An appropriate orientation

"implacable to the whole system of official values: the ignobility of fashionable life; the infamies of empire; the spuriousness of the church, the vain conceit of the professions; the meannesses and cruelties that go with great success; and every other pompous crime and lying institution of this world."

--- William James, on Tolstoy

The end of the Golden Shield

The NY Times reports on newly leaked emails from within the Department of Justice.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/us/politics/07lawyers.html?_r=1&hp

Discussed further by Glenn Greenwald.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/06/07/torture_memos/index.html

These leaks further support and strengthen various arguments already made by those calling for accountability, including ourselves --- and of course, the arguments made against other Bush administration officials as well.

In various discussions on Rice's culpability, we have dealt with the possibility that, on trial for war crimes, Rice would point to the "torture memos" for exoneration, as supposedly independent legal advice. In response, we (and the prosecution) would argue that that is not a proper characterization of the facts. We have argued, based on previous revelations, that the memos were written as "get out of jail free" cards. According to reports of National Security Council Principals Committee meetings in 2002, chaired by Rice, the memos were regarded as a "Golden Shield" for officials who feared prosecution. One can even make the case that the relevant lawyers and officials at the Department of Justice were complicit, in a conspiracy to torture.

So, in court, there would be a question to establish which narrative is accurate:

(1) Rice and others request disinterested legal advice; legal advice allows waterboarding etc. In this case, Rice and others might have a viable defence. After all, they are not lawyers, and deference ought to be accorded to the opinions of qualified lawyers within the government.

(2) Rice and others want to perform, have performed, waterboarding etc but need their "golden shield" of legal advice. They want, perhaps expect, administration lawyers in the department of justice to provide all necessary justifications. They request "get out of jail free" cards, crucially involving waterboarding. Despite the clear legal precedents that waterboarding is torture etc, obedient, perhaps complicit, lawyers provide justification. Where the justification is insufficient or not forthcoming, pressure is applied until the requisite degree of legal backing is given. In this case, the defence is not viable. The legal opinions are not in good faith, or created under pressure/duress, or dishonestly, or in complicity to torture. Rice and others (maybe including lawyers) go to jail.

How could a judge or jury choose between these narratives? There are crucial matters of fact that could help distinguish them.

Plainly, words like "golden shield" in Principals Committee meetings support narrative #2. The fact that waterboarding had happened prior to the memos, also. But clearly, much turns upon the communications between lawyers and the principals like Rice. In this regard, these emails are crucial new pieces of evidence. In particular:

A. Chronology and retrospectivity.

If interrogations happen before the legal justifications, that suggests they were written as retrospective justification. In general, lawyers (and the law) abhor retrospectivity. Lawyers do not like to write retrospective justifications, and if they do, they prefer to write them in general terms. Importantly, these emails reveal that the memos, although written in general terms, were effectively retrospective, and were regarded that way.

B. Evidence of pressure/reluctance.

The details of communications between the principals like Rice, and the lawyers, are crucial. The more reluctant lawyers are to provide these justifications, or disagree with them, the more narrative #1 sounds preposterous. As far as the individual lawyers are concerned, the reluctant ones are less likely to be found complicit, although perhaps the more likely their seniors are. These emails are the incarnation of one lawyer's reluctance and reveal extraordinary pressure from the White House, and policy-makers in general.

I should add that Comey's reluctance appears to be on extremely narrow and legally indefensible grounds; he also seems to neglect the mountain of precedent that waterboarding is torture and so on; he seems to be somewhere between gross dereliction of professional duty and complicity in torture. But the point remains.

These are not petty matters. They are crucial findings of fact which would probably be the central issue in a war crimes prosecution. And I think we have crucial evidence here which demolishes any remaining possibility of viability for the "get out of jail free card" defence for Rice and others.

Jeremy and Reyna on CBS!

Stanford Student Speaks Out On Confronting Rice

http://cbs5.com/politics/condoleezza.rice.confronted.2.999686.html

A follow up to their story from Thursday

Stanford Student Confronts Rice On Interrogations
http://cbs5.com/politics/condoleezza.rice.confronted.2.998771.html

Rice's nonsense on torture

Oh wow, I only got around to watching this video now, and from some of the comments I thought she must have been making some half-convincing arguments... nope!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijEED_iviTA&feature=channel_page


Well, first we upgrade al Qaeda to tyrants, okay. Then one gets the impression that the US homeland was not attacked in WWII. Those little incidents at Pearl Harbor and on the Aleutian islands are called bombing and occupation, to most people.

