sexually humiliated by being forced to watch female personnel simulate masturbation and grope their own breasts.
In one instance red dye was placed in the underwear of a female interrogator who proceeded to rub it on the face of a detainee, claiming it was menstrual blood. Since being used as a prison camp for ‘enemy combatants,’ at least 9 fatalities have occurred at GITMO, all deemed suicides or from natural causes, reminiscent of the ‘heart attack’ suffered by Manadel al-Jamadi in Abu Ghraib. And unlike Abu Ghraib, GITMO was staffed by a dedicated group of military personnel that were more hardened, experienced and loyal to their commanding officers. They were not inexperienced enlisted privates, suddenly thrust into a foreign warzone in a makeshift prison camp, but prepared and trained to deal with their difficult environment. Nevertheless, an alarming rate of suicides happened at Gitmo, in one instance three in one day. This seasoned climate and strong esprit de corps at Gitmo would also help explain why no embarrassing leaks in the form of photographs or video have been revealed.
The practice of ‘waterboarding,’ wherein a detainee is subjected to simulated drowning, was made infamous through its use at Gitmo. It was admitted by authorities that Khalid Sheik Muhammad was water-boarded over 183 times. All of these ‘interrogations’ were videotaped by CIA personnel, though none have been made public. Do these videos only show ‘water-boarding,’ a technique already classified as torture, or do they show other horrendous acts, or possibly murder? Unfortunately there is no way of finding out, since the CIA has admitting to destroying these records, albeit with no explanation given.
A familiar story was told by former Gitmo Commander Erik Saar, who worked there during many of the interrogation sessions. He said to 60 minutes:
Echoed by Brigader General Janis Karpinski who served as overseer to prisons in Iraq who speculated that the interrogations she was shown were staged to give the appearance that everything was normal and that no abuse was regularly taking place. When a relief organization like the Red Cross made a scheduled visit to check the prison’s conditions, the environment was also artificially improved and normalized
Medical personnel who worked at Gitmo are also complicit in the cover-up of detainee abuse and torture. Glaring symptoms of physical abuse like bone fractures, internal bleeding and contusions were never explained in medical reports, nor were psychological symptoms of psychosis due to prolonged isolation and mental abuse. If the medical staff itself was helping to coverup what went on, how can we trust any of the internal reports of official causes of death for the 9 detainees who died while in US custody?
Detainees who have been released from Gitmo have also described being drugged and sedated before interrogations with unknown substances via forced injection. While this has long been banned by the US in regards to treatment of POWS, infamous “torture memo” author John Yoo wrote that drugs could be used as long as they did not inflict permanent or “profound” psychological damage. U.S. law “does not preclude any and all use of drugs,” in essence rejecting the US ban of mind altering substances on prisoners, but more likely hinting that they should be used, basically an encouragement of the practice.
Accounts like this explain a lot of the possible impetus for the CIA to destroy video of interrogations.
Jay Bybee, author of another torture memo under Bush, wrote “Certain of the techniques [that we condemn other countries for] bear some resemblance to some of the CIA interrogation techniques.” Bybee also describes in detail in his OLC memo that almost every suggestion could be directly compared to the torture regime of different dictatorships’ gulag practices.
No official internal investigations have ever been performed regarding the detainee abuse at Gitmo, probably because there isn’t any glaring and embarrassing photographic evidence of abuse taking place. Abu Ghraib was unique in the sense that the military had to do an internal investigation to save face in light of the leaked photos.
The most direct admission in the case of Gitmo comes from Susan J Crawford, the Bush appointed convening authority over military commissions at Gitmo.
“We tortured Mohammed al Qahtnai.”
“His treatment met the legal definition of torture and that’s why i did not refer the case for prosecution.”
You could dismiss the first hand account of Qahtani if one needs more evidence, but his statements hold even more impact when you take into account Susan Crawford’s admission, that they couldn’t even prosecute the guy because his torture was so extensive.
Later in 2010, two years after Bush left office, a rather candid and startling revelation was made by Colin Powell’s chief of staff Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson who asserted “many of the detainees were innocent of any substantial wrongdoing, had little intelligence value and should be immediately release.” Quickly after he signed an affidavit attesting under oath that:
“George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld covered up that hundreds of innocent men were sent to Gitmo prison camp because they feared that releasing them would harm the push for the war in Iraq and the broader war on terror.”
To add insult to injury, not only were most of the inmates at Gitmo subjected to inhuman treatment, but hundreds of them were ‘innocent’ according to a former high ranking Bush official. As of the date of the release of this article, Gitmo holds 167 prisoners.
