Top Bush aides pushed for Guantánamo torture | World news | The Guardian

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Top Bush aides pushed for Guantánamo torture: Senior officials bypassed army chief to introduce interrogation methods by Richard Norton-Taylor The Guardian, Saturday April 19 2008: America's most senior general was "hoodwinked" by top Bush administration officials determined to push through aggressive interrogation techniques of terror suspects held at Guantánamo Bay, leading to the US military abandoning its age-old ban on the cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners, the Guardian reveals today. General Richard Myers, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff from 2001 to 2005, wrongly believed that inmates at Guantánamo and other prisons were protected by the Geneva conventions and from abuse tantamount to torture. The way he was duped by senior officials in Washington, who believed the Geneva conventions and other traditional safeguards were out of date, is disclosed in a devastating account of their role, extracts of which appear in today's Guardian.

In his new book, Torture Team, Philippe Sands QC, professor of law at University College London, reveals that:

• Senior Bush administration figures pushed through previously outlawed measures with the aid of inexperienced military officials at Guantánamo.
• Myers believes he was a victim of "intrigue" by top lawyers at the department of justice, the office of vice-president Dick Cheney, and at Donald Rumsfeld's defence department.
• The Guantánamo lawyers charged with devising interrogation techniques were inspired by the exploits of Jack Bauer in the American TV series 24.
• Myers wrongly believed interrogation techniques had been taken from the army's field manual.

The lawyers, all political appointees, who pushed through the interrogation techniques were Alberto Gonzales, David Addington and William Haynes. Also involved were Doug Feith, Rumsfeld's under-secretary for policy, and Jay Bybee and John Yoo, two assistant attorney generals. The revelations have sparked a fierce response in the US from those familiar with the contents of the book, and who are determined to establish accountability for the way the Bush administration violated international and domestic law by sanctioning prisoner abuse and torture. The Bush administration has tried to explain away the ill-treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq by blaming junior officials. Sands' book establishes that pressure for aggressive and cruel treatment of detainees came from the top and was sanctioned by the most senior lawyers.

Myers was one top official who did not understand the implications of what was being done. Sands, who spent three hours with the former general, says he was "confused" about the decisions that were taken. Myers mistakenly believed that new techniques recommended by Haynes and authorised by Rumsfeld in December 2002 for use by the military at Guantánamo had been taken from the US army field manual. They included hooding, sensory deprivation, and physical and mental abuse. "As we worked through the list of techniques, Myers became increasingly hesitant and troubled," writes Sands. "Haynes and Rumsfeld had been able to run rings around him."

Myers and his closest advisers were cut out of the decision-making process. He did not know that Bush administration officials were changing the rules allowing interrogation techniques, including the use of dogs, amounting to torture. "We never authorised torture, we just didn't, not what we would do," Myers said. Sands comments: "He really had taken his eye off the ball ... he didn't ask too many questions ... and kept his distance from the decision-making process."

Larry Wilkerson, a former army officer and chief of staff to Colin Powell, US secretary of state at the time, told the Guardian: "I do know that Rumsfeld had neutralised the chairman [Myers] in many significant ways. The secretary did this by cutting [Myers] out of important communications, meetings, deliberations and plans. At the end of the day, however, Dick Myers was not a very powerful chairman in the first place, one reason Rumsfeld recommended him for the job". He added: "Haynes, Feith, Yoo, Bybee, Gonzalez and - at the apex - Addington, should never travel outside the US, except perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel. They broke the law; they violated their professional ethical code. In future, some government may build the case necessary to prosecute them in a foreign court, or in an international court."

Impeach George W. Bush. Impeach Richard Cheney. Impeach all present and former members of their personal staffs. Impeach Gonzales, Addington, Haynes, Feith, Bybee, and Yoo. Impeach every present and former cabinet and subcabinet official in the Bush administration.

Do it now.

Comments

[psychohistorian]

Thank you. I would like to see an international trial for war crimes covering the whole lot of them.

