Torture Memos Released

A slew of retirements? It seems to me that people who have engaged in this kind of behavior will have experienced some serious psychological damage in doing so and should be encouraged to leave to make room for a new generation of operatives untainted by this disaster. (And if they didn’t experience such damage, they should be gone even sooner.)

President Bush should be indicted for War Crimes. He can present his case in a fair and impartial hearing – if he is innocent we can all rejoice. If not, then he should be held accountable. …………….

http://thefiresidepost.com/2009/01/22/indicting-george-bush-for-war-crimes/

Your logic escapes me, Joe. You seem to think that the CIA is in danger of being wounded when it is, in fact, a corpse, and not even a walking one.

“But there are real concerns in the intelligence community.”
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I’m sorry. There are real concerns in the public too. Which are more important.

FT: Many presidents before Obama have tried and failed to reform the CIA – notably Eisenhower and Nixon. In the past the CIA has closed ranks and basically ignored the civilian leadership, at least according to Tim Weiner’s book Legacy of Ashes.
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One of the few presidents to have a good working relationship with the CIA was GHWB, not surprisingly. It’s a cause of concern if you think we need a good clandestine service. Possibly the CIA should be dismantled and a new agency created from scratch.

I know there is a palpable desire to see the Bush administration pay for their various crimes and I can’t say that I wouldn’t derive some pleasure from it, but I would be lying to myself if I said my desire for prosecution is solely because as a patriot I believe every law should be followed. Clearly when it cones to marijuana that’s a law that ought to broken and strewn by the wayside.
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Knowing that much of my desire for punishment is about revenge rather than what the country would gain I can defer to the president on this. I do agree, however, that he ought not reveal the rank and file CIA and throw them to the wolves. It is not their fault that we had the bad judgment to elect a president and vice president devoid of character.
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Bush went out of his way to prove that these extraordinary measures were legal and we ought not say to the careerists now: “Well we know you put it all on the line but you should have run your own independent inquiry and found your president in error and knowing he was asking for an illegal act you should have refused his request. Now that you didn’t we have no choice but to do prosecute you. Sorry signed new administration.” No, I think not.

This is about a lot more than vengeance.This position basically guarantees that our children will be having the same discussion. No consequences means more of the same down the road.

Even granting each and every concern that agents might have, the “state secrets” defense that Obama is deploying in courtrooms go far beyond the requirments that ‘classification’ requires. Since when are judges unqualified for security clearances?
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And my admittedly rushed readings of the memo’s indicate that FBI interrogators have argued persuasively that more benign methods are more effective than stress positions or sleep deprivation in getting information from suspects is rather an understatement.
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Presumably punishing people via torture for lying might improve the quality of information extracted slightly, but the victims main motivation will be to provide as much information as possible without regard to the truth of any of it.
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I’m of course ignoring the moral implications. If the only recourse for dealing with enemies is to be every bit as evil as they are, then what’s the point of calling them enemies?

“A potential rebellion”? So you’re saying that the “intelligence community” will rebel against the President and the Congress? What will they do, start waterboarding US citizens? Wiretapping without a warrant? Oh, wait…
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Seriously, someone needs to remind these Federal Government employees that they work for the United States, not for their insulated “community”. They are subject to the same laws as the rest of us and should face the same consequences for breaking those laws.
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It really chaps my hide that the assumption seems to be that the President needs to bend over backward to accommodate these federal employees, lest they get butthurt. Too f***ing bad. The director of the CIA answers to the DNI, right? In turn, the DNI answers to the President. Why does the President have to step lightly around his own employees, or face “rebellion”?
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Of what use are laws if they can be broken with such impunity? If I can find a lawyer somewhere who gives me advice that I can, for example, not pay federal taxes, I’ll face the consequences if I do it. It makes not a sliver of difference that they had “legal opinions” that validated (or un-illegalized?) their actions. If these agents think that they were somehow immunized against the fallout of their actions because of Jay Bybee, then let them make that case in open court.
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I sure don’t remember this level of outrage from the “intelligence community” when asset Valerie Plame was outed. Interesting.

I sure don’t remember this level of outrage from the “intelligence community” when asset Valerie Plame was outed.
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That’s because it was classified…….

I notice the first memo expressly cites SERE. SERE was intended to train captured Americans to resist NK/Soviet methods used to coerce false confessions. The torture techniques used in these instances were never intended to acquire intelligence.
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As for not prosecuting the people who only followed orders, first, I thought that it was a settled matter that this is not a valid defense, and second, that this doctrine wasn’t applied to the “bad apples” at Abu Ghraib.
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Thing is, it is hard to know how this will play out. Once information starts to flow, it can take on a power of its own.

I think its easy for people who have little knowledge about our intelligence operations outside of their spectacular failures because their wins don’t get publicized but they do indeed happen.
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We like to say we support the troops and they can do no wrong. Well, where do you think a lot of the operatives come from and as for the analysts and case officers they are a part of our defense as well. Why are we so eager to dismiss their contributions? It’s as if we blame them for Cheney running amuck, when they are the ones who gave us the alternative info that showed he was a liar.