Then we are informed that 500,000 deaths in WWII is "no!" Why? Perhaps we should have got the figure correct to the precise soldier?



The problem with the internet is that you can actually find obscure references instantaneously. In this case, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) report on Guantanamo. Turns out, with ten seconds of google:

* the OSCE people were only allowed in on the condition of not actually interviewing any detainees! These same conditions were rejected by other human rights organisations, like Amnesty.

* and, the guy who led the OSCE team, Alain Grignard, with the Belgian federal police, thought detaining prisoners for years with trial was a form of "psychological torture".

http://intelligence-summit.blogspot.com/2006/03/osce-guantanamo-better-than-belgian.html

"Did you know that? Alright, no, well wait a second, if you didn't know that, maybe before you make allegations about Guantanamo, you should read."




But it gets better!

CR: "The ICRC also had access to Guantanamo, and they made no allegations about inerrogations about Guantanamo. What they did say is that they beleived indefinite detention..."

What sort of access did the ICRC have? Does anybody remember? Like, there were some prisoners that were deliberately kept away from the ICRC? And, like, this was such an official policy that it was actually written into the operating manual for the prison, there was an official level given to each prisoner, and the top level were kept away from the ICRC?

In fact, you can read various versions of the manual online.

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Chaplain,_Red_Cross_Muzzled_at_Gitmo_in_2004

In any case, with its access, the ICRC did write a detailed report, which was leaked recently. Perhaps you might actually like to read what the ICRC *did* have to say.

http://www.nybooks.com/icrc-report.pdf

From the introduction, the very first paragraph:

"The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has consistently expressed its grave concern over the humanitarian consequences and legal implications of the practice by the United States (US) authorities of holding persons in undisclosed detention in the context of the fight against terrorism. In particular, the ICRC has underscored the risk of ill-treatment, the lack of contact with the outside world as a result of being held incommunicado, the lack of a legal framework, and the direct effect of such treatment and conditions on the persons held in undisclosed detention and on their families."

It's clearly a glowing report, with sections entitled "Suffocation by water", "Prolonged stress standing", "Beatings by use of a collar", "Beating and kicking", "Confinement in a box", "Prolonged nudity", and so on. And clearly none of this involves any allegations about interrogations, surely.

And here is an example of non-allegations about interrogations, from the summary, section 1, page 5:

"as outlined in Section 4 below, and as concluded by this report, the ICRC clearly considers that the allegations of the fourteen [detainees interviewed] include descriptions of treatment and interrogation techniques --- singly or in combination --- that amounted to torture and/or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment."

Can't you see there are no allegations about interrogation?



And this is fantastic:

CR: "By definition, if it was authorised by the President, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture."

I didn't know we had monarchists left in this country!

Hmm, I wonder which article of the Convention has the "President said so" defence? Dang, that could have come in handy for Pinochet's lawyers when he was being extradited for torture under the same convention! Pity he didn't notice that provision, having been President of Chile and all, since by definition anything he authorises doesn't violate the convention!

Civilian Casualties in Iraq?

We have a densely argued discussion of the available evidence andliterature review in footnote number 30 of our open letter:

http://www.stanford.edu/group/antiwar/cgi-bin/mediawiki/index.php?title=Condi_coalition_letter_draft#cite_note-29

(Why does the link for footnote 30 ends in "note-29". I think I blame computer scientists who like to begin counting at 0 rather than 1.)

(If you go there, all the references are hyperlinked, they are not here)

"
See Opinion Research Business and Just Foreign Policy for these estimates. This far exceeds the Iraq Body Count number of around 90,000, which only counts deaths reported by multiple crosschecked media reports: see their information page. The US government has not made any serious study of deaths in Iraq during the war and occupation. Perhaps the closest is Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq, Report to Congress by Department of Defense, September 2008, at p.22. However, as noted in the December 2007 version of this report, there are many deaths for which "the Coalition does not have visibility, in particular, murders and deaths in locations where Coalition forces are not present": at p.18. See the Congressional Research Service report Iraqi Civilian Casualties Estimates, Hannah Fischer, January 12, 2009, for some further discussion. The Just Foreign Policy figure is an extrapolation of an epidemiological-style cluster study study published in the prestigious British medial journal The Lancet, which obtained a figure of 426,000-794,000 for the period March 2003 - July 2006: Gilbert Burnham, Riyadh Lafta, Shannon Doocy et al., "Mortality After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq: A Cross-Sectional Cluster Sample Survey," The Lancet, October 21, 2006, 368 (9545), pp. 1421-1429. The UK Ministry of Defence's chief scientific advisor called the survey "close to best practice" and "robust": High Death Toll Backed, Newsday, March 27, 2007.
"