[erewhon]

Let's climb out of this fantasy realm. Until Americans, all or almost all of us, renounce this insane bombing and remote control destruction in Iraq and the wasting of financial resources, we must point the finger at the person in the mirror. We want a government that offers something for nothing. Our press loved jokester Bush in 2000, just as they love senile old John McCain. If Bush were to go into the docket, many members of Congress would be unindicted co-conspirators.

When you say impeach Bush, it’s the same crap as people saying in the 60s- it’s only outside agitators, we would never countenance such actions. Are we Americans ready to bite that bullet and face the brutal realities?

[jerry]

Impeach Yoo? Interesting idea. Does anyone know where he currently works? Is anything being done to hold him accountable even there?

Or is he being protected by yet another old boy's network, consisting of colleagues all too willing to rationalize why he is invulnerable in his current role?

Oh well, more blogging under the bridge, when what really needs to be done is for one tenured professor to stand up against tyranny.

[MobiusKlein]

May I note that the professor rightly calls for impeachment, since it is the sole control allowed against a rogue executive.

Also note he does not call for the conviction in the Senate. We are all aware that getting 66 votes will not happen. But impeachment alone may be worth it.

[Tomas]

Re: Jack Bauer

The long running debat and handwringing over children watching violence in TV and movie and the fear that the children cannot tell the difference between fiction and reality seems to have missed a central argument:

Shows like 24 should not be allowed on the grounds that the chickenhawks cannot tell that stuff that works in a TV show might not make good policy. The squarking classes cannot cope with the fact/fiction distinction, especially when it plays to their faux machoist bias.

Maybe they got they economic policy ideas from watching My Little Pony reruns.

[Patrick (G)]

Impeach or Indict ?
Isn't Impeachment rather beside the point once the individuals are no longer in office?
On the flip side, are there any statutes of limitation for the crimes alleged that would prevent indictment?

Granted, given the corruption of the Department of Justice, Indictment has about the same chance of occurring as Impeachment has of being ratified in the Senate.

[Patrick (G)]

Impeach or Indict ?
Isn't Impeachment rather beside the point once the individuals are no longer in office?
On the flip side, are there any statutes of limitation for the crimes alleged that would prevent indictment?

Granted, given the corruption of the Department of Justice, Indictment has about the same chance of occurring as Impeachment has of being ratified in the Senate.

[ogmb]

The honor...

Any chance Dean Edley can find some funding to send John Yoo on a lecture tour in Europe?

[Neal]

http://berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/2008/03/05_torture.shtml

(quote)
“Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles,” Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia explained at a conference last year in Ottawa, referring to an episode of 24 that had the City of Angels in the grip of terrorists plotting to detonate a nuclear weapon. (The program, which Newsweek once called “a neocon sex fantasy,” is also a hit with such prominent conservatives as Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, and Scalia’s high-court ally Clarence Thomas.) “Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?” challenged Scalia. “Say that criminal law is against him? ‘You have the right to a jury trial?’ Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don’t think so.”
(end quote)

Face it--it's a criminal gang that has taken over the government with the acquiescence of spineless Democrats. Everyone got so scared of the bogeyman that they will let daddy beat the stuffed animals under the bed to make them safe. No justice to be found there.

And the worst thing about it--who will stop it after the next election?

After all, Jack Bauer is a hero!! Who knows what he saved us from? What Democratic wimp would dare hold Jack back?

That's the real problem, the bar for leadership is being set lower everyday in everyway.

But the real issue is that someone said that Americans are bitter and that God may not look favorably on America.

Romans 12:17-21

Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. On the contrary:
"If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head." Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

[Anderson]

"Myers mistakenly believed that new techniques recommended by Haynes and authorised by Rumsfeld in December 2002 for use by the military at Guantánamo had been taken from the US army field manual."

GMAFB. The Army's "top general" doesn't know what's in his own service's field manual? He can't look it up?

The circular firing squad of finger-pointers in this whole sorry crowd would be child's play for any competent prosecutor -- about a dozen indictments would break the whole thing open, and we would know pretty much everything there is to know, except for whatever Cheney and Addington said to each other when no one else was in the room.