I can understand the concerns of the CIA employees and the Obama administration. The President doesn’t want to prosecute people who were just doing their duty as their managers saw fit. However, I thought that the “I was just following orders” defense was debunked at Nuremberg. If we are going to absolve the CIA officers of any moral or legal responsibility for their behavior, then we need to apologize to the Nazis we hanged. If it was OK for Americans to torture people because of “legal cover”, then we have no moral authority to accuse anyone else of torture or crimes against humanity. Every person in the USA knew that the Bush administration was twisting and “torturing” the law to justify what Cheney wanted. If we won’t hold Americans accountable, then we have no right to hold anyone else accountable. We can’t have it both ways.

Just when we were all beginning to forget about Bush and his abuses…

http://www.political-buzz.com/

their wins don’t get publicized but they do indeed happen.
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I’ve heard this over and over again. I do not believe it for an instant. And even the “wins” we do hear about always seem to be ultimately reversed by blowback.
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Give me a break the only reason we ever even heard of the Valerie Plame story was because the CIA was furious.
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I’m not saying anyone was all the way right or wrong, I’m just saying that sometimes we can oversimplify something and some very real things get hurt in the process.
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I have family in harms way and I would hate for them to get hurt because of inadequate intelligence.
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Why are we not treating intelligence sources the same as our military don’t they also put themselves in harms way? I think the president is just giving them the same level of respect we give our military.

“I was just following orders” is not the defense. The defense is that the Dept of Justice explicitly stated it was legal. The agents acted under those legal guidelines.

Were these the memos that John Cornyn threatened to filibuster all the judicial appointments if they were released?

Ivy_B
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Yes. Obama called the bluff.

let’s not get it twisted Nuremberg was not about water boarding or enhanced interrogation or even torture for that matter. Nuremberg was about gross human experiments like turning human skin into lampshades, and putting folks in ovens and gas chambers, and sorry I am not going to equate the two. I think Nuremberg said that any reasonable person knows that these acts are wrong and inhuman. I don’t think the interrogation techniques fall into that category.

Just posing a question – does anyone think this is Obama trying, like FDR, to be “made to do the right thing”?
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Anyone think he wants to appear the be dragged “kicking and screaming” into prosecutions at some future date?

I’m not saying anyone was all the way right or wrong, I’m just saying that sometimes we can oversimplify something and some very real things get hurt in the process.
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Dee,
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I know what you’re saying but, at least from my point of view, even as a military member, there are certain things I KNOW are morally wrong and don’t need the cover of a memo to know that it’s wrong to do them.

Last I heard, there aren’t supposed to be any prosecutions of spooks for what they did involving torture, so they should count themselves very lucky.

The dismissal of the concept of basic human rights by the Bush administration is unforgiveable, and any actions taken should be taken against those who set the policies regarding torture. As another poster said, the underspooks were “only following orders” dictated by those who claimed what was going on was legal.

afguy
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I think Obama’s willingness to accurately state opposing views, and explain why he disagrees will play a role in how this plays out.Presumably he does this internally as well. The arguments Joe lays out, expressed as well as he can express them (which is pretty well) are not terribly persuasive. They amount to insisting on a coverup because 1) they know they were wrong and 2) they thought they had cover.

jayackroyd,
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Hope there’s something noble in all of this because it’s all looking pretty shabby from where I sit.

I think that some members of the intelligence community objected to cheney and that is probably the reason they had to get all of these legal opinions because these operatives resisted the administration. DOJ memo were used to convince them that the law was on the president’s side. Now I do think Bush, Cheney and the lawyers ought to be held responsible, especially because they allowed those rank and file soldiers take the weight for their crap. But I defer to the white house on the appropriate timing for this.

Dee,
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I HOPE that there’s a noble lining in all of this, but I still say that the soldiers/operatives can’t completely hide behind the memo. They had legal cover but, MORALLY, their “drawers” are down around their ankles.

And our MORAL cover is supposedly what we use to show the world that we are “different”.

Dee,
The reason people keep bringing up Nuremberg is because we executed people for the crime of waterboarding. The fact that it was a war crime in 1946 but not in 2005 is certainly relevant. I’m not advocating prosecuting anyone, but I think we could do a little better housekeeping than we’ve done so far.

Yes, Dee, if what I’ve read of how the agency operates (and my experience with some people who have been involved in classified stuff), I’m pretty sure that is what happened. And I am equally sure that is what ticked Cheney off–that the bureaucratic wusses insisted on having their butts covered.
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Because he too knew what he wanted was illegal, and violated treaties that the US was instrumental in bringing into existence.
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If these evil men really believed what they were doing was necessary to keep America safe, they would have done it in the open. This wasn’t about security. It was about power.

Or as Joe puts it, “a slew of retirements.”