The Just Foreign Policy website estimate is currently 1,320,110... it's a rough estimate based on extrapolation from the Lancet study.
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq/iraqdeaths.html

Remarks at dinner

These are my prepared remarks, what I said was some approximation to these.

Hi, I'm Dan. I'm a grad student here in the mathematics department. Thanks for coming.

We are here today because we're concerned.

We're here today to make a peaceful and nonviolent statement that we are deeply concerned about what's going on at this university, and more broadly what's going on in this country and the world.

I would ask everybody here to treat everybody else, including people who disagree with us, with the respect they are entitled to.

But our concern today is not any ordinary concern. It's a concern that goes to the heart of what it means to live in a humane society.

Some things are so morally abhorrent that no society can condone them and call itself civilized.

Some actions amount to crimes. But some actions go beyond mere crimes.

Such as torture. Such as the waging of aggressive war.

Some actions so shock the conscience, they so strike at the heart of what it means to be human, that we consider them crimes not just against the victim, not just against the law, but against every human being. Torture, war, they ruin the human soul, they break lives, they lessen us all.

And I think what brings us here today is our concern that there is substantial evidence – growing by the day, with every newly released report and memo – that a tenured faculty member here at Stanford has been:

firstly, a principal participant in the planning and propaganda efforts of an aggressive war waged in supreme violation of international law;

and secondly, an explicit authorizer of brutalities which have long been widely understood as torture.

War and torture. Hundreds of thousands, millions of ruined lives. A tenured faculty member. That is the situation which confronts us here today.

* * *

Let me tell you what this is not about.

This is not personal. Maybe, if you live here at Roble, you might take this personally. But I have nothing personal against anybody, here at Stanford, or anywhere; and I hope that you don't either. We are not attacking anyone on a personal basis, but we do want to see accountability where there is evidence of involvement in extremely serious crimes.

Second, this is not about beliefs; this is about actions. If there's a faculty member who makes a statement I disagree with, well, we can respectfully and politely disagree. If there's a faculty member who makes a statement that is shocking and offensive – we might respectfully but not politely disagree. Maybe we might even be moved to protest. Freedom of speech protects unpopular views, as it protects protest; academic freedom protects intellectual inquiry.

But here, today, we are in a different category. We have a professor who did not merely advocate for brutalities like waterboarding – but authorised them. A professor who did not merely cheerlead for war, but was involved in official planning and propaganda efforts of that war, at the highest levels. These are not things to respectfully disagree about. These are not experiences to learn from. These are crimes to be prosecuted.

What do we do, if the authorities are not prosecuting --- whether in US courts, overseas, or internationally?

What does it say about us, about our campus, if we let this pass?

What does it say about us, about our campus, if we ignore the evidence of these monstrous crimes and have a dinner party instead?

* * *

Let's just briefly review some of the evidence.

You probably all know that our professor was National Security Adviser and chair of the National Security Council's Principals Committee. We now know that this committee authorised specific instances of waterboarding – and the discussions there were so detailed they were "almost choreographed". Moreover, our professor was not a passive participant; according to the report, she was "decisive". She told the CIA: "This is your baby. Go do it."

Now, in the last week, a declassified narrative from the Senate Intelligence Committee reveals that our professor became on July 17, 2002, so far as we know, the first high-ranking US official explicitly to authorize the brutal drowning technique known as waterboarding.

Now, torture is a crime under international law, under US law, there's an international treaty about it. It's very clear. There's no defence of protecting national security. There's no defence of intelligence chatter. Read the convention. Article 2 says that "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture". There are some things that, if you are minimally civilized, if you respect minimal human rights, you just don't do. The evidence suggests that it also doesn't work very well, but that's not the point; it's just wrong, and it's a crime.