[MaryLou]

General Myers: Hands-off management style or master of deniability?

[piotr]

General Myers: the leakers write history.

Plus, you would be surprise how susceptible high officials are to pressure.

One question is: why the regime of torture was enacted at all? Is it the influence of TV programs?

My theory: the electoral strategy of GOP was to prove to the terrified population that only GOP is made of sufficiently stern stuff to do whatever is necessary to stem the terrorist/jihadist tide, the worst danger in the history of the West. But how to do it when Dems are rolling over and laud everything Bush invents? So, they had to go an extra mile.

Seemingly, by trial and error, GOP settled on waterboarding as the line that they will cross and Dems would not. But the glory days of torture seem to be over. I am pretty sure that Abu Ghraib gain more votes for Bush than lost, although few would admit that to pollsters. But now, the most colorful methods are, at least officially, forsworn, and the determination to waterboard does not absolve the general feeling of ineptitude of the whole adventure.

Alternative theory is that Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney genuinely got kicks from fantasies about the tortures they were designing. Those two alternatives are not exclusive, however. Torture, however conceives, rots the mind of people who perform it and of those who plan it. Strategies are replaced with obsessions.

[mistah charley, ph.d.]

In practice, "impeachment" is as dead as "declaring war" prior to implementing mass murder of foreigners by the American national military establishment, despite the fact that both procedures have not been formally amended, unlike the "runner up gets to be veep" idea that was dusted off by Messrs. Gibson and Snuffleupagous for their "debate".

Another apparently obsolete idea in the U.S. is that of a "fair trial" for high officials who commit crimes against humanity. Senator Obama was asked about it by the good folks at the Philadelphia Daily News, and you can see what he said at

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/Now_on_video_Obama_speaks_on_Bush_criiminality.html

Chris Floyd parses Obama's lawyerly response and concludes - don't hold your breath. http://tinyurl.com/3o27za

[non-lawyer]

The point is where do we go from here? The Bush Crime Syndicate has created outrage exhaustion from a long and seemingly never ending list of execrable offenses yet public outcry is what we need to hear now from the American people.

Based on Brad's now open hostility toward Yoo (et al) I would say he's a bit exercised about the situation which is much to his credit. We need a momentum of freshly minted outrage carrying us into the presidential election. A McSame victory assures us that we will stay in this moral morass and Obama needs to feel the pressure if he wins. The worst that can happen is complacency and silence that will bind us all in guilt.

[jerry]

non-lawyer, with all due respect to Brad, I see no evidence that Brad will do anything other than blog about it. Who can blame Brad, his own paycheck depends on the sanctity of tenure, not on the sanctity of academic freedom, or the sanctity of principles, or the sanctity of human rights.

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
Upton Sinclair"

[not_scottbot]

And Yoo is still a man that deserves tenure?

Yoo is a man who actively participated in the commission of evil, a 'Schreibtischtäter' committing 'menschenverachtende' words to paper for a government that has tortured innocent people in secret prisons. Sorry about the German - sometimes, it seems as if only a foreign language has a chance of being understood by the faculty at Berkeley. Especially since German is not only a fine language for philosophy, it is one where slippery slope arguments are considered moot in an area such as the one where Yoo was exercising his demonstrated sense of morality and clear dedication to ignoring the laws of the nation he served.

Impeach, indict, convict - but just because you can read a man's words justifying torture, words justifying illegal actions then implemented by our government, it is apparently no reason for his fellow faculty members to punish Yoo by stripping his tenure away (no dogs or blood soaked garments required). Or more disturbingly, according to information from the same source as the quoted passage above, justifying torture after it had occurred. Which would seem to be even more concrete grounds for stripping him of tenure, as it was no longer a merely academic exercise of exploring the basis for the American government to commit enhanced interrogation (that German translation is word perfect), it made him part of the system actually engaging in it.

