Still More on Obama Decriminalizing Torture (for Americans only, feel priviledged yet?)

AMY GOODMAN: —but then saying he will not be holding the interrogators responsible, people involved with it; we have to move forward, not move back.

ALFRED McCOY: Right. That’s exactly how you get impunity. That’s what’s happened every single time in the past. For example, in 1970, the House and Senate of the United States discovered that the Phoenix Program had been engaged in systematic torture, that they had killed through extraditial executions 46,000 South Vietnamese. That’s about the same number of American combat deaths in South Vietnam. Nothing was done. There was no punishment, and the policy of torture continued.

Historian Alfred McCoy: Obama Reluctance on Bush Prosecutions Affirms Culture of Impunity

I wanted to add the following inserts as an update at the bottom of the previous post, but then I decided to start a new post for them instead. Editing long posts gets much more difficult, and it gets harder to find errors in them and correct to them (and there were a lot of grammatical errors in the last one, and I am still finding them). These I quotes below I saw as good points toward what I was trying to say in the previous post.

UPDATE 1:

A similar crisis confronted the U.S. public in the mid-1970s. While the Watergate scandal was unfolding, widespread evidence was mounting of illegal government activity, including domestic spying and the infiltration and disruption of legal political groups, mostly anti-war groups, in a broad-based, secret government crackdown on dissent. In response, the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities was formed. It came to be known as the Church Committee, named after its chairman, Idaho Democratic Sen. Frank Church. The Church Committee documented and exposed extraordinary activities on the CIA and FBI, such as CIA efforts to assassinate foreign leaders, and the FBI’s COINTELPRO (counterintelligence) program, which extensively spied on prominent leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

It is not only the practices that are similar, but the people. Frederick A.O. Schwarz Jr., general counsel to the Church Committee, noted two people who were active in the Ford White House and attempted to block the committee’s work: “Rumsfeld and then [Dick] Cheney were people who felt that nothing should be known about these secret operations, and there should be as much disruption as possible.”

Church’s widow, Bethine Church, now 86, continues to be very politically active in Idaho. She was so active in Washington in the 1970s that she was known as “Idaho’s third senator.” She said there needs to be a similar investigation today: “When you think of all the things that the Church Committee tried to straighten out and when you think of the terrific secrecy that Cheney and all of these people dealt with, they were always secretive about everything, and they didn’t want anything known. I think people have to know what went on. And that’s why I think an independent committee [is needed], outside of the Congress, that just looked at the whole problem and everything that happened."

Disclosure of ‘Secrets’ in the ’70s Didn’t Destroy the Nation, by Amy Goodman, April 29, 2009, Truthdig.com

Imagine being able to go back in time and help Dick Cheney stop the Church Committee from going forward. Now also imagine all of the world then holds Dick Cheney's burying of the truth, for "looking to the future, not the past" as a pattern for the whole world to emulate, and the Dick becoming a world-wide popular icon of 'openness in government' thus marking the beginning of a new "Cheney Century" and the new stronger "Strong America" (torture, American-style) model of governance spreading worldwide! Nothing less important, nothing less dangerous than that is going on right now by Obama's criminality in the same vein, mold, and likeness of the previous administrations, but far far more 'popularizing' of it than the previous administration's low popularity ever could. And all because of not 'confronting' its growing popularity at risk to his personal popularity amongst those who think that the US ought to torture people. Can't risk losing their votes, because with Obama's reluctance to take on that mentality and mindset head on, they are growing more numerous (and respectable!) everyday.

UPDATE 2:

The truth is that European liaison services as well as other intelligence services have tempered their cooperation with the CIA because of the use of torture and abuse as well as the extraordinary rendition of innocent individuals from their countries to intelligence services in the Middle East.

The CIA’s extra-legal activities have complicated and undermined the task of maintaining credible relations with our allies in the battle against terrorism.