BUSH ADMINISTRATION ADMISSION OF LAWBREAKING
Normalizing Torture, my appearance on Breaking the Set with Abby Martin
When the photos of Abu Ghraib leaked to the press, the Senate reacted by forming a public hearing committee to get to the bottom of the scandal. Bush-appointed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s appearance before the committee was the most anticipated of all, due to rumors and information that had came to light indicating that he had had a direct hand in ‘enhanced interrogations,’ AKA prisoner abuse up to and including torture.
A White House memo leaked which described the legal limits the military would have to operate under if they modified the traditional Army Field Manual on Interrogations that had been in use since before 9/11. As the highest ranking member of the US military, Rumsfeld officially authorized its implementation. On the document, in Rumsfeld’s own handwriting, he circled and enhanced the wording with vague, hinting statements such as “I stand 8-10 hours a day, why is standing limited to 4 hours?” in reference to time limits on the use of stress positions. Rumsfeld later stepped down, most would say as a result of the scandal that tarnished his reputation and effectively ended his military career (in combination with his role in the Patt Tilman death cover-up).
John Ashcroft , Attorney General at the time of White House discussions of ‘enhancing’ our interrogation techniques, said in response to the discussions “Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will judge this kindly.” He resigned not long after these enhancements were decided upon, and many say his resignation was due at least in part to his disagreement with the Bush administration for authorizing torture.
Alberto Gonzales was his replacement, and he quickly became deeply involved in the quasilegal framework that the special team of Bush-appointed lawyers, Jay Bybee, John Yoo, and Steven G. Bradbury attempted to use to shield illegal torture from the official definition of a crime. In other words, these lawyers were specifically charged with the task of creating a series of elaborate arguments as to why committing torture under specific circumstances was ‘legal’. Despite their valiant attempt, most law professors and lawyers agree that the arguments were highly flawed. John Yoo has become the public face of this scandal in part due to his de facto role as PR chief in charge of defending these memos on television and at conferences. In one instance he was asked:
Cassel: “If the President deems that he’s got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no law that can stop him?”
Yoo: “No treaty…”
Cassel: “Also no law by Congress — that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo…”
Yoo: “I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.”
While Cassel’s vivid example is not directly from the text of the torture memos, several sections of those same arguments imply that psychologically torturing someone by feigning the rape or death of a family member or friend to gain intelligence was within the law since it did not produce ‘prolonged mental harm’. The focus of much of these memos is on creating arguments for redefining extant terms, e.g., ‘prolonged pain’, which falls under the definition of torture in American law, applied only to pain that lasted months and years, rather than days or weeks. Under these newly defined terms, the now-notorious practice of simulated drowning, better known as ‘water-boarding,’ creates no prolonged physical or mental harm because the subject ‘will experience relief as soon as the process stops,’ even though the repeated triggering of one’s fight or flight instinct can cause psychosis or other severe mental impairment.
The memos themselves are legally very flimsy, and if they were ever used by the government to defend their use of practices water-boarding or sexual abuse there isn’t much chance that wouldn’t be convince a court of law. However, as time went on it become very clear that no cases would actually be heard, and that these memos would be never used by a government defendant. This is because none of the cases have proceeded to trial, usually blocked by the government’s claim that it would compromise national security. The government maintains that releasing classified evidence in order to conduct a thorough investigation and trial would put us in danger. We need to protect them from litigation for our own safety and ensured success in the ongoing War on Terror.
These memos were not created in a vacuum, but rather they were assignments from the highest level Bush White House officials. Based on the evidence that is now public, Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice, Cheney, Ashcroft, CIA director George Tenant and Paul Wolfowitz incepted this policy of enhanced interrogation. From there, it was passed on to lawyers who examined each suggestion and provided the legal jargon deliberately aimed at justifying each practice, one by one. The Bush White House wanted and needed a legal shield, on paper and argued by lawyers, to get away with the crimes that he knew he and his administration had committed.
Long after Bush left office, he openly admitted“Yeah, we water-boarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,” and when asked if he would do it again, responded, “Damn right.” “I’d do it again to save lives.”
Around the same time period, a pale and gaunt Dick Cheney said in reference to the torture memos and the policy “I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared.” Clearly the former President and VP were admitting their actions with impunity, unafraid of any future repercussions.
