It's not often that reading a government memo makes you want to cheer. But two memos related to the use of torture released on Tuesday at a congressional hearing were rather heartening. They offered evidence that there were dissidents inside the Bush administration when it came to using waterboarding and other excessive interrogation techniques on detainees. Written in 2005 by three senior officials at the State Department and Pentagon, the memos are a reminder that even within the administration of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, debate sometimes ensued. Still, the dissenters lost.
It's quasi-encouraging that someone was making the case for decency and rule of law. The first memo--written in 2005 by Philip Zelikow, then a senior adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; John Bellinger, Rice's legal adviser at the time; and Gordon England, then a deputy defense secretary--argued that the United States should "choose--as a matter of policy--to treat...captives...as if they were civilian detainees under the rule of law," in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. And their point was not that international law dictated such treatment--though it might--but that this made the most sense for the United States. As they wrote in all-caps:
WE ARE NOT SAYING THAT THESE DETAINEES ARE NECESSARILY ENTITLED TO THIS STATUS. TO BE CLEAR; WE ARE GIVING THEM A TEMPORARY STATUS THEY DO NOT DESERVE. BUT WE ARE NOT DOING THIS FOR THEM. WE ARE DOING IT FOR US.
Such an approach, they maintained, would be "one that Americans and the world are more likely to understand and accept as reasonable."
They conceded that human treatment of detainees could in some cases produce less, rather than more, intelligence. But they recommended being grown-up about the cost-benefit trade-off:
There is a risk that some intelligence may be lost when enemy captives are ultimately placed in a less coercive regular detention system. As in prior wars this risk should be recognized, but accepted as necessary to maintain the integrity of the system and our common, fundamental values.
The trio made a strong case: "If the U.S. acts as if it has something to hide, Americans and the world will assume it does." They proposed that the system for holding and handling detainees "be accessible to outside visits by properly organized representatives of relevant international institutions, the press, and foreign governments."
The second memo, written in July 2005 by Zelikow and Bellinger, made their overarching point in a straightforward manner: "We do not adopt legal standards in our behavior as a favor to terrorists. We do it for ourselves, and to be able to exemplify the values that distinguish us from the terrorists."
In other words, take that, Dick Cheney!
These memos are the opposite of the now notorious Office of Legal Counsel memos that were written by Bush Justice Department lawyers to provide a legal cover for waterboarding and more. The OLC memos were a collection of legal fine print. The OLC lawyers were bending the law as much as possible, as they determined just how much waterboarding might not constitute torture (ditto regarding sleep deprivation, water-dousing, wall-slamming, and the rest). The OLC documents represent law at its worst. The Zelikow et. al. memos, though, focus on the big picture. They call for establishing humane standards of treatment "as a matter of policy and customary law." It's not about being legalistic; it's about being wise, fair, and effective.
Zelikow and Bellinger concluded the second memo this way:
These are difficult issues. In considering them we recalled how the Supreme Court of Israel (unanimously) wrestled with such questions, dealing in 1999 with the legality of certain interrogation practices used by the Shin Bet
"Deciding these applications weighed heavy on this Court. True, from the legal perspective, the read before us is smooth. We are, however, part of Israeli society. Its problems are known to us and we live its history. We are not isolated in an ivory tower. We live the life of this country." But they agreed with an earlier Commission that had "rejected an approach suggesting that the actions of security services in the context of fighting terrorism, shall take place in the recesses of the law."
Instead that Commission, and the Israeli Supreme Court chose what it called "the way of Truth and the Rule of Law." The Court observed, "Although a democracy must often fight with one hand tied behind its back, it nonetheless has the upper hand."
This sort of reasoning, alas, did not have the upper hand in the Bush administration. But at least the authors were battling within the bureaucracy. Zelikow and others tell me that there were plenty of other internal memos written from a similar perspective during that time. Let's hope they all come out.
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Comments
"In other words, take that, Dick Cheney!"
How to you "score" this, Freddie my boy?
Posted by: flan
| May 14, 2009 1:59 PM
Doesn't suprise me that there were Bush disenters in his own administration.
What is suprising is that the only disenters were Repubs and not a peep from Pelosi or Rockefeller. This has to be discouraging to Mr Corn. However, he seems to be silent on the biggest story out of DC right now. Selective journalism?
Also, why is Obama cherry picking memos? Release them all like Cheney said and it will either shut him up or prove him right. Cherry picking only raises more questions about the honesty of Obama not Cheney.
Posted by: freddie
| May 14, 2009 2:47 PM
Obama Administration to Cheney: Request Denied
The Obama administration has turned down former Vice President Dick Cheney’s request for the declassification of two CIA reports on the effectiveness of the Agency’s detainee program, THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned. A letter dated May 7, 2009, from the CIA’s Information and Privacy Coordinator, Delores M. Nelson, rejected Cheney’s request because the documents he has requested are involved in a Freedom of Information Act court battle.
