Hugh Hewitt on Obama’s urge to conduct a purge:
There is no serious prosecutor who would bring a charge against any of these Bush Adminstration officials. No one not from the far left side of the political spectrum can even frame the indictment or explain how the tactics less coercive than water-boarding could be considered criminal when Congress, offered the opportunity to declare water boarding a crime, refused to do so. When the left turns up a former United States Attorney or even senior prosecutor not named Ramsey Clark willing to lay out his theory of prosecution, that will be an argument worth responding to. This is a witch hunt, a political prosecution, one that should be a central issue in the campaigns of 2010.
I almost hope Obama goes ahead with it. It’d make the McCarthy years look like traffic court.
Cheney was right, Bush should’ve pardoned the US and Japanese soldiers we’d prosecuted for waterboarding.
It’s what’s been keeping us safe since the Spanish-American War.
Remember the Maine!
/jc
Slash is getting his history lessons from Paul Begala again.
I think they’re still trying to impeach Bush.
Why would congress declare water boarding a crime, when it was already a crime according to law? That would have been redundant, confusing, and unnecessary.
I think this is one of the most sad and cynical things I have read in a while, although I cannot say it is without merit either. Perhaps the greatest irony here is in the reference to Joe McCarthy.
While he is more well known for his communist scare hearings, McCarthy was less well known (except by us history buffs?) for having lobbied on behalf of a group of German soldiers in WWII. The captured soldiers were allegedly tortured by Allied forces. After being captured and tried for the executions of both allied soldiers and civilians during the Battle of the Bulge conflict, the sentences were modified after investigations and a variety of rehearings into the torture claims. The death sentences were commuted, and the German soldiers were eventually released in the ’50s.
So, while it Mitch may be right, and it is impossible to have a fair and non-partisan driven accountability under reasonably impartial law for illegal actions, I hope that is not true. Because if it is, our government is a complete failure, and everyone who puts partisan loyalty ahead of legitimate government is equally responsible for the failure.
We could have a witch hunt. Or we might just maybe, if we care enough, get a fair go at holding both Republicans AND Democrats responsible for the conduct and misconduct on behalf of our citizens.
McCarthy fanned a lot of fear about communist infiltrators, but no one who was accused was ever definitively proven to have done harm that I can recall. Unlike the McCarthy witch hunt, there has been real harm done by torture and the subsequent attempts at cover up, including death and imprisonment.
The rule of law should make it possible for not only convictions, but also exonerations. Maybe after the Bush years, we are so far removed from the rule of law, that an actual legally determined outcome is no longer possible. I hope that is not true. I hope that unlike the McCarthy era, that we won’t be leaping to the conclusions that anyone who wants to see accountability is by definition a communist, er, partisan witch-hunter, whose sole possible motive could ONLY be to advance one political party over another.
That would be a real shame.
Dog Gone, given that the Democrats control both houses of Congress and the Presidency, you will not have a ‘fair accounting’. You cannot change a political process into a legal process. You seem to simply want to see someone punished — this is the way witch hunts start.
So, while it Mitch may be right, and it is impossible to have a fair and non-partisan driven accountability under reasonably impartial law for illegal actions, I hope that is not true. Because if it is, our government is a complete failure, and everyone who puts partisan loyalty ahead of legitimate government is equally responsible for the failure.
Spare me the drama. In WW2 we violated the civil rights of thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry. No one was held accountable, unless you count an apology issued decades later by none of the people involved in the internment decision.
there has been real harm done by torture and the subsequent attempts at cover up, including death and imprisonment.
Remember those two towers falling? We are at war. If we forget this, our enemies will remind us. Think about the what the state of civil rghts in this country will be in the event of another 9/11 or something worse — and it could be far, far worse.
“there has been real harm done by torture and the subsequent attempts at cover up, including death and imprisonment.”