But rational voices came out in the form of two of the highest-ranking US government officials, now retired, who admitted on national television that they had indeed committed a felony by authorizing the use of water-boarding when they were well aware that it had been previously defined as torture and made illegal by the US government. Antonio Taguba, the retired 4 star General appointed to formally investigate the abuse at Abu Ghraib, stated that “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” and that “the only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”
To most civil libertarians, it seemed like quite a risk to admit such a crime had occurred, and so publicly, even so long after the event. Still, as years passed with no progress, it became clear that neither Bush, nor Cheney, nor Rumsfeld, nor any other upper echelon official would ever face an investigation or criminal charges for their role in a systematic torture regime, regardless of how much they openly mocked the rule of law on the news with their criminal admissions.
As the Bush administration did not seem concerned about the statements of Antonio Taguba or others, they remained equally unfazed by the new Obama-led administration arriving into office on campaign promises of substantive investigations and repeated condemnations of the former for violating the rule of law and the US constitution.
OBAMA’S IMMUNIZATION OF TORTURERS AND BUSH POLICY MAKERS
One of Obama’s most powerful campaign messages in 2008 was that he felt that the Bush administration systematically broke the law in regard to not only torture but also NSA wiretapping. Quotes from his 2008 campaign include:
“No more ignoring the law when it’s inconvenient that is not who we are”…”We will again set an example for the world that the law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers, and that justice is not arbitrary.” (August 1, 2007, CSPAN)
Obama did not shy away from referring to water-boarding as torture during his campaign speeches, and directly implied that an institutionalized torture regime took shape on Bush’s watch. Progressives were disappointed by Obama’s overall lukewarm anti-war message, wherein he objected to the Iraq war only on the grounds that it had been waged as a ‘dumb war’ but did not fundamentally challenge the ‘War on Terror.’ In spite of this, his stance against the lawless rhetoric of Bush gave many hope and excitement that he would investigate the Bush crimes in a substantial way. It logical to assume that a constitutional law professor would carry over into his presidency some of those principles.
As soon as Obama was elected, his message about Bush’s law breaking softened, and in various interviews when asked about his campaign message he responded with quotes like:
“What I would want to do is to have my justice department and my attorney general immediately review the information that’s already there and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued…”
“I would want to find out directly from my attorney general having pursued having looked at what’s out there right now – are there possibilities of genuine crimes?”
“If crimes have been committed they should be investigated if i found out that there were high officials who knowingly consciously broke the laws engaged in cover-ups of crimes with knowledge.” (April 2008, in response to Will Bunch for The Philly)
Constitutional experts and civil liberties activists were encouraged by this message because illegal water-boarding inarguably constitutes torture, and high level officials like Cheney had admitted to ordering the practice. Legally, a president is not supposed to decide the outcome of a trial or investigation, so someone well versed in the law would know that this is as far as the president can go in condemnations without taking action to initiate an investigation. Obama’s Attorney General Erik Holder made even stronger statements to this end. Having the head of the justice department echo the need for an investigation likely alarmed many of Obama’s handlers, as well as the neoconservatives in the Bush administration, while simultaneously exciting civil libertarians all over the country.
“Unfortunately in the last few years we have quite frankly lost our way with respect to the this commitment to the constitution and to the rule of law.” …. “Our government authorized the use of torture … secretly detained American citizens without due process of law denied the writ of habeas corpus to hundreds of accused enemy combatants and authorized the use of procedures that both violate international law and the united states constitution.” (June 2008 in a speech to the American Constitution Society)
Nine days before Obama’s inauguration, the New York Times published an article titled Obama reluctant to look into Bush programs and from thereon Obama was not inclined to pursue these matters upon which he had campaigned.
“Will you appoint a Special Prosecutor — ideally Patrick Fitzgerald — to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush Administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping?”
Evidently, most of the people who voted on issues at Change.gov felt that investigating Bush’s blatant lawbreaking was the most important issue. This was Obama’s response:
“We’re going to be looking at past practices, and I don’t believe that anybody is above the law… On the other hand, I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards, and part of my job is to make sure that, for example, at the CIA you’ve got extraordinarily talented people who are working very hard to keep Americans safe, I don’t want them suddenly feel like they’ve got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders and lawyering up.”
Carefully wording his next statements, he continued with:
“[It] doesn’t mean if somebody has blatantly broke the law that they are above the law…” “…My instinct is for us to focus on how do we make sure that moving forward we are doing the right thing” … “My orientation’s going to be to move forward.”
The best case scenario is that somewhere along the line Obama decided, perhaps based on internal pressure, not to investigate the blatant lawbreaking because of the political fallout that it would cause. Or, a more sinister scenario that implies a more direct continuity that defies democracy itself. Blanket immunity between an administration that committed war crimes regularly and one that promised, during its campaign to punish people who thought torture memos written by lawyers would shield them from the law.
