So Dick has a new book out which basically trashes all of his critics, even those within the Bush Whitehouse such as Condi Rice, Colin Powell and George Tenet and he still swears by the Torture Dat Gummit.
Here you have Glen Greenwaldl bemoaning Cheney's lack of leg irons for War Crimes.
Jerome Scahill on Countdown.
And here you have essentially the same from John Dean.
What sort of amazes me about all of these comments is that no one seems to be aware that the worst part about Cheney's Torture Regime was that it didn't work. And further that there actually is an ongoing investigation Special Prosecutor and Grand Jury current looking into the issue of torture by several CIA operatives.
And lastly none of them seem aware that the reason Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush themselves aren't current being targeted for prosecution, is the fact that what they did is now no longer illegal.
For many months after he left the White House, Cheney had claimed that there were secret CIA Memo which absolutely proved the effectiveness of his interrogation program. Anyone notice he's not talking about that anymore?
That's because those memos actually were released and they didn't prove what Cheney claims they prove.
The OPR report confirms what legal ethics scholars have long suspected: as a general practice, senior White House officials improperly pressured Yoo, Bybee, and Bradbury to "come up with an answer" in the "torture memos" that would justify the ongoing interrogation regime, conclude it was legal, and allow it to continue. The OPR report contains irrefutable proof that White House attorneys played a central role in shaping the content of the memos. White House counsel Alberto Gonzales told OPR that he would typically review drafts from lawyer John Yoo and "pass them along to other lawyers, such as [Cheney's lawyer David] Addington or [Gonzales' deputy Tim] Flanigan, who would forward them to Yoo along with their own comments." In a statement to OPR about Yoo's most notorious August 2002 memo, Gonzales is quoted as saying, "I'd be very surprised in [sic] David did not participate in the drafting of this document.'"
The final OPR report establishes that Yoo added the most flawed and egregious portions of his August 2002 memo after the criminal division of DOJ refused to give the CIA the legal authority it was seeking - and after an auspiciously timed meeting at the White House. It seems the CIA requested a DOJ criminal declination letter providing advance blanket immunity from criminal prosecution before beginning interrogations in order to ensure that no CIA interrogator would be prosecuted for torture. Michael Chertoff, then Assistant AG in charge of DOJ's criminal division, found the request unreasonable, and refused to provide a blanket protection against criminal prosecution. The next day, Yoo went to a meeting at the White House with Gonzales (and possibly Addington and Flanigan) - and the day after that, Yoo added the two most biased and flawed sections to his most notorious memo.
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As has been noted by the LA Times, the use of torture techniques was actually already in place before the memos were actually written justifying and excusing them in hindsight.
The core of program only lasted about two years, until it was shutdown by the CIA Inspector General's report which ruled that it was both illegal and ineffective in 2004.
The real trouble began on May 7, 2004, the day the C.I.A. inspector general, John L. Helgerson, completed a devastating report. In thousands of pages, it challenged the legality of some interrogation methods, found that interrogators were exceeding the rules imposed by the Justice Department and questioned the effectiveness of the entire program.
The program was opposed by the Chief Counsel of the State Department, by Colin Powell and eventually by Condoleeza Rice. (And thus we can see why Cheney had to systematically sharpen is knives against them in this "tome")
We now know that these techniques Didn't FOIL A SINGLE PLOT to attack the U.S. That even after being waterboarded 187 times, KSM still refused to tell us about anything OBL's Courier, which is how we eventually found and killed Bin Laden. Not only that it was because of the torture of Ibn Sheik al Libi in Egypt that America was misled into believing that Iraq and Saddam had connectiions to Al Qeada. He told us that Saddam had trained al Qeada operatives on the use of chemical weapons after he'd been buried alive.
Torture didn't catch Bin Laden, and it helped us get into a war we didn't need to start. Perfect.
The damage the techniques have done to our intelligence was also testified to by FBI Interrogator Ali Soufan before Congress.