I smell cat piss! Innocent lives were at stake (and still are). These murderous thugs were not party to any Geneva accords on the treatment of POW, or entitled to be treated with regard to same. The mistake was to let anybody know we had captured them; they should have extracted the info they could and disappeared the remains.
Maybe after the Bush years, we are so far removed from the rule of law, that an actual legally determined outcome is no longer possible.
Under what rule of law is Obama entitled to force out GM’s Wagoner? To force Lewis to acquire Morgan Stanley and keep the ensuing losses from shareholders? And to now threaten Pandit’s job? And to threaten banks that try and repay the TARP stuff that was forced on *all* banks to prop up the weak ones?
If you want to talk about actions taken in good faith in an emergency that could easily result in prosecutions under a different administration, we’re seeing stuff that’s *clearly and explicitly illegal* now going on. Geithner and Bernanke better plan on villas in Paraguay at this rate.
To force Lewis to acquire Morgan Stanley and keep the ensuing losses from shareholders?
Can’t put that one on Obama. That was Paulson. Otherwise, spot on. Team Obama is quite comfortable using the confiscatory procedures that were put in place under TARP, as they have demonstrated.
You know who the real McCarthyists are?
The 1922 Mississippi Supreme Court justices who threw out the conviction of a black man who confessed to killing a white man under the “barborous circumstance” of the “water cure” which “consisted of pouring water from a dipper into the nose of appellant, so as to strangle him, thus causing pain and horror, for the purpose of forcing a confession.”
White v. State, 91 So. 903, 904 (Miss. 1922).
Damn liberal 1922 Mississippi judges.
Four years later, those same socialist fascist judges had the America-hating gall to call the “the water cure, a specie of torture well known to the bench and bar of the country.” Fisher v. State, 110 So. 361, 362 (Miss. 1926).
That’s it, I’m seceding from Mississippi.
/jc
Now, without wanting to go into the specifics of the international law involved (something that international lawyers have been wrangling about for quite some time), can you tell me, Slash, if there’s a difference in legal status between:
1) American citizens accused of crimes (in or, apparently in the 1922 case, out of the criminal justice system) who are subject to fairly clear constitutional protections from torture, to say nothing of due process and representation, and…
2) Terrorists captured overseas who are NOT subject to ANY of the protections of the Geneva Convention (they are neither soldiers nor partisans) nor US law?
Ask Colbert.
Terry says:
“Spare me the drama. In WW2 we violated the civil rights of thousands of American citizens of Japanese ancestry. No one was held accountable, unless you count an apology issued decades later by none of the people involved in the internment decision.”
You probably have a rather unique viewpoint, living in Hawaii, in greater proximity to Pearl Harbor.
Are you asserting here that it was a positive action for the US to do what we did in WW 2 to Japanese americans? I had always been taught to regard this as a shameful incident in our history. I particularly remember learning about how courageously the Niponese units fought on behalf of the US in Europe despite the deplorable treatment of their friends and family. Our country behaved very badly (although short of torture) to Japanese Americans, not only during but in some cases for an extended period of time afte WW2.
Arguably, our government SHOULD have been accountable for their treatment of our Japanese-American citizens.
An interesting observation to how we regarded our other ethnic citizens, my father was flying long range recon, off of carriers, based out of Pearl during WW2. As an American of German ethnicity from Minnesota, he was sent to the Pacific as a pilot instead of the European theater because apparently Americans of German ethinicity were not entirely trusted in Europe. Even though he held some mid-range level security clearance.
The ‘polite’ explanation was that our government did not want to put soldiers in the position of possibly shooting people to whom they might be related. However apparently the military was also a bit more blunt about where and why people were being assigned. I always thought it was a bit of a slap in the face to accept the service of someone, including assigning the most dangerous possible duty, but tell them … hey, we don’t entirely trust you. Now go fight for your country.
Mitch-
It’s not a matter of the Geneva convention. It’s a matter of the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which was signed by the US back in ’88.
