Original photo by Elizabeth Cromwell, used pursuant to this license | by Damozel | Obama's going to be visiting CIA headquarters today to "make public remarks to employees, as well as meet privately with officials, an agency spokesman said Sunday night." (NYT) (266 waterboardings to two suspects!) There's no indication that he intends to call anyone to account for any of this.
As we all know, he's already assured the operatives responsible for this and other, er, "excesses" that those who used "harsh interrogation methods" (waterboarding) aren't going to be prosecuted for war crimes because -- apparently -- they weren't to know that torturing people was wrong if a couple of attorneys from Bush's DoJ said it is all right so long as you don't intend to hurt anyone by it and don't think of it as "torture" but as "defending America." After all, there's a reason why Cheney said that waterboarding is a "no-brainer" for him, even if it did get his administration accused of torture:
Let us hope that Obama will at least see to it that the perpetrators --sorry, operatives -- are ingloriously fired, or at least sent to one of those remote postings in some place like Ultima Thule that CIA officials who screw up are sent to in the movies.
People who are too unintelligent to know that waterboarding -- let alone waterboarding one suspect 183 times -- is torture have no business in Intelligence. Though on second thought, maybe this explains why over the years they have been able to reiterate the following with straight faces: "The
United States does not conduct or condone torture. The CIA's terrorist
interrogation effort has always been small, carefully run, lawful and
highly productive. "(ABC News)
In the meantime, Rahmbo has said that the authors of the torture memos won't be prosecuted for irresponsibly and in contravention of their duties as officers of the court etc. etc. are not to be held accountable for misleading those poor, gulllible CIA agents with all that bad law and those arguments a first year law student could tear to shreds.
Some analysts and lawmakers have called for investigations and possible prosecution of those involved because they say four of the memos, disclosed last week by President Obama, illegally authorized torture. Emanuel's dismissal of the idea went beyond Obama's pledge not to prosecute CIA officers who acted on the Justice Department's legal advice.
"It's not a time to use our energy and our time in looking back" out of "any sense of anger and retribution," Emanuel said on ABC's "This Week."
Ex CIA Director Michael Hayden -- whose anger seems a bit misdirected -- stepped up the other day to slam Obama (on Fox News) for releasing the DoJ memos.
"By taking [certain] techniques off the table, we have made it more difficult -- in a whole host of circumstances I can imagine -- for CIA officers to defend the nation," he said.(CNN)
To that, I can only respond: 266 waterboardings administered to two suspects strikes me as a pretty extreme "outer limit." If anything threatens our national security, it's the wrongdoing of the CIA and not the fact that it was -- as it needed to be -- exposed to the public. The New York Times has the story on the multiple waterboardings
Given that any number of intelligence officials have publicly stated that torture isn't the best practice if you want to get useful information, the guys at the CIA apparently need to upgrade their interrogation technology.
The fact that waterboarding was repeated so many times may raise questions about its effectiveness, as well as about assertions by Bush administration officials that their methods were used under strict guidelines.
A footnote to another 2005 Justice Department memo released Thursday said waterboarding was used both more frequently and with a greater volume of water than the C.I.A. rules permitted. (NYT)
It was probably "necessary torture" though, right? Those guys just would not cooperate no matter how harshly they were interrogated...
And I'm pretty certain the last thing anyone who voted for him wanted was his complicity in helping to sweep Bush administration war crimes under the Oval Office rug.
And may karma or whoever is in charge of these things reward Marcy Wheeler for drawing attention to the story.
Please sign the petition calling for Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor.....
RECENT BUCK NAKED POLITICS POSTINGS
Updated: Did the Bush Administration Condone Torture? (Warning: horrifying details included)
The Torture Administration: Exposed; The Operatives: Indemnified & Immunized
DoJ to Release Torture Memos; but Obama Won't Prosecute
Tales of the Torture Administration: Harsh Interrogation Led to False Leads
Tales of the Torture Administration: What Happened at the CIA Black Sites?
Seymour Hersh: Cheney's "Executive Assassination Ring"
Obama Releases Bush's Secret Anti-Terror Memos
CIA Destroyed At Least 92 Tapes of "Extremely Harsh" Interrogations
The Torture Administration Continued: Former Gitmo Guard Speaks Out
I mean, there are a lot of reasons why people might be against waterboarding. But come on! Don't you have to concede that just because the majority believes waterboarding is torture, that isn't necessarily the case?
Posted by: Reasons why people might be against waterboarding | June 13, 2009 at 01:17 PM