Hiding behind legalisms and memos just makes us look ridiculous.

If these evil men really believed what they were doing was necessary to keep America safe, they would have done it in the open. This wasn’t about security. It was about power.
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Perfectly put, jay.

There’s something in all of this that I find disturbing and feel should be pointed out more often and that’s how the Intelligence Community seems to have no qualms about playing politics with it’s critical function.
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I completely understand people who worry about potential intelligence failures putting our soldiers, our agents, and our citizens at unnecessary risk but I think the important point in all of this is that it will have been done intentionally in a game of political “gotcha”. This is of course not a game as far as I’m concerned and should not be passed over lightly. It’s something that’s happened in the past and should be avoided in the future. But in order to avoid it we need to make it clear that it will not be tolerated. Just how can we trust people, who are tasked to help safeguard our nation from risk, when they themselves threaten to willingly put us at risk?
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Of course it’s obvious that all things in Washington are political and therefore they will all play political games. But let’s be clear that when the Intelligence Community throws a fit when it feels it’s toes are stepped on then THEY quite clearly, literally and intentionally put our nation at risk. That’s not hyperbole but simple and demonstrable fact. Tantrums are something one expects from children who don’t get what they want. Our Intelligence agencies should behave with more maturity given the gravity of their responsibility should they not? I’m not sure I feel very “safe” if this is how they collectively behave – like spoiled teens who symbolically say “I hate you, I’m not going to!” and then stomp off to their rooms.
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Dee
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I am going to say this once and for all, if you do the crime then expect to do the time. Nobody is calling for the rank and file to be prosecuted, that is a strawman argument that President Obama invokes and Joe Klein carries forward. Who most of us want prosecuted is the people who ordered it. The same people that Joe Klein said shouldn’t be prosecuted and who Obama seems to have no appetite for prosecuting. When it comes down to it justice is just another term for retribution. Why does someone go to jail if found guilty of committing a crime? So they can be better people? Or to punish them for their actions? And when you can explain to me how punishing someone for their actions is not retribution then maybe I will fall in line with the just let it go crowd. Until that day it is a direct contradiction to say that we are a nation of laws on one hand and then turn around and say this is not a time for retribution on the other.

Wow, I can remember when Joe Klein used to be a reporter. There was a time, back in the 80′s, when you could read his stuff and trust it. Those days are long gone tho. His posts during the 2008 election were something to snicker at but not serious reading. I was continually amazed that what I was reading was written by a man my own age.

Nothing has changed since November it seems and the same kind of Kool Aid drinkers are still posting in his blog. Still posting the same overwrought anti-Bush nonsense. Even while your messiah distances himself from actually acting on the hysterical charges.

Pssst – In case you missed it Guantanamo is still up and running. Maybe a war crimes trial for The One is in order? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Let us hope that this is a start on cleaning out the stables.

Glennzilla

SG — you know I believe that Bush and crew ought to be held responsible for their actions. However, I just think I have more patience than you have when it comes to prosecutions. I give Obama more slack than you on prosecutions because I believe that he has let info come to light that international lawmakers can use to make a case but his administration does not have to spend time dealing with.
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I want Obama focused on the immediate crisis and I think there is no statute of limitations on war crimes so we have plenty of time to go after Bush and crew later.

Dee
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I give the man leeway, but he took all that leeway away with his statement. There was no reason for him to come out and say that now is a time for reflection not retribution. Thats a bullsh*t argument. He chose to make it and because of that my faith in him has been damaged greatly. I am not going to sit up here and delude myself that the man doesn’t really mean what he says. Its staring right there in my face that he wants to move on without “retribution” and I am going to take him at his word. Anything other than that is all fantasy talk.

As jay said, what Glen said. Also what the other klein said very succinctly: At some point in the past eight years, we became the sort of country that put detainees in small boxes and threatens to cover them in stinging insects.
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And what Sully said: Stay tuned as I try to unpack and make sense of these documents. There is some feeling of relief that we now have the incontrovertible evidence in front of us. But there is also a feeling of great nausea as well. Look what they did to these suspects. And look what they did to America.
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Joe tried to make this complicated. It. Is. Not.
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Not if you have a functioning moral compass. Not if you have values that are recognizable as American.
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If that’s a problem for the CIA, then the CIA needs to be razed to the ground and started over.

While I believe strongly in transparency and accountability, I also believe that in a dangerous world, the United States must sometimes carry out intelligence operations and protect information that is classified for purposes of national security.
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Then please tell me why any of this was released?
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Obama is treading on very thin ice I think. He is playing both sides of the political game. Appeasing the left extremists, while at the same time attempting to protect the American citizens.
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This has great implications and future consequeses to be paid for in my opinion. If we haven’t seen a jihad yet, you shall soon see one. And we are now going to “talk” with the Iranians without pre-conditions. I truly do not understand the rationale.