It has since been violated by Reagan, Clinton, and Bush II — probably Bush I if everything was known.
That’s why the talk about the ‘rule of law’ is a joke. None of the people who want to put Bush in the dock have any interest at all in looking at what happened in the Clinton years, in part because some current Obama administration have bloody hands.
Slash, of course, is merely continuing his misinformation campaign. You can tell when these Lefties are in trouble when they start to draw false analogies in attempt to make their point.
“everyone who puts partisan loyalty ahead of legitimate government is equally responsible for the failure.”
Then I suggest you and Peev and AssClown stop being so partisan.
That’s right, dogcrap, you are a partisan hack! Here is just one example: “Maybe after the Bush years, we are so far removed from the rule of law,…”
Bush is not President, your cries for impeachment are delusional.
Dog Gone, the point I was trying to make is that our government did not become a complete failure because internment continued throughout WW2 & an official apology didn’t happen for decades.
These days it seems to be the people on the left that who view the US as an exceptional nation. In some ways we are and in some ways we aren’t. The US did things in the decades from 1900 until very recently that would chill your spine, sometimes in pursuit of conservative goals, sometimes in pursuit of liberal goals, and sometimes in pursuit of military victory.
You write: “Arguably, our government SHOULD have been accountable for their treatment of our Japanese-American citizens. ”
And it certainly is an arguable point. The first question I would ask is “who has the legal and moral authority to hold the government responsible for events that occurred 65 years ago?” The second question would be “How is the government going to be held accountable?”
Just as a story only has meaning when it is told and heard, history only exists in the present.
Case in point: in the first year of his presidency Bill Clinton signed an ‘apology resolution’ passed by congress. The apology was for the US role in the coup that ended the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 & led to Hawaii’s annexation by the United States. This apology was sponsored both of Hawaii’s senators.
The amount of responsibility that official US policy had for the coup is heavily disputed. Inouye & Akaka introduced the apology to address political issues they faced in 1993, not in 1893. Bill Clinton signed it as payback to Hawaii Governor John Waihee for early support in the 1992 primary season. The coup happened in 1893, but the apology resolution had more to do with politics in 1993 than it had to do with what happened a century earlier.
You right-wing cowards would sell out your grannies for a little extra security. You’re un-American and you make Angryclown puke.
Terry Says:
April 24th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
“Dog Gone, the point I was trying to make is that our government did not become a complete failure because internment continued throughout WW2 & an official apology didn’t happen for decades.
These days it seems to be the people on the left that who view the US as an exceptional nation. In some ways we are and in some ways we aren’t. The US did things in the decades from 1900 until very recently that would chill your spine, sometimes in pursuit of conservative goals, sometimes in pursuit of liberal goals, and sometimes in pursuit of military victory.”
Eloquently expressed Terry – and I completely agree with you that our government did not become a complete failure because of the interment camps of WW2, and certainly that we have not always been an exceptional nation. However, it seems to me that we are only an exceptional nation when we make the attempt to live up to our highest standards during the greatest threats and challenges.
I’ve read the opinions of people asserting that the release of the torture memos is somehow beneficial to Obama and his ilk. Rather, while we are promoting the practices of democratic government in areas that are up for grabs between people who favor modern representation, and the very backward forms of essentially tribal organization promoted by the Taliban and al Quaida. If we don’t, or can’t, demonstrate rule of law providing the same justice to those who are wealthy and / or powerful we apply to the lowest person in our society, why should any country adopt it? If we cannot demonstrate how partisan factions to cooperate enough to govern — that is the biggest win Obama and his faction could ask for: we ourselves demonstrating that our system doesn’t work.
I was not arguing for holding the US government accountable for the detentions now, so much as arguing that the government should have been held accountable at the time.
I was only vaguely aware of the coup back in 1893; we barely touched on that in my American history classes. Thanks for the education.
Thank for the compliment, Dog Gone.
You have far more confidence in the allure of modernism than I do.