“In researching the information in question, we have discovered that it is currently the subject of pending FOIA litigation (Bloche v. Department of Defense, Amnesty International v. Central Intelligence Agency). Therefore, the document is excluded from Mandatory Declassification Review,” Nelson wrote in the letter to the National Archives, the agency responsible for handling Cheney’s request.
The rejection of Cheney’s request will almost certainly intensify the public back-and-forth between the former vice president and the current administration. The contentious debate over enhanced interrogation exploded on April 16, when Obama authorized the release of four memos on interrogation prepared by the Bush Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. In a statement accompanying the release, Obama pointed to “exceptional circumstances” surrounding the memos that required their declassification and release. Four days later, in an interview on Fox News, Cheney revealed that he had requested the declassification of two memos that demonstrate that the techniques were effective.
White House officials have told reporters and members of Congress that the Cheney memos do not bolster the case for enhanced interrogation, as Cheney has suggested. But they have nonetheless refused to release them.
President Obama has the legal authority to declassify the documents “with the wave of his hand,” according to one expert.
Posted by: freddie
| May 14, 2009 2:52 PM
Lieberman: CIA tells me the truth
Senator Joe Lieberman doesn’t quite call Speaker Nancy Pelosi a lying sack, but he comes pretty close. When asked by Norah O’Donnell whether the “CIA misleads [Congress] all the time,” as Pelosi alleged today in her press conference, Lieberman laughs out loud (via Weekly Standard):
No, on that specific point, I totally disagree. You have to have confidence in the CIA. And over the 20 years I’ve been here, I’ve been briefed constantly by the CIA and I’d say that they’ve told me the truth, as they see it.
O’Donnell says the CIA stands by their earlier statements on the briefings. Don’t be surprised to see more Democrats peel away from Pelosi after her foolish double-down on a 12 today. They don’t want to be anywhere near her when the next shoe drops, probably in the form of specific briefing notes that will prove the CIA right and Pelosi a liar.
Anyone think that Obama’s regretting the release of the OLC memos now? I’d bet that he’d like a do-over like he got with the photos yesterday.
Posted by: freddie
| May 14, 2009 2:57 PM
ABC's Diane Sawyer Frets: Obama 'Caved In' to Cheney and 'Political Right'
By Scott Whitlock | May 14, 2009 - 12:37
"Good Morning America" co-host Diane Sawyer worried on Thursday that Barack Obama backtracked "on his pledge to release pictures of U.S. soldiers allegedly torturing terror suspects," fretting that this might be a "cave-in to Dick Cheney and the political right."
Posted by: freddie
| May 14, 2009 3:00 PM
Obama admitting that his policies won't work...........
Obama Says U.S. Long-Term Debt Load ‘Unsustainable’
By Roger Runningen and Hans Nichols
May 14 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama, calling current deficit spending “unsustainable,” warned of skyrocketing interest rates for consumers if the U.S. continues to finance government by borrowing from other countries.
“We can’t keep on just borrowing from China,” Obama said at a town-hall meeting in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, outside Albuquerque. “We have to pay interest on that debt, and that means we are mortgaging our children’s future with more and more debt.”
Holders of U.S. debt will eventually “get tired” of buying it, causing interest rates on everything from auto loans to home mortgages to increase, Obama said. “It will have a dampening effect on our economy.”
Posted by: freddie
| May 14, 2009 6:20 PM
OK, so to recap -
Bush is a liar
Cheney is a liar
Condoleeza Rice is a liar
GeorgeTenent is a liar
General Petraeus is a liar
U.S. Marines are liars
The CIA are liars
HOWEVER,
Pelosi speaks only the truth (except for that waterboarding briefing thing)
Reid speaks only the truth (except for that "war is lost" thing, and that "surge has failed" thing)
Murtha speaks only the truth (except for that "marines are cold-blooded murderers" thing)
Kerry speaks only the truth (except for that "terrorizing children in the dead of night" thing)
Obama speaks only the truth (except for that "no military tribunals" thing, and that "transparency" thing, and that "no lobbyists in my administration" thing, and that "no earmarks" thing, and that "address bills line by line thing", etc.)
'nuff said.
Posted by: denmac
| May 14, 2009 7:54 PM
"We do not adopt legal standards in our behavior as a favor to terrorists. We do it for ourselves, and to be able to exemplify the values that distinguish us from the terrorists."
Profound and a true American value.
Torture - not-so-much, eh?
Posted by: capt
| May 15, 2009 8:22 AM
"What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer."
~ Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970)
Posted by: capt
| May 15, 2009 8:24 AM
I am waiting to hear which texts Yoo and Bybee used to help them in determining how much torture is really torture and how little is merely harsh interrogation. Perhaps both had worked in that business prior to becoming attorneys and had the experience needed to make such finely tuned decisions about torture. Surely they did not make it up out of whole cloth? Maybe they waterboarded Cheney and Scooter Libby in order to get such precison in their legal work.