Dee in Columbia MD Says: Look it is very simple…we don’t torture. The creed for the CIA and the military is no different. You do not have to follow orders which you think are against regulations or the law. The President of the United States, in this case, George Bush, doesn’t not represent the law or ininterpret it. That is the responsibility of the Supreme Court and the reason we have a separation of powers. Any military person or CIA official who knowingly breaks the law faces the same scrutiny that you and I do. What is very unfortunate here is the the court in the Hague has choosen not to try George Bush and his administration the same as they have others for war crimes. And as for those CIA folks that say that will walk…I’m with the rest of the folks here…good riddens and keep walkin’..we don’t need you!

rusty: While I believe strongly in transparency and accountability, I also believe that in a dangerous world, the United States must sometimes carry out intelligence operations and protect information that is classified for purposes of national security.
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This information was classified to protect the guilty. And the whole world already knew “we” did most of these things. The best protection in this case is sunlight.

These operatives are not stupid. They knew what they were being asked or encouraged or authorized to do was illegal in the US and pretty much the rest of the world too. And I think that is the crux of the defence by Cheney, Addington, et al. They did not directly ORDER any torture. They tasked [I hate that use of that word] the operatives with maximizing the amount of intelligence that they could get out of the captives, then AUTHORIZED the use of extra legal methods.

Unless the US government is prepared to put Cheney, Bush, Addington, et al on trial, it would be grossly unfair [though quite American] to try the subordinates who committed the act of torture.

Last point; that threat of mass resignations is so laughable as to be some sort of twisted joke. Are these guys planning to take up jobs at AIG when those guys all walk out the door? Please.

One last comment…about Abu Ghraib and the conduct of the military there. If there are any other retired military or others blogging this you can chime in too. I have never believed for one second that the military folks that carried out these acts did so without permission. If you have ever been to a military prison you would know just how difficult it is to gain access, and especially with a dog, carry out these deeds and no one in the chain of command knew nothing??!! Absolute lies. What I would suspect happened was these folks were acting on orders and were told to carry out this type of torture, then once caught were told that even if they say they were order to do it they would still be tried because they had the absolute right to disobey those orders knowing they were illegal. Does anyone remember the case of 2nd LT Calley in the My Lai Massacre? How the military tried him and later vendicated him? This is no different.

bushido – you are aware of A.J. Rossmiller, right?

The banality of evil:

He operated unthinkingly, following orders, efficiently carrying them out, with no consideration of their effects upon those he targeted. The human dimension of these activities were not entertained, so the extermination of the Jews became indistinguishable from any other bureaucratically assigned and discharged responsibility for Eichmann and his cohorts.
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Arendt concluded that Eichmann was constitutively incapable of exercising the kind of judgment that would have made his victims’ suffering real or apparent for him. It was not the presence of hatred that enabled Eichmann to perpetrate the genocide, but the absence of the imaginative capacities that would have made the human and moral dimensions of his activities tangible for him. Eichmann failed to exercise his capacity of thinking, of having an internal dialogue with himself, which would have permitted self-awareness of the evil nature of his deeds. This amounted to a failure to use self-reflection as a basis for judgment, the faculty that would have required Eichmann to exercise his imagination so as to contemplate the nature of his deeds from the experiential standpoint of his victims. This connection between the complicity with political evil and the failure of thinking and judgment inspired the last phase of Arendt’s work, which sought to explicate the nature of these faculties and their constitutive role for politically and morally responsible choices.

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Former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee wrote:

You [the CIA] would like to place Zubaydah in a cramped confinement box with an insect. You have informed us [the Department of Justice] that he appears to have a fear of insects.

This is the bureaucracy of torture.
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America has done this. It is time now to understand what we have done.

sz, digby has more on that. She sees it as worse:
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The psychology may have been the same — they were just doing their jobs. But the act of doing their jobs required a consciousness that goes beyond the average bureaucrat, even the average Nazi bureaucrat ca. 1942. They thought it through. The man who wrote that memo now sits on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and his conscious judgment is at issue every single day. This country should not have anyone who authorized twisted and depraved behaviors sitting in judgment of anyone. If Obama refuses to take action against this man, the legal profession should do it for him and disbar him. And if the congress can impeach someone over illicit oral sex, they can surely impeach a federal judge for authorizing torture. It’s bad enough that we have war criminals running free. Having one of them sitting on one of the highest courts in the land is mind-boggling.

I also believe that in a dangerous world
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What danger? What possibly threatens the United States? This is such fearmongering nonsense, and it’s been going on for more than 60 years.

sgw, Dee
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I’m with Dee here. Let this play out. Obama has shown an ability to be patient. This step was one he couldn’t have taken without institutional discussion.
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State secrets? That’s another story. But I do not want that to be settled by executive fiat in any case. Even if Obama decides, belatedly, to withdraw the claim, future presidents can still assert it. Fixing this requires actions by the legislature and the courts.
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This does NOT mean that I think Obama is doing this because he wants to be corrected by the courts and the legislature. He is doing what executives will do if allowed to. It’s more important to stop this encroachment on the other two branches than it is to just have this case get dealt with differently.