Defying the course of events this far into Obama’s presidency, he declassified OLC (Presidential Office of Legal Counsel) torture memos in April 16th 2009 in response to an FOIA request. The release of these four memos reignited the debates in America over whether or not Obama should prosecute the Bush torture crimes. Perhaps the timing of this release produced an opportunity to reinforce the oft-repeated talking point that “we need to look forward, not backward.’ Investigations are defined by a critical ‘look backward’ to determine whether or not a crime was committed, and by whom. Crimes that are not punished must be considered more, and not less likely to occur again. ‘Looking forward’ without investigation into past actions acts as if no crimes were committed at all. To do this, the Obama administration attempted to sidestep the black mark on our history that the Bush torture crimes had left.
Upon the release of the OLC memos, Obama reiterated this ‘look forward, not backward’ mantra in this speech:
“This is a time for reflection not retribution At a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying the the blame for the past. Our national greatness is embedded in Americas ability to right its course in concert with the our core values and to move forward with confidence. That is why we must resist the forces that divide us, and instead come together on behalf of our common future.”
It seemed as if Obama was directly challenging previous statements by Eric Holder. Any chance of America getting its sought after ‘reckoning’ evaporate as the final words of Obama’s speech were uttered.
It was in August 2009 that Erik Holder was to deliver the final verdict on who would be investigated and how high up the chain it would go. He had already cut a deal with a prominent senate Republican (and probably by proxy the Republican establishment) wherein he promised not to investigate any high level officials in the Bush administration. His first historically important act as Attorney General was to make a speech echoing the ‘look forward, not backward’ rhetoric of Obama. In the end, the only red meat he could offer the American pubic was in the form of 12 open investigations (now closed leaving only two remaining open) targeting low ranking military personnel who had physically carried out the torture. To this day, only insignificant people were brought to justice, and those responsible at the highest level escaped scrutiny and punishment.
This is moment in time when the narrative, the propaganda, and the marketing that got Obama into office needed to shift. It had served its purpose and was no longer useful to drum up anti-Bush sentiment. It was time to change to a new narrative, one that would under the cover of state secrets and prosecution of whistleblowers would serve the Bush neoconservative legacy. While it would be fun to imagine Bush and Cheney in hand cuffs and orange jump suits, they shared a goal with the new administration: how to maintain continuity for the escalating military moneymaker that is ‘War on Terror.’ Obama’s promise of ‘transparency of government’ was craftily extinguished, as this new and nebulous war was re-branded and continued under a new cloak of secrecy.
Obama is now complicit in war crimes by covering them up. In 1988 Reagan had signed into law the convention against torture, which was ratified in the senate in 1994. This US law states that knowledge of torture taking place, in the past or in the present, and refusing to investigate it is a crime unto itself and can be prosecuted. This is Obama’s law and the normalization of neoconservatism. In the next installment, we will discuss how his war on whistleblowers and continued blocking of court proceedings has used the states secret privilege to erode our rights even further.
MEDIA ROOTS – Recently, I had the honor of going on the Joe Rogan Experience, a popular podcast hosted by comedian and TV show host, Joe Rogan. Although I was a little nervous before going on the show, I was eased by the dope art decorating the studio–especially the naked mannequins sporting Boba Fet heads.
Congressional candidate and activist, David Seaman, along with his campaign manager, Dell Cameron, joined me for a three hour conversation with Redban and Joe Rogan about everything from US politics to space exploration, including discussion about the NDAA, media activism, drone wars, the two-party system and Prometheus.
If you know me in real life you know I swear like a sailor, so don’t be alarmed at the language used during the broadcast.
“I don’t ‘support Obama.’” Ellsberg clarified in an opinion article last Thursday. “I oppose the current Republican Party.” Echoing the recent words of Professor Noam Chomsky, he adds, “if I were a person in a swing state, I’d vote against Romney/Ryan, which means voting for Obama because there’s no other choice.” While this may have been sound advice of yesteryear, today this is simply forfeiture to the modern political duopoly funded by nearly identical corporate entities.
Ellsberg then continues to preach that “the only way for progressives and Democrats to block Romney from office, at this date, is to persuade enough people in swing states to vote for Obama.” While also ironic, this statement is alienating to all progressives who do not consider themselves Democrat. For instance, the majority of those whom continue to support Dr. Ron Paul would likely consider themselves progressives for the congressman’s continued stance against undeclared wars and the unconstitutional Federal Reserve Bank. And as President Obama continues to escalate Bush-era policy, it is puzzling to understand how his administration could be considered progressive in the first place.
