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Two more stories to add to the list.

And remember, this is all the fault of the liberal media.

Is this who we are?


Via TalkLeft.

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Brutal interrogation in Iraq
Five detainees' deaths probed

Brutal interrogation techniques by U.S. military personnel are being investigated in connection with the deaths of at least five Iraqi prisoners in war-zone detention camps, Pentagon documents obtained by The Denver Post show.

The deaths include the killing in November of a high-level Iraqi general who was shoved into a sleeping bag and suffocated, according to the Pentagon report. The documents contradict an earlier Defense Department statement that said the general died "of natural causes" during an interrogation. Pentagon officials declined to comment on the new disclosure.

Another Iraqi military officer, records show, was asphyxiated after being gagged, his hands tied to the top of his cell door. Another detainee died "while undergoing stress technique interrogation," involving smothering and "chest compressions," according to the documents.

Details of the death investigations, involving at least four different detention facilities including the Abu Ghraib prison, provide the clearest view yet into war-zone interrogation rooms, where intelligence soldiers and other personnel have sometimes used lethal tactics to try to coax secrets from prisoners, including choking off detainees' airways. Other abusive strategies involve sitting on prisoners or bending them into uncomfortable positions, records show.

"Torture is the only thing you can call this," said a Pentagon source with knowledge of internal investigations into prisoner abuses. "There is a lot about our country's interrogation techniques that is very troubling. These are violations of military law."

Miles Moffeit, The Denver Post

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GI: Boy mistreated to get dad to talk

A military intelligence analyst who recently completed duty at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (news - web sites) said Wednesday that the 16-year-old son of a detainee there was abused by U.S. soldiers to break his father's resistance to interrogators.

The analyst said the teenager was stripped naked, thrown in the back of an open truck, driven around in the cold night air, splattered with mud and then presented to his father at Abu Ghraib, the prison at the center of the scandal over abuse of Iraqi detainees.

Upon seeing his frail and frightened son, the prisoner broke down and cried and told interrogators he would tell them whatever they wanted, the analyst said.

Mike Dorning, Chicago Tribune

Via Atrios at Eschaton

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STOP RUINING OUR COUNTRY YOU SPOILED CHICKENHAWK FUCK

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Originally posted by Nim the Fanciful:
Trouble is, none of all this will be remembered in 10-15 years, the only official bits pertaining to GWB's time in office will be: "Firmly led America on the road to justice and retribution in the war on terror, in the wake of Sept. 11th".

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One for the history books

How will historians tell the tale of George W. Bush's presidency? Some history professors aren't waiting 50 years to weigh in. The History News Network conducted an informal poll of professional historians -- eight in 10 said Bush's tenure has been a "failure." Twelve percent said Bush's presidency is the worst in all of American history.

Here's how historians finished the sentence "Bush's presidency is the worst failure since ____" and how they came to their conclusion.

REAGAN: "I think the presidency of George W. Bush has been generally a failure and I consider his presidency so far to have been the most disastrous since that of Ronald Reagan--because of the unconscionable military aggression and spending (especially the Iraq War), the damage done to the welfare of the poor while the corporate rich get richer, and the backwards religious fundamentalism permeating this administration. I strongly disliked and distrusted Reagan and think that George W. is even worse."

NIXON: "Actually, I think [Bush's] presidency may exceed the disaster that was Nixon. He has systematically lied to the American public about almost every policy that his administration promotes." Bush uses "doublespeak" to "dress up policies that condone or aid attacks by polluters and exploiters of the environment . . . with names like the 'Forest Restoration Act' (which encourages the cutting down of forests)."

HOOVER: "I would say GW is our worst president since Herbert Hoover. He is moving to bankrupt the federal government on the eve of the retirement of the baby boom generation, and he has brought America's reputation in the world to its lowest point in the entire history of the United States."

COOLIDGE: "I think his presidency has been an unmitigated disaster for the environment, for international relations, for health care, and for working Americans. He's on a par with Coolidge!"

HARDING: "Oil, money and politics again combine in ways not flattering to the integrity of the office. Both men also have a tendency to mangle the English language yet get their points across to ordinary Americans. [Yet] the comparison does Harding something of a disservice."

McKINLEY: "Bush is perhaps the first president [since McKinley] to be entirely in the 'hip pocket' of big business, engage in major external conquest for reasons other than national security, AND be the puppet of his political handler. McKinley had Mark Hanna; Bush has Karl Rove. No wonder McKinley is Rove's favorite historical president (precedent?)."