I’m late to the party and just scanned the comments, but heartily agree with a common sentiment I saw…screw the intelligence community. They don’t like a government of laws? Hit the door and good riddence. Anybody who thinks we can’t have an effective intelligence agency that operates by legal, constitutional, American standards is an idiot.

if you were one of the tortured ones, i bet you would want your torturers go free.

why do you think we have prisons at gitmo, abu ghraib, east europe and afghanistan where there is no law?

what is the difference between state sponsored torture and state sponsored terrorism? people can’t talk freely in this country any longer. you can bet that these comments will be traced by CIA.

if i was a prisoner in one of these, i would have sued us government.

[...] Time: CIA rebellion over torture memos’ release? [...]

Are you kidding me? Have we become such a nation of pansies that we believe that making someone stand for a while or sit in a small room is torture? Do people realize that our enemies saw people’s heads off?

Can you honestly say that if you, or a loved one’s, life was on the line you would not want the CIA to use a “face slap” to get someone to talk?

The blood of future terrorist victims will be on Obama’s hands. But, of course the terrorists will be “comfortable”.

Until we start showing a little backbone and MAKING our enemies respect us we will continue to be seen as scared, spineless, cowards and the attacks, kidnapping and bombings will continue. Only this time it won’t be in Iraq, it will be in our own streets and neighborhoods.

[...] did stick to his guns (as he has on almost every issue), i figured that same person would say obama compromised the safety of covert operators (not to mention all of us poor overt motherfuckers) for the sake of [...]

childerj
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Riiiiiiiiiiight everybody is pansies except you. I mean you are such a macho tough guy that I am sure standing for hours and being in boxes and getting waterboarded is the kinda sh*t you do before breakfast. Take that bullsh*t elsewhere. Ronald Reagan called it torture so I guess you think he was a pansy too right?
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The real pansies are the people like you who are so scared of their own shadow that they look at the world and think nobody is afraid of us and everyone wants to kill us. I bet you grab your purse everytime a dark skinned person gets on an elevator with you huh?
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Ignorant just phucking ignorant

What gives? Low ranking soldiers in Abu Ghraib are prosecuted and CIA personnel are not prosecuted for atrocities committed against prisoners? Once again a dual standard is an operation. The only way to stop this from ever happening again is to prosecute all involved, directly or indirectly. We would be doing the CIA a favor by getting rid of goons that are capable of torturing without remorse. We would be even better off if we prosecuted the senior officials that were aware of it and allowed it..

sg, you are right on about childerj. When you see that macho, tough guy talk, you can be sure you’ve got a real lillie on your hands. He wouldn’t last 5 min. in anything requiring endurance. I would bet good money on that.

For those criticizing the intelligence community – how do you people think that we conduct intelligence operations? We steal secrets and information in all mediums to gain an advantage – illegal. We murder people that ultimately threaten our wellbeing – illegal. We detain people for merely suspecting they may be involved in activities designed to hurt or kill Americans – illegal. We put them in uncomfortable positions that may persuade them to give us sensitive information – torture (debatable)???

Please someone tell me how you propose gaining intelligence without committing an illegal act????

I agree, however, its a fine line that we have to walk, giving them an huge amount of responsibility without granting them carte blanc. You have to place a certain amount of trust in those that know what they’re doing. Armchair quarterbacks who are not man or woman enough to volunteer to defend our nation in some capacity have little to stand on. Many times our intelligence agencies are unsuccessful, but intelligence gathering is an inexact science. They should be allowed to fail repeatedly because the rewards of their success can be powerful.

It’s easy for you to throw stones, but I’m willing to bet nobody provides a VIABLE solution to my original question. Yet, from the other side of your mouth you question how they missed the plan to fly two planes into the WTC towers.

I am getting pretty tired of cynical types telling us that we “we can’t handle the truth,” or that our values must be supported by a shadow world of murder, torture and ends-justifies-means types willing to do anything in our name. Why have so many of our men and women died, if not to protect the very values undermined by these people who think us scared children.

I think Obama has once again shown the sobriety and wisdom we elected him for. I support both his willingness to open up the basement and let the people see what their government has been up to, and his willingness to keep the agents who did these things from becoming the victims of a sensationalized rush to justice.

The fact is WE, the people of the United States, tortured those people because we were AFRAID. We don’t deserve scapegoats for this. It is time that we behaved like grown-ups and tried to live up to all this talk of freedom and honor and justice that our parents and grandparents fought and died for.

[...] doesn’t happen often, but I generally agree with Joe Klein on this one. As he notes, there are powerful reasons not to give our enemies a road map to [...]

