Impeach Every Single Member of the Bush Administration. Now.

Andrew Sullivan:

The Daily Dish: [T]he administration originally seized far, far more detainees than it could prove guilty (or ever tried to prove guilty) and has released thousands falsely imprisoned. Of the thousands seized... many were abused and tortured, with over a hundred deaths occurring during interrogation, two score of whom the administration has itself conceded were murder-by-interrogation. All this occurred after the president decided his actions as commander-in-chief could not be constrained by the law, after he had waived the baseline Geneva Convention protections for prisoners in wartime - in violation of the policy of every previous president of the United States from Washington on - and after critical memos were signed allowing American interrogators to do anything to prisoners short of death or loss of a major organ.

Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell's former chief of staff explains what this means in terms any morally responsible person would understand:

As I compiled my dossier for Secretary Powell, as I did further research, and as my views grew firmer and firmer, I needed frequently to reread that memo. I needed to balance, in my own mind, the overwhelming evidence that my own government had sanctioned abuse and torture which, at its worst, had led to the murder of 25 detainees in a total of at least a 100 detainee deaths. Death, Mr. Chairman, seems to me to be the ultimate torture, indisputable and final. We had murdered 25 or more people in detention; that was the clear low point of the evidence.

And all this was done not in the chaos of a battlefield or even by rogue units or POW camps. It was not done in a war with anything like as many soldiers and battles as World War II. It was done in a closely managed war by a professional military and intelligence service in every theater of combat as a concerted policy... authorized directly in the chain of command by the president, who knowingly broke the law and hired lawyers to tell him he hadn't. No clever argumentation that "only" 270 prisoners remain at Gitmo can gainsay that.... Now, you could argue that the administration, after initial understandable over-reach, has tried to set things right. But you would be wrong....

[I]t may be true that the administration would, in an ideal world, have preferred that every person they seized was actually guilty; and that every person they tortured gave up accurate information. Police states would love it if this were true as well. But the point is that this cannot happen and has never happened in the real world - and recognizing this fact is a core principle of Western civilization. If you suspend the Geneva Conventions, give the green light to anything that will get intelligence, round up thousands all over the globe with reckless disregard for guilt or innocence, you are effectively and knowingly issuing orders to seize innocent people and torture them. Any president who decides to do that and then says it was not his intention to do that is a fraud or a fool. It matters not a whit what fantasy the president had cooked up in his own mind about what he was doing. This is what he was doing.

Major Gen Antonio Taguba, trusted enough by this administration to run an earlier report on the abuse scandal, puts it plainly enough:

After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account...

Comments

[Tuco]

Brad, you're setting the bar rather high on the call for impeachment right now, don't you think, considering the fact that Congress is busy granting retroactive immunity to the Telcos for their role in colluding with the Bush Crime Family to illegally spy on innocent Americans.

If a Telco ever thought differently (like Qwest did, much to their credit) they're on board now, thus cementing a new surveillance feature of American life.

Also, isn't it time to add a refrain to the call for impeachment that also calls for Yoo, that facilitator of torture and murder, to be ejected from Berkeley? Just askin.

[jerry]

"[I]t may be true that the administration would, in an ideal world, have preferred that every person they seized was actually guilty; and that every person they tortured gave up accurate information. Police states would love it if this were true as well. But the point is that this cannot happen and has never happened in the real world - and recognizing this fact is a core principle of Western civilization."

In a sense this is basic measurement theory, differentiating between Type I (false positive) and Type II (false negative) error. Any attempt to drive Type II error to zero without considering Type I error will just increase the number of Type I errors.

This is my old rant, but there is an academic department that backs a self-proclaimed liberal movement that advocates ignoring false positives for certain crimes and jailing false positives and considering the problem of false positives to be trivial, so low as to be ignorable, or just not as important as the problem we all want to eliminate.

And that's the problem of trying to eliminate rape. There are many self-identified liberals, who I see no reason to believe ARE progressive liberals, who do not consider the problem of throwing innocent people into jail, or making them register as sex offenders as any sort of problem.

Though studies indicate that rape is falsely accused anywhere from 8% to 40% or even more, and even though the widely claimed rate of 2% has been thoroughly debunked, we, as liberals adhering to the party line, are not allowed to consider the problem of false accusations.

This places those feminist speakers and those feminist bloggers and those that do not stand up to that on the same moral plane as our Administration. And it places both outside Western Civilization.

As a society, we were founded on Blackstone's ratio, better that ten guilty persons go free than jail one innocent person. Ben Franklin thought the ration should be 100:1.

It's a sexist, irrational, immoral position to take. Brad, it is neither moral or ethical to be silent in the face of this. It is sexist, condescending, and patronizing of you to not speak up against this bullshit when you observe it.

[sootytern]

First, Brad has spoken out against Yoo on several occasions and requested an
investigation by the school.

Second, torture and abuse of prisoners in the United States is nothing new. Per a PBS documentary, there was a civil war prison camp outside of Chicago that was notorious for its abuse of prisoners. Torture and abuse has been Western tradition until relatively recently, at least well into the 1600s.

As sickening as it may be, I think our current crop of murders, torturers, and abusers will get off relatively unscathed it not totally free. I see relatively little outrage in the general public. I don't know whether it is uncaring or even tacit approval. I think the United States is delusional in its sense of self-righteousness.

[Bob Snodgrass]

You are right on target, but the question is whether the American public, often so secure in our smug American exceptionalism and our thought that the tougher we are, the more we are feared and the more safe we will be, can stir itself to demand anything other than cheaper gas. General Taguba is no wild-eyed radical.

If McCain is the next president, he will appoint more Scalia clones to the Court and we will all be trapped by the kind of surveillance made famous by Orwell's 1984. It's not Roe v Wade that is the crucial barrier. If Obama is President, will he stick with the Congressional idiots who repeatedly bow low before King George II- I mean Pelosi, Hoyer and Reid? Obama is a cautious man but if he doesn't do something about the Congressional leadership, we are in deep trouble. I'd settle for a Bush & Cheney criminal trial- it won't be impeachment, it will have to come in 2009. However, a public criminal trial would be more instructive for the general public than impeachment- think of the Clinton-Lewinsky circus.

[Doctor Jay]

The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account...

"Senator McCain, we have had authoritative reports that 27 prisoners at Guantanamo were murdered by torture. Do you intend to prosecute these crimes if you are elected president?"

[Frank Wilhoit]

Brad,

You don't have more than a glimmer of the true moral horror of the situation. The 25 detainees who were "murdered" were no more real to their killers than cardboard cutouts or blow-up dolls. They were proxies, surrogates -- FOR ME, AND YOU, and every "blue" American. The "war" on "terror" has never been ANYTHING other than an allegory for the domestic civil war. Until you grasp this, you grasp nothing.

[Ahab]

Come on Frank you're scaring me now!

[David Lloyd-Jones]

.


I don't understand what this whole "interrogation" thing is about.

What ever happened to "name, rank, and serial number," period?


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[PeterE]

Many in the Administration are probably guilty of war crimes, of course. Others in the Adminstration are guilty as accomplices. Ditto the Republicans in Congress. But what about the Democrats? As far as I can tell, 75% of them enabled or endorsed the Administration's activities, even though (in theory) their supporters don't. I suspect (I hope I'm wrong) that the country supports the Administration on Guantano; is indulgent about Abu Ghraib-- they just find the publicity distressing.

[CN]

What powers did Josef Stalin have that George Bush has not claimed to have?

[Captain Dan]

With the rumors about the Bush ranch in Peru surfacing, one can hope that he seeks asylum rather than a coop de tat.

[Tuco]

"Many in the Administration are probably guilty of war crimes, of course. Others in the Adminstration are guilty as accomplices. Ditto the Republicans in Congress. But what about the Democrats? As far as I can tell, 75% of them enabled or endorsed the Administration's activities..."

This, in my opinion, is why the Boumediene five voted the way they did. When both the executive and legislative branches are corrupt and have worked together to specifically create places outside the US where the US government then acts premeditatedly in a rogue fashion, beholden to no laws, it became necessary for the judiciary to step in and remedy the situation.

[Lee A. Arnold]

If anyone else out there is hoping to avoid a fascist police-state future, NOW would be the time to speak out.

[anne]

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/fisa/

June 20, 2008

FISA
By Paul Krugman

My biggest concern about an Obama administration is that, in the end, he won't make universal health care a priority. My second biggest concern is that "Unity" means never having to say you're sorry: that in the name of putting past partisanship behind us, the next administration will sweep the abuses of the past 8 years under the rug, the same way Bill Clinton did in 1993; the result of that decision was that the very same people responsible for Iran-Contra showed up subverting our democracy all over again.

Obama's support for the FISA bill intensifies my second worry. He did say some of the right things, promising to work to get rid of telecom immunity and hold people accountable. But caving on this bill is nonetheless not a good sign.

I'm with Greg Sargent, * Digby, ** and Duncan Black *** : this is a downer.

* http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/06/why_obamas_support_for_fisa_ca.php

** http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/no-hope-today-by-dday-we-live-in.html

*** http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/blogspot/bRuz/~3/316442698/2008_06_15_archive.html

[SteinL]

Following the illegal occupation of Iraq, they were desperate to find WMD. When none were found, they decided to apply the thumbscrews to everyone they came across, in the hope that someone would reveal whatever was needed to help them look good.

Because Americans are served by a press consisting of sycophantic idiots, they were allowed to get away with it.

[not_scottbot]

Well, remember, on the scale of punishments, having tenure removed due to one's having written a memo often considered the official basis for America to enter the club of torturing nation is a much, much harsher punishment than impeachment.

Besides, Yoo can't be impeached.

[Yes he can. His impeachment would deprive him of serving as an official of the United States ever again. What Yoo cannot be is attainted...]

And as for having his tenure removed for past behavior, well, that could destroy the very fabric on which the university is founded, free inquiry without fear of consequences. Because who will be able to instruct future lawyers properly for our brave new world, if they fear that their past acts will be held against them?

[dearieme]

Cheer up: just wonder at the remarkable foresight of President Washington abiding by the Geneva Convention. What a guy.

[Fred Colbourne]

Why impeach only single members? How about the married ones?