Dror Ladin is a staff attorney at the ACLU National Security Project. He writes—ACLU Lawyers Will Get to Question Ex-CIA Officials in Torture Case:
In a critical step towards accountability, a federal judge has ordered that former high-ranking CIA officials will have to sit for depositions in the lawsuit against the two psychologists who designed and implemented the CIA torture program.
Two of the officials are John Rizzo and Jose Rodriguez, who both held top positions when the torture program was developed and carried out. Rizzo was the CIA’s chief lawyer, and Rodriguez was the head of the CIA Counterterrorism Center and then deputy director of operations. The depositions are expected to happen in the next few months as part of the discovery process, which will be completed by mid-February.
The case was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of three men — Suleiman Abdullah Salim, Mohamed Ahmed Ben Soud, Gul Rahman — who were tortured using methods developed by the CIA-contracted psychologists, James Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen.
Rizzo was the CIA’s acting general counsel for much of the George W. Bush administration. President Bush nominated him to be confirmed in the position in 2007 but was forced to withdraw the nomination amid objections over Rizzo’s involvement in the torture program. Rizzo went along with the now-discredited Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel memos that purported to approve torture, privately acknowledging the OLC’s “ability to interpret over, under and around Geneva, the torture convention, and other pesky little international obligations.” Rizzo also helped draft Bush’s still-secret order authorizing the CIA to establish secret detention facilities overseas and to interrogate detainees.
Rodriguez has repeatedly defended the CIA’s torture of detainees and played an integral role in the program from the start, authorizing the use of specific abusive methods on detainees. In 2005, over the objections of the White House and Congress and in violation of a federal court ruling, Rodriguez ordered the destruction of more than 90 videotapes that showed the torture of detainees through waterboarding and other methods. [...]
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2009—Green Diary Rescue & Open Thread: 350:
A seven-member team at the Economics for Equity and Environment have concluded in The Economics of 350: The Benefits and Costs of Climate Stabilization that quickly reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere to 350 parts per million would have significant economic costs. But authors Frank Ackerman, Kristin Sheeran and Eban Goodstein say that these costs would, at worst, amount to foregoing less than one year’s normal growth of about 2.5%-3% of GDP. And they would be far below the costs – both economic and otherwise – of not making the reduction or of not making it rapidly.
In 1990, at the Rio Earth Summit, it was thought that stabilizing the atmosphere at around 450 ppm of CO2 would mean holding the average rise in temperature to 2°C. The effects of this would be unpleasant and problematic – highly problematic in some parts of the world, especially low-lying and high-latitude areas, – but livable with adjustments. If current levels of increase continue, we’d hit the 450 ppm mark around 2040. But in the past few years, scientific opinion has shifted.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin adds an interesting spin on post-debate analysis. What might really be behind that $916 million Trump loss. New contributor @Canuck_Pundit points the finger at Marla. Clown panic + AR-15 = Perfect Storm of Derp.
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