However, there are these "torture memos". More of these have come out last week. Our professor assures us that everything she authorized was legal, and these memos provide the legal argument. Well, just go and read these memos and see what you think about the reasoning. Don't be afraid of legalese, this stuff speaks for itself.

Take the memo of August 1, 2002, which was released last week. August 2002, just after our professor authorised waterboarding. The conclusion: waterboarding, and all other desired techniques, not torture.

So, how is waterboarding not torture? Well, there might be a bunch of legal precedents that it is, going right back to the Spanish-American war, 1898, but somehow the lawyers didn't find them.

Anyway, the reasoning is pretty good. The statute says that to be torture, waterboarding must "inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering". But you see, waterboarding only – only! -- involves the panic of imminent death from drowning! That's not actual physical pain, you see. Okay, but what about actual physical suffering? The physiological response of drowning seems like physical suffering to me! But no, you see, we are informed, that's not how it works. The phrase "pain and suffering" in the defintion of torture must be understood as a single concept, not "pain", not "suffering", but "pain-and-suffering". So, there's no pain, might be suffering, but there's no "pain-and-suffering". Get it?

And so it goes on.

The requirement in the War Crimes act is for "specific intent". So, says the memo, you have to actually explicitly specifically intend to inflict severe pain or suffering! If you intend anything else, it can't be torture! You just have to believe in good faith of something other than that you are inflicting severe pain or suffering. Your belief doesn't even have to be reasonable. And --- and this is a key point --- your good faith belief that you didn't actually specifically intend to inflict severe pain or suffering can be established by reliance on experts. Like legal advice. Like this very memo.

And this is the way to regard these memos. They were regarded as a "Golden Shield". They were written to get torturers out of jail. And producing fallacious legal arguments, reinterpreting the law to justify conduct that was previously clearly torture, has another name: aiding and abetting torture.

And there's plenty more. Go and read it, I'm just scratching the surface. Especially read the bit about putting someone in a box with insects.

So every time our illustrious professor talks about how everything was assuredly legal, that is the reasoning it's based on. It's ridiculous, it's unbelievably bad, it has been rescinded as an embarrassment, and it is aiding and abetting torture

And, our professor can't claim any ignorance about this. We know from the recently released report of the Senate Armed Services Committee, that through 2002-2003, she was present at several meetings in the White House at which Mr. Yoo, her Berkeley colleague, provided legal advice. So she has heard it. She knows how bad it is. And yet, the evidence is that she was decisive regardless.

* * *

Torture is one thing, and it's terrible. But I'm sorry, my friends, there are worse things in the world than torture. A full-scale war is much, much worse.

War is generally illegal, has been illegal since 1928. It can only be justified, legally, in two circumstances: as self-defence from imminent attack, or with authorisation from the UN Security Council under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. That doesn't necessarily make it moral, or good, but makes it legal. That's international law. Very simple. And neither condition was satisfied in the case of Iraq. So it's illegal. It's aggressive war.

And the waging of aggressive war is not just a crime. It's a crime against the world, a crime against humanity, the same crime for which the Nazis were tried at Nuremberg. Countries don't invade other countries in the 21st century. That belongs to a world long past, that belongs in past ages of barbarism.

So the invasion of Iraq is not to be regarded as a mistake, or a blunder, but, to quote the Nuremberg tribunal, it is "the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." That is the position at international law, reaffirmed ever since.

Well, what is the role of our illustrious professor?

She was one of the "five Administration officials most responsible for providing public information and shaping public opinion on Iraq", and central to policy formulation and execution. Here I'm quoting a Congressional Committee and leading reports. She was among the topofficials promoting, planning, and eventually perpetrating the war.

Smoking guns and mushroom clouds. That's our professor.

The Center for Public Integrity has calculated that, overall, the Bush administration made 935 public false statements about the national security threat posed by Iraq. Of those 935, our illustrious professor made 56 false statements.

Aggressive war, and a breathtaking tragedy. Hundreds of thousands have died as a result of the war – by some estimates, well over a million. Over 4 million refugees. Lives broken across an entire region of the planet. A humanitarian catastrophe, and still ongoing.

That's our professor, who's having dinner parties in dormitories.

* * *

In the end, for us here at Stanford, I think it comes down to asking –

What sort of a world do you want to live in? and

What sort of a campus do you want to study in?