To further discourage third-party voters, Ellsberg specifically calls out those in swing states that might be considering a vote for anyone but Obama or Romney. He considers it absurd for anyone residing in these states to think that there’s no difference between the two primary candidates and that this line of thinking is “crazily divorced from present reality.” A third-party vote in a swing state, he contends, is “complicit in facilitating the election of Romney and Ryan.” Ellsberg neglects to recognize that third-party votes in these very battleground states would actually underscore America’s current appetite for new political leadership in this country.
Sometimes things must get worse before they can get better.
The Ellsberg article closes with a reference to one of America’s greatest resisters, Henry David Thoreau. While voting is itself an action, engagement in the electoral process – from private discussion to public outreach – is ultimately of more influence. So when Mr. Ellsberg could have used his influence to publicly support the third-party candidate that he’s voting for, he instead published an item that merely continues to feed into the establishment’s two-party system for continued war, continued unlawful detentions, and continued criminal conduct.
If Governor Romney does end up switching titles, perhaps then America will witness the antiwar movement awaken from its current slumber or, at least, an Occupy Wall Street renaissance. Possibly then those whom already see through the two-party charade could start to make an impression on yesterday’s thinkers while inspiring tomorrow’s leaders. But what is certain is that only when the two-party paradigm is shattered will America witness the dawn of a new political landscape.
MEDIA ROOTS – With the second of three presidential debates now over, democracy continues to be victimized by the campaigns of establishment candidates referred to colloquially as “Obamney” or “Robama.” However, viewers of corporate media would not understand this for throughout the coverage, very little was reported on events occurring just outside the spectacle.
Since the historic Kennedy-Nixon debate of 1960, televised presidential debates have been a primary tool for American voters to learn about candidates for office. Over 70 million Americans tuned-in for that first televised debate as well as last night’s orchestrated charade. But while it is widely agreed that Kennedy won the debates because of his favorable on-camera presence, the winner of last night’s debates was more nebulous. For never have these televised debates featured more than the two major candidates nor have additional voices ever been needed more in a presidential election.
Yesterday Dr. Jill Stein and her running-mate, Cheri Honkala, attempted to alter the two-party paradigm by attending the debates without “credentials.” They were promptly arrested after not refusing to leave only to be later released, without charge, shortly after the debates concluded. “We think [the Commission on Presidential Debates] is entirely illegitimate,” Dr. Stein mentioned just prior to their arrest. The physician, author, teacher, and mother continued “that if democracy truly prevailed there would be no such commission, that the debates would still be run by the League of Women Voters, that the debates would be open.”
– “The candidates may not ask each other direct questions during any of the four debates.”
– “The candidates shall not address each other with proposed pledges.”
– “At no time during the October 3 First Presidential debate shall either candidate move from his designated area behind the respective podium.”
– For the October 16 town-hall-style debate, “the moderator will not ask follow-up questions or comment on either the questions asked by the audience or the answers of the candidates during the debate….”
– “The audience members shall not ask follow-up questions or otherwise participate in the extended discussion, and the audience member’s microphone shall be turned off after he or she completes asking the questions.”
– “[T]he Commission shall take appropriate steps to cut-off the microphone of any…audience member who attempts to pose any question or statement different than that previously posed to the moderator for review.”
– “No candidate may reference or cite any specific individual sitting in a debate audience (other than family members) at any time during a debate.”
– For the town-hall debate: “Each candidate may move about in a pre-designated area, as proposed by the Commission and approved by each campaign, and may not leave that area while the debate is underway.”
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Photo provided by Flickr user Daquella manera.
Dr. Jill Stein and Cheri Honkala, surrounded by law enforcement officers,
explain to the American people yesterday how the presidential debates are illegitimate and
offers insight into what an appropriate presidential debate would look like.
MEDIA ROOTS – As cloaks of legal strategy currently shield President Obama from investigation, criminals of the previous administration remain legally unscathed after having clearly flaunted international law.
MEDIA ROOTS – With eight years of scandal, contempt and two illegal ground wars deep, a strong anti-bush sentiment was pervasive among American citizens leading up to the 2008 presidential elections. During Obama’s campaign for President, he made it clear that water boarding was torture, and that Bush administration officials broke the law with their counter terrorism torture strategies.
MEDIA ROOTS – Recently, I had the honor of going on the 
MEDIA ROOTS – Daniel Ellsberg is 
MEDIA ROOTS – With the second of three presidential debates now over, democracy continues to be victimized by the campaigns of establishment candidates referred to colloquially as 