Nobody is calling for the rank and file to be prosecuted, that is a strawman argument that President Obama invokes and Joe Klein carries forward.
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speak for yourself. The bottom line here is that the torturers remain legally liable for their acts, and should not be given a free pass for two reasons
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1) The laws and precedents involved in the use of torture allow for mitigation based on the circumstances of the case — in other words, while prosecutions are compulsory under the law, the issue of punishment is much more malleable.
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2) The best way to make a case against Bush administration officials is with the co-operation of the people who were engaged in torture. The threat of prosecution of lower level members of a criminal organization (and severe sentences upon convinction) is one of the government’s best weapons in prosecuting the people giving the orders.
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We have a both a moral and legal obligation to prosecute everyone involved in US government sanctioned torture — as Jay Ackroyd implies, they knew that what they were doing was torture, and was illegal, and the memos were sought as “cover”.

Even though sgw responded in perhaps the most appropriate – dismissive and belittling – manner to childerj, here is hilzoy providing a substantive response to the “substance of childerj’s post: "Prolonged Mental Harm":
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When you read these sections, it might help to have this report from Physicians for Human Rights in the back of your mind. PHR tracked down eleven people who had been detained in Iraq and Guantanamo, and assessed their medical and psychiatric condition. They were not detained by the CIA, but many of the techniques used on them were similar. Here are the results of their psychiatric evaluations, from the Report’s Executive Summary:
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“With one exception, the former detainees have experienced and continue to experience severe psychological effects of torture and ill-treatment as a result of their detention in US custody. All but one feel utterly hopeless and isolated, and lack the ability to sleep well, work, or engage in normal social relationships with their families. Seven individuals disclosed having contemplated suicide either while in detention or after being released.
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Most of the released detainees, to this day, live with severe anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder, including intrusive recollections of trauma suffered in detention, hyperarousal (persistent symptoms of increased arousal, e.g., difficulty falling or staying asleep, anger, and hypervigilance), avoidance and emotional numbing behavior. PHR’s clinicians determined that these symptoms were directly related to the torture and ill-treatment reported having taken place while in US custody, even after taking into account the fact that the released Iraqi former detainees are living in a war-torn environment. Amir explained, “These are the memories that I can never forget. I want to forget, but it is impossible.”
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For the four detainees who had experienced symptoms of depression or other mental disorders prior to detention, torture and ill-treatment by the US Personell severely exacerbated these conditions, and in one case it ignited such deep despair and dysfunction as to lead the detainee to repeated suicide attempts while at Guantanamo.”
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Just something to keep in mind.

I’m with Dee here. Let this play out. Obama has shown an ability to be patient. This step was one he couldn’t have taken without institutional discussion.
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another vote for the 11-dimensional chess master theory of Barack Obama, I see.

I reluctantly think Obama’s successfully threading a very narrow needle here. He quite specifically did not exempt government officials who approved this, or the lawyers who wrote the justification. Perhaps after some of them are investigated and prosecuted it would be the time to pursue those who carried out orders they knew were torture.
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My guess is that protecting the rank and file was the necessary price for getting the memos out, which was absolutely necessary for history and for the long-term integrity of this country.
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I also reluctantly agree that we are still in a precarious place economically and the near-term pursuit of torturers is not where the near term energy needs to go.
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It’s up to us to keep the heat on the administration and senators – especially Republicans – who are necessary for Sen Leahy et al to have the leverage to pursue this.

AS a retired Army MSG I say hats off to the “NO TORTURE” by our new president. Hold everyone accountable and those who commit torture should see the inside of Levenworth for a lenghthy stay. John McCain, former tortured POW during the VIET NAM war, should be remembered by all of us. I hope the Geneva Convention laws are drilled into all present and future US Government staff …that means everybody!… Thank you

This is really sad that these inhuman torturing practices were approved by our own government. I always relate the detention camps with concentration camps by Nazis which were established in which inmates were exposed to extreme torture and were used as slave labor until they died of exhaustion or disease. We have committed a sin. Hopefully, the world will forgive us. The world didn’t forgive the Nazis.

…some operators are asked to behave extra-legally for the greater good of the nation.
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Why won’t Obama let Jack Bauer be Jack Bauer?!?

“That it represents a “breach of faith.” This is an extremely serious claim in the intelligence culture, where some operators are asked to behave extra-legally for the greater good of the nation.”
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That’s a “serious claim” only to people trying to justify their own criminality and lovers of authority (you know, high RWAs). What they did harmed the country in every way possible, legally, morally, politically and in national security, while giving us nothing of even practical benefit. The “intelligence culture” is broken when it believes that it decides what a “breach” in service to its actual masters: the President and the citizens of the US. Thanks for the window into their their massive hubris as well as their bottomless depravity.

When Obama was campaigning, I sometimes argued in his favor against SZ. I trusted Obama; SZ said we must apply pressure and not trust him to keep his promises and do the right thing. I now say that I was wrong, and that I no longer believe Obama acts for the good of the people.

Torture is still the one issue powerful enough to make me a single issue voter. Torture is worse than killing, which is the reason it is not permitted under any circumstance by international treaties. Any argument that security threats or terrible behavior by our enemies justifies it is therefore absurd.

