The ‘worst of the worst’ wear business suits
The “worst of the worst” wear tailored business suits, hold press briefings, and say things like, “Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: The United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms.” (Obama in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech.) Don’t you just love the fake humility of “Whatever mistakes we have made…”? So the Vietnam War was just a mistake, was it? I thought it was a reward from President Lyndon Johnson to his cronies in the military-industrial complex.
Uncle Sam’s hypocrisy rises to new heights
From the Manawatu Standard of July 13, 2012. The cartoonist is Malcolm Evans.
Hillary Clinton: The voice of American hypocrisy
Cartoon by Malcolm Evans from the Manawatu Standard of May 13, 2011. Of course, if you accept that there is one law for the United States and another law for everyone else (which is the premise of American exceptionalism), there is nothing inconsistent here.
The catastrophe of ‘liberated’ Iraq
Cartoon from The Dominion Post of October 27, 2010.
Word
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Scam email tells of ‘torture’ in Iraq
Note how the writer of the following scam email, which I received today, makes it sound more “authentic” by saying the captured terrorists were tortured:
Attn;
I am Captain Steve Marthins from the hospitality state (Mississippi), of the US Marine Force on Monitoring and Peace–keeping mission in Baghdad-Iraq.
On the 21st day of December 2008, we were alerted on the sudden presence of some Terrorists camping in a suburb not too far from Karbala here in Iraq. After Immediate intervention, we captured three (3) of the Terrorists, twenty-six (26) were killed leaving seven (7) injured.
In the process of torture they confessed being rebels for late Ayman al-Zawahiri and took us to a cave in Karbala which served as their camp. Here we recovered several guns, bombs and other Ammunitions including some boxes among which two contains clearweapons, one filled with hard drugs (cocaine) and the other four to my amazement contain some US Dollars amounting to $23.2M after I and two of my junior intelligent officers counted them.
I however instructed them to keep this in high secrecy.
I am in keen need of a “Reliable and Trustworthy” person like you who would receive, secure and protect these boxes containing the US Dollars for me up on till my assignment elapses in here in Iraq.
I assure and promise to give you 15% of this fund, however feel free to negotiate what you wish to have as your percentage in this business.
Please assure me of your keeping this topmost secret to protect my job with the US Monitoring and Pe ace-Keeping mission. contact me through my personal e-mail; captstevemarthins@gmail.com
Please for the confidentiality of this deal
Kind Regards,
Capt. Steve Marthins
Waterboarding cartoon
From the Manawatu Standard, Palmerston North, New Zealand, May 26, 2009
Barack Obama, Torture Enabler
By Ted Rall. Published on April 10, 2009, by Ted Rall.com
America is a nation of laws — laws enforced by Spain.
John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, William Haynes and Douglas Feith wrote, authorized and promulgated the Justice Department “torture memos” that the Bush Administration used for legal cover. After World War II, German lawyers for the Ministry of Justice went to prison for similar actions.
We’ve known about Yoo et al.’s crimes for years. Yet — unlike their victims — they’re free as birds, fluttering around, writing op/ed columns … and teaching. At law school!
Obama has failed to match changes of tone with changes in substance on the issue of Bush’s war crimes. “We need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards,” he answered when asked whether he would investigate America’s worst human rights abuses since World War II. Indeed, there’s no evidence that Obama’s Justice Department plans to lift a finger to hold Bush or his henchmen accountable.
“They should arrest Obama for trying to impersonate a President,” one wag commented on The San Francisco Chronicle’s website.
Fortunately for those who care about U.S. law, there are Spanish prosecutors willing to do their job. Baltasar Garzón, the crusading prosecutor who went after General Augusto Pinochet in the ’90s, will likely subpoena the Dirty Half Dozen within the next few weeks. “It would have been impossible to structure a legal framework that supported what happened [in Guantánamo]” without Gonzales and his pals,” argues the criminal complaint filed in Madrid.
When the six miscreants ignore their court dates (as they surely will), Spain will issue international arrest warrants enforceable in the 25 countries that are party to European extradition treaties. All hail King Juan Carlos I!