The horrors are not over. Violence in Iraq continues. War in Afghanistan escalates. Bombings in Pakistan escalate. Foreign policy goes on with the new President, as it has gone on for a long time, and it is not pretty. Before Iraq and Afghanistan there were interventions, just to name a few – in Panama, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Libya, Grenada, Angola, Guatemala, Iran; the list goes on, and it's bipartisan.

There is plenty to push the President on. And on the question of prosecuting torture, he is possibly wavering, he's been hedging.

He needs some backbone. But we can help to give him some backbone. Imagine what a message a strong stand by Stanford students on campus could send.

Because for us, this is not an abstract question. For us, this question has come home – today, it has come home for dinner.

I think it's important to realise that, in calling for prosecutions, we are not looking for retribution. The most important thing is to make sure that the horrible episodes we have seen – war, torture, aggression, violations of international law – do not happen again. How do you ensure they do not happen again? By letting anybody who is thinking of doing it again know that if they do it again, they will be prosecuted. And how do you ensure that? By prosecuting those who did it this time. The best way to put the past behind us is for people to face accountability now.

It's also the law – article 12 of the Convention Against Torture requires investigations, whenever there is reasonable ground to believe torture has been committed.

But we have to ask ourselves some questions:

How can we change a culture where such a professor considers herself able to invite herself over to dinner, where dozens will sign up adoringly?

Somehow we have to grow up. We have to realise that not every adult around here, not every authority figure, is someone to look up to.

Somehow we have to get people to think about their place in the world, their place at this university, and the place of this university in the world. Considering the role of this university in the power structures of society, what do we want it to be? And how can we make it so?

So I invite you to join with us, work with the coalition that is coming together to work on this issue, to work for justice, for accountability, and for peace.

After all, we all live here. It is the responsibility of all of us.

War Criminals of Tomorrow

An awesome video by a friend.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6O2KeDPTh3o

"Condoleezza Rice is back at Stanford University. What does it mean for the Stanford community to accept an alleged war criminal on their campus? What does the pipeline of war criminals to universities mean for students everywhere? Please read about Rice's alleged crimes during the past 8 years: http://www.stanford.edu/group/antiwar/cgi-bin/mediawiki/index.php?title=Condi_coalition_letter_draft and support the movement on Stanford's campus to hold Rice and former Bush administration officials accountable..."

This is your pizza. Go eat it.

I think this is amazingly good --- at least to my own aesthetics. Just the right mix of seriousness and hilariousness, gravity and spirit, light and heavy, yin and yang.

http://www.stanford.edu/group/antiwar/cgi-bin/mediawiki/images/d/da/NoMoreTorture.png

This is your pizza. Go eat it.

Are you allergic to illegal wars? Do you think torture sucks? Can't stomach a dinner with Rice? Well then, come to our

Dinner for Human Rights and International Law

Condoleezza Rice will be having a dinner with students at Roble at the same day & time. This event is meant to peacefully show to the campus that the Stanford community will not ignore evidence that Condoleezza Rice violated international and domestic laws against aggressive war and torture, and that we must confront our own institutional role in enabling and even honoring this behavior. We want accountability!

Why are we having dinner parties with an authorizer of waterboarding in Roble Hall? History will not judge this kindly.

Articles about torture in today's NY Times

In Adopting Harsh Tactics, No Inquiry Into Their Past Use
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us/politics/22detain.html

Report Gives New Detail on Approval of Brutal Techniques
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us/politics/22report.html

Obama Won't Bar Inquiry, or Penalty, on Interrogations
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us/politics/22intel.html

Comments on the Memos

From one of the memos:
"
In addition to using the confinement boxes alone, you also would like to introduce an insect into one of the boxes with Zubaydah. As we understand it, you plan to inform Zubaydah that you are going to place a stinging insect into the box, but you will actually place a harmless insect in the box, such as a caterpillar. If you do so, to ensure that you are outside the predicate act requirement, you must inform him that the insects will not have a sting that would produce death or severe pain. If, however, you were to place the insect in the box without informing him that you are doing so, then, in order to not commit a predicate act, you should not affirmatively lead him to believe that any insect is present which has a sting that could produce severe pain or suffering or even cause his death. [Redacted section] so long as you take either of the approaches we have described, the insect's placement in the box would not constitute a threat of severe physical pain or suffering to a reasonable person in his position. An individual placed in a box, even an individual with a fear of insects, would not reasonably feel threatened with severe physical pain or suffering if a caterpillar was placed in the box.
"

Some excerpts from the memos:
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/04/17/us/politics/20090417-interrogation-techniques.html
The actual memos:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/images/nytint/docs/justice-department-memos-on-interrogation-techniques/original.pdf


Many further links, quotes, and comments follow, for those who are interested.



