This is short and sweet. A special prosecutor has been formally requested of Eric Holder by Conyers and Nadler et al.
http://www.pubrecord.org/...
via Benmasel, the other signers:
Robert Scott, , Steve Cohen, , Hank Johnson, , Mel Watt, Sheila Jackson Lee, Maxine Waters, Robert Wexler, Pedro Pierluisi, Luis Gutierrez, Tammy Baldwin, Anthony Weiner, Linda Sánchez, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Daniel Maffei.
Read the the five page document here.
Be still my heart. Thanks for creating the shitstorm, everyone, especially budhy and mcjoan.
This is an open thread.
Update via Nightprowlkitty:
Greg Sargent notes that despite the media's reluctance to describe it as such, a new poll out today by the New York Times and CBS News found that 71 percent of Americans consider waterboarding to be "a form of torture"
Update via Edgewater:
House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and Rep Jerrold Nadler, (D-NY), formally requested that Attorney General Eric Holder appoint a special prosecutor to probe and, "where appropriate, prosecute," Bush administration officials responsible for the torture of detainees at Guantanamo Bay prison and Iraq.
Here's mcjoan bringing on the Haldol:
This is good
but I'm not expecting action on it until the Senate Intelligence Committee report is completed, and that could be a while.
I could be completely wrong. There might be enough political pressure to make it happen. We might be able to create enough pressure.
and IOZ from the other day:
Worst Among Equals
When people talk about "criminalizing policy differences", there's a crucial, question-begging assumption, namely: that no one actually broke the law.
-Hilzoy at the Washington Monthly
When liberals talk about "holding the Bush administration to account" and other colorful varieties of that species of songbird, there's a crucial, question-begging assumption, namely that "the Presidency is a public trust, not a license for criminality." Well, if you just learn to think of him a sovereign instead of a citizen. What was that delightful phrase of the early Roman emperors? Primus inter pares? Or of our own scowling would-be Augustus: if the President does it, it's not illegal.
I don't mean to be a killjoy, but the wagon train has long since rolled West on the circumscribed presidency. The train has left the station. The ship has sailed. The toothpaste has left the tube. If it comforts them, Democratic partisans can believe that their glorious leader "ended torture as one of his first acts in office," but the more realistic reading is that he codified a public policy whereby the United States tortures prisoners in extremis, during hot warfare or following terrorist attacks, but will not go all France-in-Algeria every time it commits resources to this or that colonial war around the world. The yet more realistic reading is that the United States returns to the status quo ante of keeping its torture private--distant Bagram the obvious counterpart to nearby Guantanamo and all that.
In any case, just the other day the radio told me that the first gang of US soldiers was transferred directly from Iraq to Afghanistan. Do not pass GO. Do not collect $200.
Final Update:
Is the ice finally melting on this torture issue? Apparently, an investigation is being requested of APA psychologists who greenlighted involvement in torture.
Here's some of what the APA officials discussed in relation to overseeing torture at the PENS (Psychhological Ethics and National Security) taskfore:
May 6, 2005: "In many of the circumstances we will discuss when we meet the psychologist’s role may bear on people who are not ‘clients’ in the traditional sense. Example, the psychologist employed by the CIA, Secret Service, FBI, etc., who helps formulate profiles for risk prevention, negotiation strategy, destabilization, etc., or the psychologist asked to assist interrogators in eliciting data or detecting dissimulation with the intent of preventing harm to many other people. In this case the client is the agency, government, and ultimately the people of the nation (at risk). The goal of such psychologists’ work will ultimately be the protection of others (i.e., innocents) by contributing to the incarceration, debilitation, or even death of the potential perpetrator, who will often remain unaware of the psychologists’ involvement."
Not clients in the traditional sense. Shame on you, APA.
Contact APA!