A most interesting historical parallel can be found in the case of Sakharov, the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, and the Soviet government. Except in that case, Sakharov was a beacon of human morality, while the defense of Sakharov by the essentially craven members of the Academy at least benefited a decent man.

Yoo deserves a fair trial. He did not, and does not, deserve tenure.

[me]

At Six Flags, the war is a virtual reality experience

By John Kessler
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Published on: 04/12/08

The teenagers crowding Six Flags Over Georgia during this week's spring break have an alternative to the endless lines for the Georgia Scorcher: a virtual combat zone set up by the U.S. Army to thrill these kids, entertain them and maybe even recruit them.

The Virtual Army Experience —- a noisy world of genocidal killers, Humvees and improvised explosive devices —- looms under a tent at the edge of the park. The show, which launched at the Daytona 500 in early 2007, travels the country and already has had 60,000 visitors.

Strapping Army officers in battle fatigues greet the youths, take down their contact information and give them official-looking tags to wear on lanyards around their necks.

Next, the teens enter the tent for a welcome blast of air conditioning and a taste of things to come. They first assemble by a bank of XBox 360 consoles and learn to play "America's Army True Soldier" —- a first-person shooter that costs $50 and handles just like the popular Halo series.

"This is awesome!" says Harrison Bentley, 14, who was visiting Six Flags with students from A. Crawford Mosley High School in Lynn Haven, Fla. "I was going to buy a Mario game, but now I'm totally going to get this one."

Next, the couple of dozen kids herd into a briefing room and break into combat units —- Charlie, Delta and so forth —- indicated by squares on a carpet.

"Listen up, soldiers!" shouts Josh Hernandez, a Green Beret with a shaven head, square jaw and T-shirt that defines every muscle rippling beneath it. "Your mission is to deliver supplies to a humanitarian aid force inside hostile territory. But a genocidal indigenous force will try to stop you!

"Now who here knows what an IED is? Anyone?" continues Hernandez. One hand tentatively goes up.

Hernandez leads the youths onto a gaming floor with six full-size Humvees and two overwatch stations, each positioned in front of a panoramic bank of floor-to-ceiling video screens. The participants were issued replicas of M-4 carbine assault rifles with pneumatic recoil so they feel like real guns when fired.

The Humvees, though stationary, seem to approach in convoys through a cartoonlike projection of dusty streets and cruddy storefronts. One store has a fading billboard of a man holding up a bottle of soda pop. "Taste!" it reads.

The bad guys emerge from the building. Bam! The teenage sharpshooters kill them with lasers.

A bag of garbage on the side of the road? An IED? Pow! followed by a flash of light.

When the bad guys die, they fall bloodlessly and disappear. They keep coming —- standing atop silos, pouring from buildings.

The scream of a female voice rises above the cacophony. This is not a game effect but a young girl manning the turret gunner in one of the Humvees. The lights of the IED simulation startles her. Hers is the only scream.

Eventually the animation leads across a bridge to a place that looks like a bombed-out hospital where healers attend the sick.

"Mission Accomplished" read all the monitors. Game over.

Hernandez then brings the teens together to watch a video about Sgt. Jason Mike, a Silver Star recipient who provided medical services and cover fire for his unit after it was ambushed on patrol south of Baghdad.

As a special surprise, Mike, himself —- one of eight "Real Heroes" traveling with the show —- runs out from behind a door to address the group. He tells them the ambush was like the game, but it took 45 minutes and it was, well, real. But now he has his own action figure that the kids can buy.

So, does anyone want to join the Army?

"I'm somewhat interested," says Sam Marlow, 17. "It looks like such an adrenaline rush while you're there, and then there's the teamwork. It seems kind of cool."

Bentley also said the Virtual Army Experience gave him a good impression of combat. "After seeing this, I really do think I could join the Army one year. I think I'd be good at it. But I'm good at astronomy, too, and that seems a little safer."

If he wants to practice before making that decision, the Army has a parting gift: a CD with a version of the game to play on his computer.

http://www.ajc.com/search/content/metro/stories/2008/04/12/guiterhero0412.html