Both Ignatius and Goss argue that, because of the release of the memos, CIA clandestine operatives will keep their heads down and avoid assignments that carry political risk, and that the decline in CIA “morale and effectiveness” will harm American national security.

More nonsense! CIA operatives and analysts are professionals who pride themselves on service to the country and their oath to the Constitution.

Very few of them took part in the corruption of intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and very few participated in the policies of torture and abuse. They know that the law should not be broken and they want to get these issues behind them so that they can continue to serve the national interests of the United States.

They know that painful truths must be acknowledged and that some price must be paid by all for the chicanery of a few.

If Agency personnel were permitted to share their opinions about torture and abuse with the press, a large majority would oppose the practices. Unfortunately, only those officers seeking to cover-up their own activities have the temerity to talk to reporters.

WPost: All the Ex-President's Excuses, by Melvin A. Goodman, May 1, 2009
http://consortiumnews.com/2009/050109b.html

UPDATE 3:
And to add a bit from the Memo to President Obama on Torture, by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, April 29, 2009 (Updated May 1, 2009)

Please do not be deceived into thinking that most intelligence officials, past and present, condone torture — still less that they are angry that you have put a stop to such techniques.

We are referring, of course, to what President Bush called “an alternative set of procedures” involving cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment that violates domestic and international law. ...
You need to know that the vast majority of intelligence professionals deplore “extraordinary rendition” and the other torture procedures that were subsequently ordered by senior Bush administration officials.

Sadly, President Bush was not the first chief executive to find a small cabal of superpatriots, amateur thugs, and contractors to do his administration’s bidding. But never before in this country were lawless thugs given such free rein. The congressional “oversight” committees looked the other way.

Tenet and his acolytes successfully ingratiated themselves with President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and the faux lawyers who devised what actually amounts to a very porous “legal” shield for those who carried out the torture. ...

On April 28, former Vice President Walter Mondale exposed the speciousness of that argument during an interview in Minneapolis. Mondale was one of the senators on the Church Committee, which during the mid-Seventies unearthed the unlawful activities of COINTELPRO and other abuses by intelligence agencies.

Speaking from that experience, Mondale noted that concern over the effect on agency morale — a concern that is widely expressed now — was also voiced both before the Church investigation got under way and while it was proceeding.

The concern proved totally unfounded, according to Mondale, as it quickly became apparent that agency personnel called before the Church Committee were thankful for the chance to get the truth out, get a heavy burden off their shoulders, and put the scandal behind them.

Most important, the truth that was brought to light made it possible for the country to resolve how national security issues should be addressed in the future. Much of that wisdom and many of the legal protections introduced at that time were simply disregarded by your predecessor and the people he picked to run his administration.

As for the need for holding people to account, Mondale had this to say:

"Holding people responsible in some way for what happened is very important. If the verdict here is that you can do these kinds of things and there are no consequences, then that leaves a precedent. I've been around the federal government long enough to know that if there is a bad precedent, it's like leaving a loaded pistol on the kitchen table. You don't know who is going to pick it up and pull the trigger. There need to be consequences for violating the law.”
We of VIPS call for a full, truthful and public fact-finding process to begin without delay. We ask that you give careful consideration to Senator Carl Levin’s suggestion that the attorney general appoint retired judges with solid reputations for integrity to begin the process.

Another viable possibility would be the appointment of an independent “blue-ribbon commission,” perhaps modeled on the Church Committee of the mid-Seventies, to assess any illegal or improper activities and make recommendations for reform in government operations against terrorism.

We commend the administration for releasing the Department of Justice memos attempting to legalize torture. We believe the remaining relevant information must be released promptly so that the citizenry can make informed judgments about what was done in our name and, if warranted, an independent prosecutor can be appointed without unnecessary delay.

We believe strongly that any judgments regarding amnesty, forgiveness or pardon can only be made on the basis of a fully developed, public record — and not used as some sort of political bargaining chip.