GRANT: "He ranks with U.S. Grant as the worst. His oil interests and Cheney's corporate Haliburton contracts smack of the same corruption found under Grant."

Via Salon

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Pentagon Report Set Framework For Use of Torture
Security or Legal Factors Could Trump Restrictions, Memo to Rumsfeld Argued

Bush administration lawyers contended last year that the president wasn't bound by laws prohibiting torture and that government agents who might torture prisoners at his direction couldn't be prosecuted by the Justice Department.

The advice was part of a classified report on interrogation methods prepared for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld after commanders at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, complained in late 2002 that with conventional methods they weren't getting enough information from prisoners.

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The president, despite domestic and international laws constraining the use of torture, has the authority as commander in chief to approve almost any physical or psychological actions during interrogation, up to and including torture, the report argued. Civilian or military personnel accused of torture or other war crimes have several potential defenses, including the "necessity" of using such methods to extract information to head off an attack, or "superior orders," sometimes known as the Nuremberg defense: namely that the accused was acting pursuant to an order and, as the Nuremberg tribunal put it, no "moral choice was in fact possible."

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To protect subordinates should they be charged with torture, the memo advised that Mr. Bush issue a "presidential directive or other writing" that could serve as evidence, since authority to set aside the laws is "inherent in the president."

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Analysis: Normally, I would say that there is a fine line separating legal advice on how to stay within the law, and legal advice on how to avoid prosecution for breaking the law. DoD and DoJ lawyers often provide this first kind of sensitive legal advice to top decisionmakers in the Executive Branch (regardless of administration) who want to affirm the legality of their actions. Often times, memoranda on these topics can be seen both ways, depending on your perspective. I tend to think that the Yoo memorandum and Gonzales memorandum leaned more heavily towards providing advice about how to stay (barely) within the bounds of the law � not how to break the law and get away with it. But this DoD memo appears to be quite the opposite. It is, quite literally, a cookbook approach for illegal government conduct. This memorandum lays out the substantive law on torture and how to avoid it. It then goes on to discuss the procedural mechanisms with which torture is normally prosecuted, and techniques for avoiding those traps. I have not seen the text of the memo, but from this report, it does not appear that it advises American personnel to comply with international or domestic law. It merely tells them how to avoid it. That is dangerous legal advice.

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Second, I'd like to counterpose one other key point from the memo against an excerpt from the U.S. Constitution. Compare the following line from the WSJ story:

To protect subordinates should they be charged with torture, the memo advised that Mr. Bush issue a "presidential directive or other writing" that could serve as evidence, since authority to set aside the laws is "inherent in the president."
with this passage from Art. II, Sec. 3 of the U.S. Constitution, regarding Presidential power:

Section 3.

He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information on the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.

The italicized passage is commonly called the "take care" clause by Constitutional Law scholars. It is not a permissive grant of power � it is an affirmative duty to enforce the laws and ensure that subordinate officers of the government do the same. It is the basis for Presidential command and control over the executive branch, and it has been invoked on many occasions to justify prosecution of law violation within the branch. President Truman tried to invoke this clause, in conjunction with his broader power as Commander-in-Chief, to justify the emergency seizure of steel mills during a labor stoppage during the Korean War. The Supreme Court sharply rebuked him, saying that he lacked the Constitutional authority to do so. (See Youngstown v. Sawyer, aka The Steel Seizure Case). I have read a fair amount on this particular area of Constitutional Law, and think the DoD memo gets it wrong. I am not aware of any legal authority which supports the proposition that the President has inherent power to set aside the laws when he deems it necessary. If anything, the opposite is true, according to Supreme Court precedent and treatises on Constitutional Law by scholars such as Joseph Story. Even in wartime, the President's authority to act is limited by the Constitution. There is no general Presidential power to nullify the laws of the United States, nor the laws of war which have been codified in treaties. Advice to the contrary is wrong, and any actions which follow this advice are probably unlawful as well.

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But put aside the technical analysis and ask yourself: Why has torture been such a hot topic since 9/11? The United States has fought many wars over the past half century, and in each of them our causes were just as important as today's, information from prisoners would have been just as helpful, and we were every bit as determined to win as we are now. But we still didn't authorize torture of prisoners. FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, LBJ, Reagan � all of them knew it wasn't right, and the rest of us knew it as well.

So what's different this time? Only one thing: the name of the man in the White House. Under this administration, we seem to have lost the simple level of moral clarity that allowed our predecessors to tell right from wrong. It's time to reclaim it.

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