These people must be tried. Partially because what they did is so horrible. Partially because the government must not have the discretion to choose not to investigate it’s own misdeeds. The most important laws exist to limit what the government can do to real people. If the government can make this kind of deal with someone, government employee or not, and then decline to prosecute, then there are no limits on what the government can do.

Is there really anything scarier than the government being able to authorize and order people to do literally anything, and then immunize them afterwards? I don’t think so.

And I reject the idea that we should ignore the little guy to go after the big one. I’d love to see Cheney and Co. punished for this more than anything. But realistically, there is always the possibility of someone evil coming to power. The only way to stop that from leading to tragedies like this is for the little guy to be required to step forward and blow the whistle. Cheney had no conscience. I guarantee a few of the low-level guys did. If the culture were right, one of them might have blown the cover off this. Holding them accountable is a critical step in changing that culture.

Joe:
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I see paralells here between what Obama is doing and what Mandela did after the end of Apartheid.
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1. He has declined to persecute those who are involved in even the most heinous acts, even in the face of criticism of his own party. It appears that he might be doing so for the same reason he is not going after those who are trying to get as close to incitement as they can without going overboard.
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That particular reason is that he doesn’t want to create martyrs for the other side to unite behind. Mandelas’ approach was widely criticised, but the end result now is that SA has problems with crime and corruption – not insurrection.
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2. The publication of those documents may have riled the CIA some, but not as much as prosecuting them. Instead, this is the other aspect of his approach that is modeled after Mandela.
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In this case, Mandela implemented the ‘Truth and Reconciliation’ amnesty program. In Obama’s case, since there isn’t such a severe a political situaion (no one but Rove has likely visited crimes against humanity against our own citizens*), no such amnesty program would really work – the perpetrators would just stonewall, and there isn’t enough motivation there to move beyond that, politically. Hence, the publication of the documents which serves to discredit them instead, and expose their actions to the light of day.
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I think this is an example of very intelligent implementation and an equally astute assessment of the current political atmosphere.
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*I base this only on my hunch that Rove helped implement a strategy of ethnic cleansing after Katrina. I would not be surprised if he is at some point in the future, pointed to for this type of crime. However, if Obama can fix the country, I’m not going to complain too much if Rove is never investigated.

I see paralells here between what Obama is doing and what Mandela did after the end of Apartheid
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this is obscene.
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first off, there is no moral equivalence here. Madela represented the victims of apartheid; Obama was never tortured, and lacks the moral authority to act on behalf of those who have been tortured.
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secondly, its not true… see http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/president-mandela-will-not-halt-the-prosecution-of-a-former-defence-minister-1536900.html
Mandela allowed the prosecution of apartheid crimes — this is just one example.
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Agreed. Unlike Mandela, there is no moral high ground here for Obama, unless he holds his predecessors accountable for their actions.

[...] rather than applied only to elites who break the law act extra-legally (emphasis in original): Time’s Joe Klein purports to list all the dangers for Obama in alienating the CIA as he has:  morale will drop; [...]

pluk, shephard:
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I didn’t say that he never prosecuted those who committed Apartheid crimes. Obama’s decision not to prosecute them fits with his overall strategy of keeping himself pointed toward the future. His overall strategy is really what I meant to compare with Mandelas’ ‘Truth and Reconciliation’ program. As for Mandela prosecuting some of those cases, that’s what the Scorpions were for.

“Obama’s decision not to prosecute them fits with his overall strategy of keeping himself pointed toward the future.”
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Perhaps. And perhaps it also fits with not getting himself on the wrong side of the military/intelligence community and authoritarian friendly, centrist Villagers like Joe Klein.

shephardwong:
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Staying on the right side of them maybe is a good idea, with limitations, of course. I know some are pretty upset he’s not going to go after them, but then again, the way I feel about Karl Rove is very similar.
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Even then, I’ll trade it for an America that has been refurbished and functional – minus the Insane Mrfrks (Formerly know as the GOP).
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As for Joe Klein, well, I watched him evolve from a semirabid Bushie to someone quite a bit more observational.
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I don’t really consider him “authoritarian” freindly given his fued with the Neocons, which is rapidly rising to Hatfield/McCoy status in my mind.

[...] UPDATE:  Time’s Joe Klein purports to list all the dangers for Obama in alienating the CIA as he has:  morale will drop; they’ll all retire at the time he needs them most for Afghanistan and Pakistan; Obama is sparking a “potential rebellion in the clandestine service.”  Klein then unleashes this deeply Orwellian observation (h/t CRust1):  ”This is an extremely serious claim in the intelligence culture, where some operators are asked to behave extra-legally for the greater good of the nation.” [...]

sgwhiteinfla, how about answering my question instead of cowering behind verbal insults.

Can you honestly say that if you, or a loved one’s, life was on the line you would not want the CIA to use a “face slap” to get someone to talk?