1. Choreographing torture

Note in these excerpts how the choreography of interrogations is considered: which techniques can be combined with others, how often they can be done, and so on.

As the NY Times Editorial "The Torturers' Manifesto" points out
(the editorial is good but, as Brian notes, far too late in coming):
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/19/opinion/19sun1.html?th&emc=th
"
To read the four newly released memos... is to take a journey into depravity.

Their language is the precise bureaucratese favored by dungeon masters throughout history. They detail how to fashion a collar for slamming a prisoner against a wall, exactly how many days he can be kept without sleep (11), and what, specifically, he should be told before being locked in a box with an insect — all to stop just short of having a jury decide that these acts violate the laws against torture and abusive treatment of prisoners.
"

Recall the April 2008 ABC News report that disclosed Condoleezza Rice's chairing of NSC Principals Committee meetings, in which she was "decisive" in authorizing brutal interrogation techniques, including authorizing waterboarding of three people in U.S. custody, telling the CIA "This is your baby. Go do it." According to that report, the discussions were so detailed they were "almost choreographed—down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic."

One cannot help but imagine that the "choreography" of interrogations, discussed in the reports of the National Security Council's Principals Committee meetings, which were chaired by Condoleezza Rice, would have been along similar lines as in these memos, and just as barbaric.



2. Official statements and the Nuremberg defense

Statement by Director of National Intelligence (and prima facie war criminal, accessory to Indonesian atrocities in East Timor) Dennis Blair:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/us/politics/16text-blair.html?ref=politics

Blair essentially invokes the Nuremberg defense --- "just following orders" --- or the recent variant, "just following orders while relying on get-out-of-jail-free legal opinion" --- to argue that interrogator-torturers should not be prosecuted.

But the point of the Nuremberg defense, as we should know, is that it is *not* supposed to be a defense. He misses the entire point that it is the right, indeed duty, of all people, in armed forces or anywhere, to disobey illegal orders. (There is section 1004 of the Detainee Treatment Act, as (lightly) amended by section 8 of the Military Commissions Act, but this is the general principle.) Of course there is also the obvious consideration that those at the top, giving the orders and authorizing any torture, are primarily responsible, and hence much more worthy of prosecution than those performing their orders on the ground.

Statement by Obama:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/us/politics/16text-obama.html?ref=politics

Obama, law professor and scholar, also invokes this Nuremberg defense as if it were legally and morally clear. The final two paragraphs make explicitly opposite statements; this is a clear hedge, and his well-known position.
"
[N]othing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past... That is why we must resist the forces that divide us, and instead come together on behalf of our common future.

The United States is a nation of laws. My Administration will always act in accordance with those laws, and with an unshakeable commitment to our ideals.
"

However, if the first of these two paragraphs means a commitment not to prosecute, it is a nonsensical position. The laws in which Obama expresses his "unshakeable commitment" obligate his administration to investigate and prosecute war crimes that have occurred in his jurisdiction: not because it is a matter of laying blame for the past, but because those who commit grave crimes must be held accountable for their actions, in order to ensure the rule of law, and in order to ensure that such horrors do not happen again.


3. The obligation to investigate, and amnesty

One such law is Article 12 of the Convention Against Torture, to which the US is a party, and as a properly ratified treaty is the supreme law of the land. Article 12 states that a State Party "shall ensure that its competent authorities proceed to a prompt and impartial investigation, wherever there is reasonable ground to believe that an act of torture has been committed in any territory under its jurisdiction."