BTW The CIA's claims that they fully briefed Pelosi and Rockefeller are as believable as Cheney's assertion that he had proof that Atta met with an Iraqi secret service agent while planning the WTC bombing.
As everyone knows the CIA never misleads anyone and is always forthcoming with all available evidence proving their behavior is consistently impeccable and beyond repraoch.
Posted by: kalpal
| May 15, 2009 8:53 AM
Powell aide says torture helped build Iraq war case
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/14/iraq.torture/
Seems a bit odd to think Pelosi would have been trying to help Busheney make an Iraq = al qaeda argument but if she did - she too should be hung from the yardarm.
"Now, more than ever, we need to end this silly kabuki of he said/ she said and get down to business. Let's get that Truth Comission empaneled and let's get them ALL under oath: the Bushies, the CIA and the congressional leadership. Now, it's an imperative."
(marccooper.com)
Posted by: capt
| May 15, 2009 9:01 AM
"I can make a firm pledge, under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."
- I guess he's not good with numbers!
"I don't take a dime of their [lobbyist] money, and when I am president, they won't find a job in my White House."
- OOPS!
"Over the last 15 months, we've traveled to every corner of the United States. I've now been in 57 states? I think one left to go. "
- Uh oh, Barry's back onthe blow!
"We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded. "
- Wow, Bertrand Russell would have HATED this idea!!!
"We need earmark reform, and when I'm President, I will go line by line to make sure that we are not spending money unwisely."
- Well , not line by line - don't read it, just sign it!!!
"We're not going to baby sit a civil war."
- Unless, of course, that civil war is in Afghanistan!!
"You will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime."
- No, actually a WHOLE BUNCH of dimes!!!
Yea, change we can believe in - BWAAAHHHH!!
Posted by: denmac
| May 15, 2009 9:01 AM
It's a funny thing, though many Republicans insist that waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques" aren't torture they say in the next breath that Nancy Pelosi is at fault for going along with something that wasn't wrong in the first place according to them. In any case, whatever Pelosi knew or didn't know she wasn't free to go public at the time; the attempt to sidetrack the basic issue is farcical.
(buzzflash.com)
Posted by: capt
| May 15, 2009 9:19 AM
On the air with Rachel Maddow, Col. Wilkerson said:
You notice that Dick Cheney always says ‘7 1/2 years,”" Wilkerson told Maddow. “That’s because he has the honor of being — or the dishonor of being — the man on whose watch 3000 Americans died. More Americans died from a terrorist attack under Dick Cheney’s leadership, if you will, than any other president in our history.”
“The reason we have not had another attack in this country,’ Wilkerson continued, “is over 200,000 Americans who have been fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. … We have had 200,000 Americans overseas presenting al Qaeda with very, very lucrative targets — and therefore, why would they want to come here? This is idiocy of the first order that Dick Cheney is putting out.”
Raw Story, 5-13-09
Posted by: capt
| May 15, 2009 9:22 AM
Actually trying to blame Pelosi shows how desperate Bush and Cheney are.
It is like a shoplifter trying to blame store security for letting them get away with it.
In other words, a tacit admission of the crime just a last ditch effort to blame someone else.
Posted by: capt
| May 15, 2009 9:43 AM
"When this issue started to resurface I called the appropriate people in the agency and said I would like to know the dates from your records that briefings were held," Graham recalled. "And they contacted me and gave me four dates -- two in April '02 and two in September '02. Now, one of the things I do, and for which I have taken some flack, is keep a spiral notebook of what I do throughout the day. And so I went through my records and through a combination of my daily schedule, which I keep, and my notebooks, I confirmed and the CIA agreed that my notes were accurate; that three of those four dates there had been no briefing. There was only one day that I had been briefed, which was September the 27th of 2002."
(huffpo)
Everybody knows Graham keeps copius notes.
Seems the liars are being exposed for what and who they are.
Drip, drip, drip . . . .
Posted by: capt
| May 15, 2009 9:48 AM
Actually trying to blame Pelosi shows how desperate Bush and Cheney are.
~~~~~~~~
Someone can't comprehend the facts here!
Cheney is not blaming anyone. He stands by the fact that waterboarding (not torture) worked.
Pelosi wanting to investigate Cheney for approving waterboarding (not torture) approved of it herself and is now caught lying about it.
Not that hard to follow if you just lay off the kool aid for a tad bit.
Posted by: freddie
| May 15, 2009 12:09 PM
It is not a fact that waterboarding (torture) worked.
Posted by: flan
| May 15, 2009 12:21 PM
It is not a fact that waterboarding (torture) worked.
~~~~~
It's not a fact that it didn't!
Posted by: freddie
| May 15, 2009 2:14 PM
Israeli lawyers and military law experts filed amicus curiae with the Supreme Court, arguing that terrorists should be given more rights.
http://radamisto.blogspot.com/2007/09/more-on-israel-guantanamo.html
Posted by: Steve J.
| May 18, 2009 12:51 AM
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