I don’t think that the al Qaida terrorists are any more ignorant about the modern West than we are about Fundamentalist Islam. Conflict is inevitable. Our side will win, in the end, but it will transform us.
…into the kind of country no longer worth defending. At least if you far-right types get your way. Fortunately things aren’t going your way much lately.
Terry Says:
“You have far more confidence in the allure of modernism than I do.”
You may be right, but if you observe how many western or modern things even the most extreme isalmic factions seem to adapt – the technology, in some cases entertainment, even clothing, among other things, I think that is a fair observation.
Terry says
“I don’t think that the al Qaida terrorists are any more ignorant about the modern West than we are about Fundamentalist Islam.”
Like the previous observation, we are more observable, through the various media, than the fundamentalist islam followers are to us. It is a good point to keep in mind that we make as much or more of an impact through what we are seen to do, than just by what we say.
Terry says:
“Conflict is inevitable. Our side will win, in the end, but it will transform us.”
Yes, I think conflict is inevitable. I hope you are right that our side will win. Recognizing that transformational change is going to occur, I’m arguing for trying to have some kind of control over that change as much as possible, not just having it happen to us passively.
I hope you are correct that our side will win in the end. It is not something we can take for granted.
K-rod, you are the poster child for the vocabulary word inchoate.
I don’t want to see Bush and his administration impeached, well, possibly with the exception of Bybee as judge. There are reports, although I don’t know how reliable, that he has already engaged an attorney in anticipation of an investigation and prosecution.
I want to see the appropriate investigation and prosecution for crimes, not only of the Bush bunch, but also of the others complicit in violating the law. Seems like Reid is starting to sweat the notion of an investigation, and I find Pelosi’s denials unconvincing in the extreme.
But we don’t know that any crimes have been committed, Dog Gone. We know what happened, though, and why this is bring brought up now:
Cheney made some well-publicized comments about Obama making the US less safe by suspending or reversing soem of Bush’s anti-terrorism policies.
Obama’s people release some memos that make Bush & co. look bad & raise the possibility of an investigation of sort.
Cheney is pushing back by insisting that specific documents be released as well.
This is about politics, not the law, and I think Obama is overplaying his hand.
Terry writes:
“But we don’t know that any crimes have been committed, Dog Gone. We know what happened, though, and why this is bring brought up now:
Cheney made some well-publicized comments about Obama making the US less safe by suspending or reversing soem of Bush’s anti-terrorism policies.”
Respectfully, I think this might be an oversimplification Terry, and that the timeline is larger than this. There have been a series of court cases driving the whole larger issue of detainees, including the one that forced the Obama administration to release the most recent memos under FOIA. But the success of other court cases domestically, as well as the potential for court cases outside the US like Spain are part of the equation.
I think that Obama would have been happier NOT to release the memos, to blow off Cheney, and go forward. As it is, this is getting way out of any possible control of his administration, taking away the focus from what he wanted to accomplish.
Cheney has only requested a couple of pages, taken out of a larger context, written at a substantial remove from the actual interrogation.
While the people that actually run SERE in the armed forces have produced memos indicating prior to any torture taking place that it would be not only unproductive, but also that it would make it impossible for non-coercive techniques that had been producing information ever to work again. The most recent of those court cases resolved in the favor of detainees caught outside of Afghanistan, who are not Afghanis, but have been held at Bagram air force base. This is much larger than just three guys and waterboarding in Gitmo – I think rightly so.
An interesting exchange on the subject:
http://patterico.com/2009/04/25/liz-cheney-on-waterboardingharsh-interrogation-tactics/
Obama supports studying even more extreme interrogation methods.
Will the shun boy AssClown call for his impeachment? Will Dogcrap demand a subpoena? Why stop there? Let’s get comrad Kerry to tell us about more war crimes and torture!!! Can we at least get a Dean Scream?
“Thanks for the education.” – DogGone
You’ve got a long way to go, doggie.