Can you be truthful?

Joe klein is only fooling himself and wishing this will all go away, it will not go away. You can’t claim to be an example of democratic government and try to sweep war crimes,that we all know about,under the rug.The people in the White House who justified and authorized these war crimes must be brought to trial. Most likely this will happen many years from now in the International Court, but happen it will. This is the outcome that must and will happen. The world will not forget.

How’s this for a money making idea.
Sell jihadist souvenier shirts with slogans like:

My comrads behead Americans on TV
All I got was a lousy Waterboard

or

My associates planned 9/11
All I got was a lousy Bug in a Box

Any additional slogans would be apreciated.

For some more discussion on this, check out

http://polswatch.wordpress.com/2009/04/18/prosecutions-must-follow-the-release-of-the-torture-memos/

“As for Joe Klein, well, I watched him evolve from a semirabid Bushie to someone quite a bit more observational.
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I don’t really consider him “authoritarian” freindly given his fued with the Neocons, which is rapidly rising to Hatfield/McCoy status in my mind.”
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Well, that’s kind of the point. I don’t have very much to go by except Joe’s reliable credulity toward authority figures, particularly those attached to military and intelligence circles, even after they’ve been caught lying to him. That and watching his politics shift perceptibly toward whatever regime is in ascendance. The neocons, and Republicans in general, no longer have any authority whatsoever, so they’ll get no respect from Joe.

shephardwong:
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On the shift to whoever is in ascendance, I’ll go out on a limb here to defend Joe because when I signed on here, more than a year before the elections, the outcome was by no means clear. As a matter of fact, Hillary Clinton was the only one on the horizon and the Republicans really felt that she was beatable – and wanted her to be the one to run against.
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That means to me anyway that if Joe was pandering, he must have also been clairvoyent knowing how the election was going to come out.
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He definatly has wrestled with us Swampcritters, particularly on the FISA issue last year, and a group of us, I believe, helped him to attain some maturity on matters of race – we made him see the fallacies of the Southern Strategy.
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If anything can be said, to me, he’s almost a Swampcritter himself, in that off all of these Times pundits, his interactions with us has changed him.
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Maybe I’m taking too much credit for us critters, but even KT hasn’t, for all she’s interacted with us, taken home as much from it as Joe has.

53_3:

I’m here exactly because of the terrific opportunity to feed back directly to these journos. If you happen to think that what ails the populous politically has a lot to with our political media and part of what ails the political media is insularity and group think, what better opportunity to try to improve the narratives.
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So I like Joe because he interacts and seems to be trying to learn something from the experience but also because I think his heart’s in the right place. I just think that Joe is attracted to power and authority (who isn’t) and it makes him trust the wrong people too much. The “intelligence business” is really the “deception business” after all and Joe’s been around the block enough times to know that pushing the CIA narrative is almost always pushing some sort of lie.

shepardwong:
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I’ll give you this. I think that there are indeed defects in the man, as there are in all of us. It’s been great to interact with him in the way I have been able to.
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I know he doesn’t much appreciation for some of my views on Israel/Palestine, but he’s a rare voice in that forest too.
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Don’t you wish they would post something new? I’d like to hear some current stuff!

[...] a measured intelligence gathering tool that wouldn’t be allowed to get out of hand. But with the release of the Justice Department interrogation memos ordered by President Obama last week, it has become clear that the use of waterboarding seemed to [...]

[...] a measured intelligence gathering tool that wouldn’t be allowed to get out of hand. But with the release of the Justice Department interrogation memos ordered by President Obama last week, it has become clear that the use of waterboarding seemed to [...]

[...] On Monday, James Horne, a British researcher, who was also cited by the CIA medical experts in recently declassified memos, similarly called the agency’s medical reasoning [...]

[...] Today With President Barack Obama placed an observative post today on Torture Memos Released – Swampland – TIME.comHere’s a quick excerptSwampland on TIME.com … First the FISA violations, now news that the Obama Administration will release the so-called “torture memos” written by the Bush Administration’s … [...]

I totally agree with jayackroyd, there is NO DANGER in this world. We should do away with all aspects of the military, the Secret Service, the FBI, CIA, and the Deptartment of Homeland Security. Jayackroyd hit the nail on the head, this nonsense fearmongering HAS been shoved down our throats for the past 60 years. For what? I’m still waiting for even the slightest danger to rear its’ ugly head. I’ve read all of the history books, not one leg for the fearmongers to stand on in any of the books I’ve read. We, as a Nation, would be much safer without Secret Service, the Military, the FBI, CIA, and Homeland Security. The only bad things that happen in this world are caused by the fearmongers and their troops. Once we do away with those horrible groups, the police and firefighters need to go next. This would be a much better country without any of those advocates of fear. I, for one, voted for change, now I’d like to see that change.

[...] we’re not just talking about Dick Cheney here; we’re talking about MSM hacks like Joe Klein and Roger Cohen and David [...]