Torture revisited: Pentagon implies it's authorized by the President?

Great Debates
1

The WSJ has been releasing a series of leaked memos recently regarding the abuse of prisoners, many of which have been going little noticed.

Here’s the latest:

In an April 2003 memo from the DOD, we have

Here’s another

All of this sounds like it was pretty clear that the administration was considering how it should go about torturing prisoners, rather than if. And the fact that it strongly recommends that the President quietly sign orders authorizing torture, up and to the death of an prisoner, raises the possibility that there is a piece of paper sitting around somewhere entitled “Electroshock and beat those guys good for me” with Bush’s signature on it.

Here’s a more in-depth analysis:
http://www.intel-dump.com/archives/archive_2004_06_07.shtml#1086610719
“Normally, I would say that there is a fine line separating legal advice on how to stay within the law, and legal advice on how to avoid prosecution for breaking the law…”

Now, of course, for reference, here’s the relevant bit from the 1994 Convention Against Torture, which we ratified and made our own law, in part to protect our own soldiers from similar treatment,

Now, this might be, as another memo written for the administration put it, quaint.

But if the President is going to break the laws of his land, doesn’t he have a duty to come clean about doing so as he does it? To submit his decision to public scrutiny so we can understand why it was done? This is particularly the case given that in many wars past, in many desperate situations, the U.S. has avoided using torture. Every conflict seems dire, and lives are at stake, but it’s been U.S. policy up until now that we don’t cross that line (though we’ve blurred that line before in allowing other nations that work for us to do the dirty work). That isn’t just because we’re great guys either. It’s because we realize that the logic of “good for the goose, good for the gander” would mean that if we are seen to use torture, then others will see fit to use it on us.

2

But…9/11…terrorists…freedom…democracy…Saddam gassed his own people…

3

I don’t like how abbreviated and paraphrased those quotes are. The single most important part of the first quote, being (the prohibition against torture0 is parenthesied, which means that those were not the original words contained in the defense department memo, but were in fact an editor’s addition.

The second quote is similar, in that it does not actually quote anything meaningful that the department of defense said, but draws conclusions anyway. “To protect subordinates should they be charged with torture,” is not a quote of the memo, but a quote of the author of that article.

Another thing to consider is exactly who within the department of defense wrote the memo? We all know that Rumsfield is a son of a bitch, and that Bush is patting him on the back saying “good job” about the mess in Iraq, but that’s very different from Bush actually supporting torture, even if Rumsfield likely did. Remember, the memo that you’re describing wasn’t actually written by Bush.

To be honest, I would not be too surprised if we learn that Bush either knew about the torture and did nothing, or even approved of it. I dont think that I’ll base my opinion on an article written by someone who seems to want to make my opinions and draw my conclusions for me, though.

4

Well, first of all, this is the WSJ, a fairly conservative newspaper, so I doubt it’s gunning an agenda to get the President. And I very much doubt that the paratheticals distort the meaning of the passages. The entire memo is ABOUT torture, for goodness sakes, and how to avoid legal consequences if we torture: so what do you think the parathetical is concealing? That the sentance is really about the president’s authority to pet fuzzy bunnies without Congressional approval? The document discusses the potential use of a Nuremberg defense at great length, and you are worried that maybe it isn’t, after all, concerned with protecting subordinates?

5

I don’t have a subscription to the WSJ, but I did go to your other link and read that article, and I also read two MSNBC articles about the memos, which were linked in that article. I must say, this does appear to be outrageous. I always think that this is as outrageous as it gets, but it just keeps getting worse.

Is anyone else troubled by all the WWII invocations of late? Bush makes WWII comparisons, now this, suggesting that he and his administration attemped to circumvent the GC. It seems foolish, really. Like Hitler could have claimed he wasn’t legally liable because he declared it so beforehand. <shakes head>

6

This is a disturbingly “anti-accountability”: train of thought that has been apparent in Republican political philosophy at least sincea famous interview David Frost did with former president Nixon in 1977.

Asked by Frost whether he thought any of the acts he committed in the Watergate scandal were wrong, he replied with something along the lines of “Well, of course, if the President did it, it can’t be wrong.” In other words, today’s conservatives wish for the President to be treated as though he is above the law of the land. IMO, they want a king, not a President, and apparently have no real use for the American system of Government.

A train of thought that seems quite evident in the actions of the current executive, I might add.

7

That’s generally done when the meaning of the original sentence is not clear without surrounding context. The most likely reason is that “the prohibition against torture” was already referred to, and the sentence in question referred to it with a pronoun like “it”, which would have been ambiguous. I seriously doubt they were trying to pull one over on us.

8

Unless he’s a Democrat, of course – in which case, everything you can do to drag him down is fair game. Remember when the Right accused Clinton of “trying to place himself above the law” when his lawyer said that Paula Jones’ lawsuit should be deferred until Clinton left office?

9

I’m no lawyer, but isn’t it unambiguous that a president does not have the authority to set aside laws at whim? Is there actual debate on this subject?

Surely Nixon and Clinton would have used this power to get out of their troubles…

If Bush broke the law of the land and ordered people to be tortured, wouldn’t this be impeachable? Surely most would agree it’s more serious than lying under oath about getting a knob-shine, I would hope.

