Much has occurred today with regards to Guantanamo Bay and many decisions are yet to come. But there is another milestone worthy of note: Today marks the eighth anniversary of the creation of the legal foundation for the prison and the second-tier justice system established to try terrorism suspects there.
David Cole’s new book is two things: First, a collection of six of the previously-published “torture memos” written between 2002 and 2006 by lawyers at the Bush-era Office of Legal Counsel. Yes, the ones that used law to justify the “enhanced interrogation techniques” now so well known. And, second, Cole’s commentary on this distortion of the law and its implications for our society
The Spanish newspaper Público reported exclusively on Saturday that Judge Baltasar Garzón is pressing ahead with a case against six senior Bush administration lawyers for implementing torture at Guantánamo.
From the Archive: John Yoo, the author of one of the infamous Aug. 1, 2002, “torture” memos that formed the legal basis for so-called “enhanced” interrogation techniques against high-level terrorist detainees, used a statute governing health benefits when he provided the White House with a legal opinion defining torture.
CIA Director Leon Panetta has just shown himself to be an apologist of the highest order when it comes to torture-related crimes carried out by agency interrogators and contractors. Panetta issued a statement in advance of the release later Monday of a critical 2004 inspector general’s report on the agency’s torture program. Panetta says the [...]
In hopes that it may be of some assistance to Eric Holder, John Conyers, Patrick Leahy, active citizens, foreign courts, the International Criminal Court, law firms preparing civil suits, and local or state prosecutors with decency and nerve is a list of 50 top living U.S. war criminals. These are men and women who helped to launch wars of aggression or who have been complicit in lesser war crimes. These are not the lowest-ranking employees or troops who managed to stray from official criminal policies. These are the makers of those policies.
Congressman Jerrold Nadler, D-NY, warned Attorney General Eric Holder that if he decides to authorize a criminal investigation into torture it should not be limited to rogue CIA interrogators, but should also determine whether high-level officials of the Bush administration committed war crimes.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney Cheney pressured George W. Bush and other top administration officials to deploy U.S. soldiers to a Buffalo NY suburb to arrest suspected terrorists, according to a report. Using American soldiers for domestic law enforcement purposes would have been unprecedented. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits the armed forces [...]
George W. Bush justified his warrantless wiretapping by relying on Justice Department attorney John Yoo’s theories of unlimited presidential wartime powers, and started the spying operation even before Yoo issued a formal opinion, a government investigation discovered. Essentially, President Bush took it upon himself to ignore the clear requirement of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance [...]
On Jan. 17, 2003, Mary Walker, the Air Force general counsel, received an urgent memo from the Pentagon’s top attorney. Attached to the classified document was a set of directives drafted two days earlier by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.”Establish a working group within the Department of Defense to assess the legal, policy and operational [...]
