Crooks and Liars make an excellent point that this isn’t some partisan smear job by some crazy leftist group, this is the Red Cross that is saying our president committed war crimes.
It’s something that has certainly been spoken of within the liberal blogosphere. I’ve seen the random bumpersticker or freeway blogger suggest it as well, but it is no longer something that can be written off as a partisan or extremist view. As Countdown guest host Rachel Maddow and George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley discuss on Friday, the International Committee of the Red Cross sent a report last year to the CIA saying that the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo was unquestionably torture and the Bush administration officials that approved the treatment are war criminals.
According to the Red Cross that makes Bush a war criminal.
From Andrew Sullivan…
“Categorically” Torture
That’s the Red Cross’ analysis of what Bush and Cheney sanctioned in Gitmo, according to Jane Mayer’s new book. I’ve read some summaries of the book’s key points but haven’t gotten a hold of the galleys yet. But suffice to say: it’s as bad as we feared:
The book says Abu Zubaydah told the Red Cross that he had been waterboarded at least 10 times in a single week and as many as three times in a day.
The book also reports that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, told the Red Cross that he had been kept naked for more than a month and claimed that he had been “kept alternately in suffocating heat and in a painfully cold room.”
The report says the prisoners considered the “most excruciating” of the methods being shackled to the ceiling and being forced to stand for as long as eight hours. Eleven of the 14 prisoners reported prolonged sleep deprivation, the book says, including “bright lights and eardrum-shattering sounds 24 hours a day.”
This is what we know from the history of torture. Some of the least superficially awful techniques - such as the Gestapo-perfected “stress positions” and “hypothermia” - can actually be the worst in terms of suffering. There is no doubt at this point that the president of the United States is a war criminal. The only question is whether he will ever be brought to justice.
President Bush says he was aware that his top aides met in the White House basement to micromanage the application of waterboarding and other widely-condemned interrogation techniques. And he says it was no big deal.
“I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved,” Bush told ABC News’ Martha Raddatz on Friday. “I don’t know what’s new about that; I’m not so sure what’s so startling about that.”
Only the fact that torture is against the law.
If you consider what the government did to be torture, which is a crime according to U.S. and international law, Bush’s statement shifts his role from being an accessory after the fact to being part of a conspiracy to commit.
Last week, John Yoo’s 2003 torture memo was released by the Justice Department. The memo was written to justify the President’s power to torture without regard to any laws or treaties and has been the Bush administration’s policy ever since.
In this clip, Yoo says that it is legal to crush your child’s testicles if the President thinks he needs to do that.
“Illinois Democrats close to Sen. Barack Obama are quietly passing the word that John Edwards will be named attorney general in an Obama administration,” according to Robert Novak.
The appointment of Edwards “would please not only the union leaders supporting him for president but organized labor in general. The unions relish the prospect of an unequivocal labor partisan as the nation’s top legal officer.”
“In public debates, Obama and Edwards often seem to bond together in alliance against front-running Sen. Hillary Clinton. While running a poor third, Edwards could collect a substantial bag of delegates under the Democratic Party’s proportional representation. Edwards then could try to turn his delegates over to Obama in the still unlikely event of a deadlocked Democratic National Convention.”
Novak isn’t the most popular reporter amongst Democrats, but I think Edwards as Attorney General is an excellent idea. Taking on the corporate interests that control Washington DC has been the theme of Edwards’ campaign. As Attorney General, Edwards would have the ability to investigate and hold accountable corporations that have abused the system.
Obama could name Edwards as his choice for Attorney General before the general election and Edwards could campaign on the need to restore the Constitution when it comes to domestic spying, torture, and Habeas Corpus and against corruption in government.
I was very surprised to read that Tom Ridge, the first secretary of Homeland Security, has said that waterboarding is torture.
“There’s just no doubt in my mind - under any set of rules - waterboarding is torture,” TomRidge said Friday in an interview with the Associated Press. Ridge had offered the same opinion earlier in the day to members of the American Bar Association at a homeland security conference.
“One of America’s greatest strengths is the soft power of our value system and how we treat prisoners of war, and we don’t torture,” Ridge said in the interview. Ridge was secretary of the Homeland Security Department between 2003 and 2005. “And I believe, unlike others in the administration, that waterboarding was, is - and will always be - torture. That’s a simple statement.”
Over at Bleeding Heartland, DesMoinesDem takes a look at today’s Republican party in a post called Checking in on Republican Culture. She talks about the decline of the moderate Republican and the rise of the religous right.
She quotes an article by Time’s Joe Klein about a focus group ratings of the CNN/YouTube debate that took place last week. The amazing part of Klein’s article, that is the heart of DesMoinesDem’s post, shows how much Republicans love torture.
When John McCain started talking about torture–specifically, about waterboarding–the dials plummeted again. Lower even than for the illegal Children of God. Down to the low 20s, which, given the natural averaging of a focus group, is about as low as you can go. Afterwards, Luntz asked the group why they seemed to be in favor of torture. “I don’t have any problem pouring water on the face of a man who killed 3000 Americans on 9/11,” said John Shevlin, a retired federal law enforcement officer. The group applauded, appallingly.