10

It ought to be, but that was what was so puzzling. My cite of Nixon is nothing like a direct quote, but if you see that part of the interview, as I did several years ago, it is quite clear that his expressed opinion was that nothing the President did could be regarded as wrong by by simple virtue of the fact that he was president, even if the same act could justly be called wrong if performed by someone else. IOW, he very straightfacedly implied the belief that an Electoral College majority somehow bestowed some sort of divine immunity to the chief executive. The fact that Frost didn’t call him to task for this statement I can only attribute to the fact that he is a star-fuck who grew up with a queen in his government.

The same arrogance on the part of a Republican administration is plain over 25 years later in the DOD document cited in the OP.

11

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_06/004098.php

There are now four memos on this subject, and they seem to range chronologically in topic matter from “could we do this?” to “How do we avoid getting caught?”

12

As I understood the NPR report on this thing this afternoon, the Attorney General appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee, or a subcommittee, today and flat said that he would not produce the Dept of Justice memorandum. He did not expressly assert the so-called executive privilege but he seems to have recited all its elements. This deals with only the Dept of Justice memo, not with the memo out of the General Counsel’s Office at the Defense Department. No one I know of has challenged the reliability of the leaked memos. From what I can gather the Department of Justice memo narrowly defining torture as stuff likely to cause a bodily organ to quit working or death or long term disabling psychiatric trouble – apparently if the subject of attention merely urinates blood for a week or two it doesn’t count.

I suspect I know what is going on here just because I have been through it. The government lawyer’s imperative is to tell his boss how the boss can do what the boss wants to do, not to tell the boss all the reasons he can’t do what he wants to do. In other words, either give the boss a justification or go find another job. . It is important to note that the DoJ memo predated the occupation of Iraq – somebody was asking what the interrogators could get away with well before the fact and with a view toward giving interrogator as wide discretion as could be conceived.

There are days you just shake your head. We are, for better or worse, the United States. We are a nation founded on ideals of human dignity and respect for rules democratically arrived at. As a people and as a government our history has been a long struggle to live up to those ideals, even when not expedient. To go out looking for excuses, to impose tortured interpretations on the standard rules in order to avoid them is a betrayal of the principles we supposedly cherish. Damn it, the end (the security of the nation or the successful prosecution of a foreign adventure) does not justify ANY means that might facilitate that goal.

13

This should spell the end of the Guantanamo detention cases in the Supreme Court and also the career of the admin’s lawyer who told the justices, “we don’t do that sort of thing.”

14

What planet are you living on? Someone will retire early and the admin will find something else to f* up until we forget about this.

Funny, with Clinton, it was “he would do something to get the heat off his back”… with Bush, it is “they’ll f* up something else”… Clinton’s wars were getting him out of a mess. Bush’s war is the mess he is trying to get out of. O_o

15

Are any of you aware opf the actual specific actions which are and are not allowed under the various prohibition against torture laws? Without seeing a little more of the memos (they’ve obviously been leaked, why not simply print them?) it is difficult to tell the actual purpose of them. They could be dishonest attempts to find excuses for torturing prisoners. They could also be honest attempts to get legal opinions on the extent of what the law allows.

Lots of things have been labeled torture of the years. The word does not mean exactly what it used to.

Also, what policies were the result of these memos. If a memo circulated which said “we should torture those guys” and the decision (and policy paper or orders to troops or whatever) actually taken was more along the lines of “The United States does not torture under any circumstances”, then this is a tempest in a teapot.

16

Right, just like I am looking up legal opinions on the laws governing murdering President Bush, chopping up his corpse, and serving him at a Pubbie fundraiser.

17

In my haste to reply before, I missed this one.

No wonder you don’t give a damn about Reagan letting gays die off by the thousands…

The reason people are pissed isn’t that it was a contradiction of orders - we/they are pissed because it WAS THOUGHT ABOUT.

Seriously? You don’t see something wrong with the President’s buddies passing notes about whether or not they should torture and abuse people, and if they could get away with it?

18

Pervert, it’s already been established that Gitmo has at the very least pushed the line on torture and authorized the use of tactics which the international community is having a very hard time not calling torture (so called “stress” positions are themselves, pretty clearly a form of torture, and were apparently SOP). Plenty of ex-detainees have testified to torture, but the U.S. has blown them off saying they aren’t credible. Yet here were are staring at memos in which precisely these tactics and how to perform them while getting around the law are discussed.

It’s further been established that there were many cases that clearly went over the line. The real question now is simply: how much was authorized, and by who, and who knew about it.

By the way, here’s the experience of a soldier who was play-acting as a prisoner

He ended up being choked and his head bashed into the ground, suffering seizures and apparently some form of permanent brain damange. The videotape of this incident has mysteriously vanished, and the military has decided that there was no miscoduct in, you know, choking and giving someone brain damage.

As Kristof notes, if this is how the U.S. treats one of its own soldiers (permanent injury, a cover up, and then a smear campaign to help the cover up), what assurances do we have that Afghanis and Iraqis aren’t recieving worse?

19

I understand. The point I was trying to make is that we are not looking at memos authorizing such tactics. Or at least not at ones which made it farther than the what about this sort of thing.

That’s exactly right. This is the question. It is the questio I am asking. I’m sorry, and I am willing to be wrong, but it seems to me that this OP is not asking this question. He is making an accusation.

Well, let’s not go too far. The plural of anecdote is not data as someone once said.

I agree the incident you mentioned is troubling. I agree that the memos mentioned are troubling. I do not agree that they are proof of wrong doing. I have trouble drawing inferences for patially quoted memos.

20

Really? You mean you’d much rather the army and the administration do thing without thinking about the legal ramifications? I’m surprised. Judging by the tenor of your recent posts, I’d of thought you were all for thinking. :rolleyes: