Sullivan: "If You Want to Know How Democracies Die, Read These Memos"; Olbermann and Others to Obama: "Prosecute, Mr. President"

  by Damozel | There are many points on which I disagree with Andrew Sullivan, but torture is not one of them.  Once again, he nails it:

[A]fter the 2004 re-election, after the original period of panic...[the Bush Administration made the decision to] set up a torture program, replete with every professional and bureaucratic nicety. This is why the Bradbury memo of 2005 is so much more chilling in its way. This was long after Abu Ghraib, long after the initial panic, and a pre-meditated attempt to turn the US into a secret torture state.

These legal memos construct a form of torture, through various classic torture techniques, used separately and in combination, that were to be used systematically, by a professional torture team along the lines proposed by Charles Krauthammer, and buttressed by a small army of lawyers, psychologists and doctors - especially doctors - to turn the US into a torture state. The legal limits were designed to maximize the torture while minimizing excessive physical damage, to take prisoners to the edge while making sure, by the use of medical professionals, that they did not die and would not have permanent injuries.

The torture techniques were all the more brutal in order to push back against the reputation of the US even in the minds of Qaeda or alleged Qaeda members. What Mukasey and Hayden are arguing for today is a scheme whereby, in secret, the US government credibly allows captives to believe they are in an endless, bottomless pit of extra-legal terror. This is the state of mind they are trying to construct by torture. That's the point of the sensory deprivation, the disappearances, the sequestering from the Red Cross, the endless solitary confinement, the IRFing, the hoods, the nudity, and all the other sadism. It is precisely to persuade the barbarians that we are as bad as they are and have no limits and no qualms in doing to them whatever we want. (The Daily Dish)

Which tells us everything we need to know about the true legacy of Bush and his gang of thugs.

Looked at from a distance, the Bush administration wanted to do two things at once: to declare to the world that freedom is on the march, and human rights are coming to the world with American help, while simultaneously declaring to captives that the US has no interest in the law, human rights, accountability, transparency or humanity. They wanted to give hope to all the oppressed of the planet, while surgically banishing all hope from the prisoners they captured and tortured. And the only way they could pull this off is by the total secrecy they constructed and defended. So we had a public government respectful of the rule of law, and a secret government whose main goal was persuading terror suspects that there was no rule of law at all. It is hard to convey just how dangerous this was and is...

If you want to know how democracies die, read these memos. (The Daily Dish).

And most especially I agree with this:

The question of prosecution remains. It's a painful decision. My view is that those who pay the legal price should be, first and foremost, those who authorized this at the highest levels. My view is also that it is a travesty that the Abu Ghraib reservists were prosecuted, and yet far, far more culpable people are claiming it would be too divisive to prosecute them. My view is that no one is above the law, and that when a society based on law prosecutes the powerless and excuses the powerful, it is corroding its own soul...Justice can be slow as long as it is guaranteed.  (The Daily Dish)

Slow or fast, nothing Obama's said so far has convinced me that we are ever going to see justice done.

Greenwald emphasizes again that Obama deserves enormous praise for releasing the memos at all.

I think the significance of Obama's decision to release those memos -- and the political courage it took -- shouldn't be minimized.  There is no question that many key factions in the "intelligence community" were vehemently opposed to release of those memos.  I have no doubt that reports that they waged a "war" to prevent  release of these memos were absolutely true.  The disgusting comments of former CIA Director Mike Hayden on MSNBC yesterday -- where he made clear that he simply does not believe in the right of citizens to know what their government does and that government crimes should be kept hidden-- is clearly what Obama was hearing from many powerful circles.  That twisted anti-democratic mentality is the one that predominates in our political class. 

In the United States, what Obama did yesterday is simply not done.  American Presidents do not disseminate to the world documents which narrate in vivid, elaborate detail the dirty, illegal deeds done by the CIA, especially not when the actions are very recent, were approved and ordered by the President of the United States, and the CIA is aggressively demanding that the documents remain concealed and claiming that their release will harm national security.  When is the last time a President did that?... 

Other than mildly placating growing anger over his betrayals of his civil liberties commitments (which, by the way, is proof of the need to criticize Obama when he does the wrong thing), there wasn't much political gain for Obama in releasing these documents.  And he certainly knew that, by doing so, he would be subjected to an onslaught of accusations that he was helping Al Qaeda and endangering American National Security.  And that's exactly what happened, as in this cliché-filled tripe from Hayden and Michael Mukasey in today's Wall St. Journal, and this from an anonymous, cowardly "top Bush official" smearing Obama while being allowed to hide behind the Jay Bybee of journalism, Politico's Mike Allen.  (Salon)

But Greenwald reiterates that he himself believes that  the need to prosecute those responsible "is absolute and non-negotiable (and, as I wrote earlier today, in the case of torture, criminal investigations are legally compelled).  A collective refusal to prosecute the grotesque war crimes that we know our Government committed is to indict all of us in those crimes, to make us complict in their commission."

On Countdown, Olbermann and Jonathan Turley criticized Obama for his opposition.  "Mr. President, you're wrong," said Olbermann.  Here is his eloquent commentary:

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John Dean also weighed in and also gave Obama credit for releasing the memos.  Olbermann specifically asks Dean about the CIA's "just following orders" defense.  Dean:  "It gave them the cover they needed....It's become a kind of Republican thing to stack the Justice Department to get the opinions they want."  Dean thinks Obama's pass applies only to those who implemented the policy, but not those who created it.  He thinks Obama has left the door open to prosecute those responsible. 

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Memeorandum has more.

RELATED BUCK NAKED POLITICS POSTINGS

The Torture Administration: Exposed; The Operatives: Indemnified & Immunized

DoJ to Release Torture Memos; but Obama Won't Prosecute

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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

Comments

[Jorge]

The article by Andy Sullivan in The Atlantic was excellent. If our society lets those at the top who put in place the policies which gave the go ahead to the atrocities and the tortures, then we are not truly a nation of laws, but a nation of excuses.

[Adam]

Really, it's the best stuff I've ever seen from Sullivan. Just brilliant.

I must admit I've been pleasantly surprised by Olbermann's treatment of the torture issue and Obama's legal actions for the last month. I had basically written him off as purely partisan. His stance on this subject shows that he has an ideological core that doesn't blindly follow the interests of the Democratic party.