David Cole, on an interesting NY Times blog, notes the obligation to investigate under the Convention Against Torture:
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/the-memos-torture-redefined/

Scott Horton discussed Obama's effectve amnesty (and many other things) on Democracy Now (discussed earlier on some of these email lists):
Obama Releases Bush-Era Memos Authorizing Torture Techniques, Rules Out Prosecuting CIA Interrogators who Carried Them Out
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/17/memos
"
The surprising thing was, of course, the statement that was released alongside of it that there would be no prosecution of CIA agents who relied on these memos in performing their duties. And I'd say that that outcome—most people who've studied this don't expect that there ever would be such prosecution, certainly not of ground-level people at either the CIA or the Department of Defense. But there's some very serious issues about how this is raised, in particular because this amnesty—and that's effectively what it is—is being granted before an investigation of all the facts has been completed. And I think, in terms of proper process, it would be appropriate to lay down the facts to establish them and then make some sort of decision about amnesty.
"

Michael Ratner, from the same NY Times Blog above, on legal advice as get-out-of-jail free card:
"
Torture is torture and all the legal window dressing in the world cannot hide its essence: the infliction of pain and suffering on human beings. If legal advice can protect torturers, no official anywhere can ever be prosecuted. Legal advice then becomes a get out-of-jail free card and will be employed by every petty dictatorship to protect its abusers.

In making the decision not to prosecute, President Obama is acting as jury, judge and prosecutor. It is not his decision to make. Whether or not to prosecute law breakers is not a political decision. Laws were broken and crimes were committed. If we are truly a nation of laws as he is fond of saying, a prosecutor needs to be appointed and the decisions regarding the guilt of those involved in the torture program should be decided in a court of law.
"

Is Obama flouting the law by not proceeding to a prompt and impartial investigation of Yoo, Bybee, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others... including, of course, Condoleezza Rice?




4. Depths of barbarity

"You asked me once, what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world."
--- O'Brien, in George Orwell, 1984


Also on the same NY Times blog mentioned above, Michael Ratner notes that the sadistic use of insects is, literally, straight out of Orwell's room 101 in MiniLove:
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/the-memos-torture-redefined/

"There is nothing abstract about the techniques: they are initially focused on one individual and even discuss his psychological weakness in language similar to the novel 1984 — although in this case, it's bugs, not rats."

Scott Horton on the barbarity and the use of healthcare professionals:
"
Well, we're seeing the realization of two famous pieces of literature, aren't we? George Orwell's 1984 with the rat—remember, the rat was selected after psychoanalysis of the subject revealed that he had a fear of rats, so this was being used to terrorize, quite literally, the individual—as well as Terry Gilliam's filming of Brazil, where we know again study of fear was used to drive, to craft special techniques. ... [The memos suggests] that with respect to this prisoner, the diagnosis of psychiatrists and psychologists who had studied his case was that he had an irrational fear of insects. So let's use this fear to unhinge him.

So, the other thing I think we should note, going back here, is this shows the central role played by healthcare professionals in the crafting and implementation of this entire process. It's clear from reading these memoranda that doctors and psychologists are present at every stage along the way, supervising what's going on, but also suggesting and refining the techniques to make them more terrible.
"

And some more from the NY Times editorial:
"
These memos are not an honest attempt to set the legal limits on interrogations, which was the authors' statutory obligation. They were written to provide legal immunity for acts that are clearly illegal, immoral and a violation of this country's most basic values.

It sounds like the plot of a mob film, except the lawyers asking how much their clients can get away with are from the C.I.A. and the lawyers coaching them on how to commit the abuses are from the Justice Department. And it all played out with the blessing of the defense secretary, the attorney general, the intelligence director and, most likely, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
...

These memos make it clear that Mr. Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution. Congress should impeach him. And if the administration will not conduct a thorough investigation of these issues, then Congress has a constitutional duty to hold the executive branch accountable. If that means putting Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales on the stand, even Dick Cheney, we are sure Americans can handle it.
"

Is there any reason why Condoleezza Rice should not be added to that list, as chair of the Principals Committee of the National Security Council --- their discussions and decisions, so far as we know, right out of the plot of the same mob film? There is one significant difference: the Principals Committee were not just lawyers --- they were actual decision-makers, with all the legal responsibility that entails.




5. Hoover fellows to the rescue

They are out in force! (A concerted effort?)

On the aforementioned NY Times Blog we have Kori Schake making an argument against prosecution, which she is perfectly entitled to do, except it's relevant to us because of her Hoover position. She informs us that applying the rule of law in a democracy is now called "politicization".