Which brings us to a leaked report by the Red Cross, famous for its traditional reticence to confront governments. Which means that physicians are enjoined to do no harm. Doctors are prohibited by their ethical code of conduct from attending, much less participating in, torture. (What does this have to do with Bush’s lawyers? Hold on. I’m getting there.)
The Red Cross found that CIA doctors, nurses and/or paramedics “monitored prisoners undergoing waterboarding, apparently to make sure they did not drown. Medical workers were also present when guards confined prisoners in small boxes, shackled their arms to the ceiling, kept them in frigid cells and slammed them repeatedly into walls,” reports The New York Times.
“Even if the medical worker’s intentions had been to prevent death or permanent injury,” the report said, they would have violated medical ethics. But they weren’t there to protect anyone but the CIA. They even “condoned and participated in ill treatment … [giving] instructions to interrogators to continue, to adjust or to stop particular methods.” Charming.
Since 1945, at least 70 doctors around the world have been prosecuted for participating in torture. But not Bush’s CIA torture facilitators. Not by this president. Asked to comment on the Red Cross report, a spokesman for CIA director Leon Panetta replied that Panetta “has stated repeatedly that no one who took actions based on legal guidance from the Department of Justice at the time should be investigated, let alone punished.” (There’s the lawyer connection.)
Which is similar to what Obama said about the torturers: “At the CIA, you’ve got extraordinarily talented people who are working very hard to keep Americans safe. I don’t want them to suddenly feel like they’ve got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders and lawyering up.” Don’t you just hate being micromanaged when you’re torturing people?
Ah, the great shell game of American justice. You can’t prosecute the torturers because their lawyers advised them that torture was OK. You can’t prosecute the lawyers because all they did was theorize–they didn’t torture anyone. You can’t prosecute the president and vice president who ordered the torture because they have “executive privilege” and, anyway, who would put a head of state on trial? What is this, Peru?
What’s the flip side of a victimless crime? A perpless crime?
It’s a neat circle, or would be if it fit, but drink some coffee and let the caffeine do its thing and it soon becomes apparent that it doesn’t come close. The trouble for the Bushies, and now for Obama–they’re his torturers now — is that lawyers are bound by a higher code than following orders.
Yoo, Bybee, Addington, Gonzales, Haynes and Feith were asked by the White House to come up with legal cover for what they knew or ought to have known were illegal acts under U.S. law, international law, and treaties including the Geneva Conventions (which were ratified by the U.S. and therefore hold the force of U.S. law). Since they don’t deny what they did — indeed, they continue to justify it — their presumed defense if they wound up on trial in Europe would be that they were just following orders.
However, the decision in the 1948 trials of German attorneys immortalized in the fictionalized film “Judgment at Nuremberg” makes clear that a lawyer’s duty is to the law — not his government. And not just his own country’s law — international law.
The Nuremberg tribunal acknowledged that Nazi Germany was an absolute dictatorship in which everyone answered to Adolf Hitler and could be shot for disobeying. Nevertheless, the court ruled, “there were [German] restrictions for Hitler under international law.” Despite his total legal authority within Germany, Hitler “could issue orders [that violated] international law.” Obeying a direct order from Hitler, in other words, was illegal if it violated international law. And German lawyers went to prison for doing just that.
The six lawyers about to face charges in Spain didn’t have to worry about Nazi firing squads. They were rank opportunists trying to advance their careers in an Administration that viewed laws as quaint, inconvenient obstacles. Here’s how not scared they are: Feith recently penned an op/ed in The Wall Street Journal daring — double-daring — Obama’s Justice Department to go after him.
“If President Barack Obama and the prosecutors see a crime to be prosecuted, they can act,” Feith wrote.
One can only hope. In the meantime, we’ll always have Spain.
© 2009 Ted Rall
Lawyers schemed to make torture legal
‘The challenging task set before these [Bush era] lawyers was to somehow “make legal” a set of [interrogation] techniques that had originated in a program developed expressly to prepare [US] soldiers for techniques that were illegal’. From The Red Cross Torture Report: What It Means, by Mark Danner, published on April 10, 2009 by The New York Review of Books. Click for full article. See also ‘These People Fear Prosecution’: Why Bush’s CIA Team Should Worry About Its Dark Embrace of Torture.
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