WASHINGTON -- The testimony of a key witness at a Senate hearing Wednesday raised serious questions about the truthfulness of former President George W. Bush's own personal defense of the CIA's brutal interrogation program. Former FBI agent Ali Soufan also indicated that the harsh interrogation techniques may actually have hindered the collection of intelligence, causing a high-value prisoner to stop cooperating.
In the first congressional hearing on torture since the release of Bush administration memos that provided the legal justification for torture, Soufan told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the CIA's abusive techniques were "ineffective, slow and unreliable, and as a result harmful to our efforts to defeat al-Qaida." According to Soufan, his own nonviolent interrogation of an al-Qaida suspect was quickly yielding valuable, actionable intelligence -- until the CIA intervened.
So with this in mind, why isn't anyone going to jail?
Because in 2006 after the Hamdan v Rumsfeld decision restored the protection of Habeaus Corpus to Gitmo Detainees and the Congress shifted into Democratic Hands President Bush rushed through Military Commission Act which re-wrote both the War Crimes Act and the Torture Statutes to match the Bybee Standard that had been specifically crafted to allow for torture, as long as the subject didn't die.
The term `serious physical pain or suffering'
means bodily injury that involves--
``(I) a substantial risk of death;
``(II) extreme physical pain;
``(III) a burn or physical disfigurement of a
serious nature (other than cuts, abrasions, or
bruises); or
``(IV) significant loss or impairment of the
function of a bodily member, organ, or mental
faculty.
To this very day, this remains the current standard.
This is why when Obama inquired about the treatment of Bradley Manning, he was told that the conditions of his confinement were "perfectly legal". And since Manning hasn't died yet, essentially they are.
However, there were cases where the subject died during interrogation and in those cases there can be prosecutions under the current law - and those prosecutions are being pursued by Special Prosecutor John Durham.
It has been nearly a decade since Manadel al-Jamadi, an Iraqi prisoner known as "the Iceman" — for the bungled attempt to cool his body and make him look less dead — perished in CIA custody at Abu Ghraib. But now there are rumbles in Washington that the notorious case, as well as other alleged CIA abuses, could be returning to haunt the agency. TIME has learned that a prosecutor tasked with probing the CIA — John Durham, a respected, Republican-appointed U.S. Attorney from Connecticut — has begun calling witnesses before a secret federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., looking into, among other things, the lurid Nov. 4, 2003, homicide, which was documented by TIME in 2005.
TIME has obtained a copy of a subpoena signed by Durham that points to his grand jury's broader mandate, which could involve charging additional CIA officers and contract employees in other cases. The subpoena says "the grand jury is conducting an investigation of possible violations of federal criminal laws involving War Crimes (18 USC/2441), Torture (18 USC 234OA) and related federal offenses."
...
Official investigations ruled al-Jamadi's death a homicide. Investigators concluded that while in CIA custody, the prisoner was hung on a wall before succumbing to asphyxiation and “blunt force injuries.” The CIA's Inspector General referred the case to the Justice Department shortly after it happened for possible prosecution, but no action was taken.
...
Now Durham is seeking evidence about the Iceman's death from, among others, current and former U.S. military personnel who served at Abu Ghraib, the notorious prison west of Baghdad, according to sources with knowledge of the investigation. And he is asking a lot of questions — like who took photographs of the body, and when. Durham, according to these sources, has also asked about civilian contractors at the site, mentioning one by name, and has probed the source of the multiple shoe prints apparently found on material used to wrap al-Jamadi's body.
There isn't much chance that these prosecutions, even if successful, will ultimately lead back to the doorstep of Dick Cheney, Addington, Yoo, Bybee and Gonzales even with the fairly daming implications of the OPR report, because they were all so skilful at manipulating the Justice Department and later the Congress into immunizing their actions.
So Cheney gets to smirk and call for more torture, as long as the Military Commission Act covers his ass.
Strange that I didn't hear Scahill, Greenwald or Dean even suggest that it should be repealed. Maybe that's what they should be talking about. After that is done, Cheney's butt would be completely uncovered and vulnerable to a prosecutor like Durham and his new book - would become his open confession.
Vyan