Still at the same blog, Kenneth Anderson, also from Hoover, rightly points out that "Congress Knew All Along", including senior Democrats. Unfortunately, he also seems to regard the Nuremberg-plus-get-out-of-jail-free-card defense as "obvious", rather than obviously not a defense, given that Democrats were complicit. It is not at all clear why war crimes become non-prosecutable when the opposition party proves to be (or perhaps, was well known to be) spineless and fails to take a stand against them. Does one decide not to prosecute a Nazi officer because the SPD failed to prevent, or even knew about, or even sympathized with Nazi atrocities? But this argument, ridiculous in principle, is made in such a dismissive fashion that one is not sure whether he actually means it as a matter of principle, or as a matter of prosecutorial discretion.

Such arguments by those we are supposed to look up to on campus speak for themselves. All the more so, when there are faculty on campus against whom there is a prima facie case of war crimes.

One should also note that, in the case of Rice, there is also a prima facie case of participation in the much worse crime of aggressive war, the supreme crime against international law, the same crime for which the Nazis were hanged at Nuremberg. The evidence is overwhelming that she was a principal participant in the planning and propaganda efforts of the war on Iraq, a monstrous crime leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths --- by some estimates, well over a million.

What if such people lived nearby; what if they came to dinner?

Ideology survey

Extremely interesting statistics.

This is a national survey of 1,000 US adults, a couple weeks ago, 95% confidence interval is +/- 3 percentage points.

Which is a better system - capitalism or socialism?

53% Capitalism
20% Socialism
27% Not sure

That is, pick 1,000 random americans off the street, ask them to choose between capitalism and socialism, and 200 will answer socialism; another 270 will be unsure.

Those 20% hold that belief in spite of a century of capitalist propaganda, in spite of nearly a century of Soviet propaganda that socialism means the USSR, in spite of the opinion being heresy in all respectable circles everywhere in the world, and in spite of no serious model of a desirable functioning socialist system in existence, or possibly even in theory.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/just_53_say_capitalism_better_than_socialism

Also, Bill Blum mentioned in his most recent anti-empire report (also including some discussion of his socialism) an interesting statistic, which has been around for a while.

"In 1987, nearly half of 1,004 Americans surveyed by the Hearst press believed Karl Marx's aphorism: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" was to be found in the US Constitution."

http://www.killinghope.org/bblum6/aer68.html

Socialists have no seriously worked out alternative, have no elite support, very few serious political parties with significant support, and a deafening chorus unanimous in its condemnation among all the great and the good of the world.

And yet, they have 20% of the population of the most fiercely capitalist nation on earth behind them. Never underestimate the resiliency of the heretical belief in social justice!

Imagine if they got their act together.

On dinner parties and war criminals

"Oh, your prudery; oh, your squeamish respectability; all the abominations are allowed to *happen*, but no one may mention them. Delicate women must not know anything or say anything about blood and filth... There is nothing indecent about death and killing as far as you are concerned, you well brought up little ladies..."

"[T]he way [respectable] conversation customarily handles a new movement that strives to create a big upheaval: with an expression of prudent doubt and reservation, gentle ridicule, condescending recognition of the noble cause --- and all of that against a background of unmoving, rigid indifference."

--- Bertha von Suttner, 1889

Favourite political axiom ever

"Maybe one of the principles around which work should be organized is: does it leave people enough time and energy to go home and have sex?"

--- Cynthia Peters, "The Art (and Serendipity) of Kinship"

The Nation Reimagines Socialism

There is a lot of discussion happening on broad vision at the moment. In particular, the Nation has a whole Forum on "Reimagining Socialism". This looks fantastic. I haven't read everything there yet, but it looks great. There's a lead article by Ehrenreich and Fletcher, and then a whole bunch of articles in response.

Reimagining Socialism: A Nation Forum
By Barbara Ehrenreich & Bill Fletcher Jr.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090323/ehrenreich_fletcher

Ehrenreich and Fletcher mention participatory economics, which I think is something worth thinking about -- in my opinion, it's a leading candidate for what a desirable economy looks like, at least among those I have heard about. Michael Albert, who is one of the people who wrote down this vision, wrote a response to them, but the Nation did not print it.
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/20826

The Venezuelan consul also wrote a response, which again the Nation has refused to print, so far as I am aware. In it, she talks about various programmes of the Bolivarian government, and remarks positively about participatory economics.
http://www.zcommunications.org/blog/view/2906

This is precisely the right time for these discussions. It's a pity
there isn't more radical infrastructure in place to take advantage of
the situation and press for radical change.

Keeping the flame alive

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/03/26/18583436.php