Finally, we firmly oppose the notion that anyone can arrogate a right to ignore the Nuremberg Tribunal’s rejection of “only-following-orders” as an acceptable defense.

(signatories are listed alphabetically with former intelligence affiliations)

Gene Betit, US Army, DIA, Arlington, VA
Ray Close, National Clandestine Service (CIA), Princeton, NJ
Phil Giraldi, National Clandestine Service (CIA), Purcellville, VA
Larry Johnson, CIA & Department of State, Bethesda, MD
Pat Lang, US Army (Special Forces), DIA, Alexandria, VA
David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council, Linden, VA
Tom Maertens, Department of State, Mankato, MN
Ray McGovern, US Army, CIA, Arlington, VA
Sam Provance, US Army (Abu Ghraib), Greenville, SC
Coleen Rowley, FBI, Apple Valley, MN
Greg Theilmann, Department of State & Senate Intel. Committee staff, Arlington, VA
Ann Wright, US Army, Department of State, Honolulu, HI

Annex

We list below additional experienced intelligence personnel and a few others, who have spoken out/written publicly about the inefficacy and counter productiveness of torture:

FBI: Ali Soufan, Dan Coleman, Jack Cloonan

CIA: John Helgerson (former Inspector General), Bob Baer, Haviland Smith, Mel Goodman

Military: Navy General Counsel Alberto J. Mora; Major General Antonio Taguba (who probed Abu Ghraib and concluded that Bush officials committed war crimes: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/41514.html); Air Force Col Steven M. Kleinman; Rear Admiral (ret) and former Judge Advocate General for the Navy John Hutson; former Naval Intelligence officer and Assistant Secretary of Defense during the Reagan Administration Lawrence Korb; former U.S. military interrogator (pseudonym) Matthew Alexander; and former military intelligence officer Malcolm Nance.

Journalists: Scott Horton, Patrick Cockburn

Update 4:

Indeed. What kind of primitive, brutal country knows for years that its own powerful government officials participated in torture and then fails even to investigate what happened, let alone impose meaningful accountability on the torturers? The international community simply cannot tolerate acquiescence to that sort of evil. Note that the UAE apparently compensated the victims of the prince's torture, whereas the U.S. blocked -- and continues to try to block -- its own torture victims from even having a day in court. ...

>> It had been previously known that officials of the agency had destroyed hundreds of hours of videotaped interrogations, but the documents filed Monday reveal the number of tapes. . . . The destroyed videotapes are thought to have depicted some of the harshest interrogation techniques used by the C.I.A.<<

Only monsters and barbarians fail to destroy their own torture tapes. The New York Times previously reported that the highest-level White House officials -- including David Addington and Alberto Gonzales -- participated in discussions about whether to destroy those videotapes (acts which the co-chairmen of the 9/11 Commission have called "obstruction of justice"), though because we need to Look Forward, Not Back, and this all happened in The Past, we don't know what was said and don't need to. Knowing that might disrupt our moment of quiet, contemplative reflection. ...

>> We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during a course of that, both by the armed forces and CIA. [Releasing the memos] was the right thing to do. . . . There is prosecutorial discretion. We shouldn't in my view go after the CIA officers involved in this. There is a good argument in my view for reviewing the White House justice council and the Attorney General's office who okayed this.<<

Gen. McCaffrey's point was echoed by the Hard Leftist Vengeful Partisan, Gen. Antonio Taguba:

>>>[T]here is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. . . . [T]he Commander-in-Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture. . . . The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.<<<

Even by official U.S. Government acknowledgments, there have been numerous deaths of detainees in U.S. custody which "were acts of criminal homicide." Independent reports make clear just how prevalent detainee death was.

But anyway, enough about all that divisive partisan unpleasantness -- back to this brutal, criminal UAE prince: let's watch more of those videotapes, express our outrage on behalf of international human rights standards, and threaten the UAE that their relationship with us will suffer severely unless there is a real investigation -- not the whitewash they tried to get away with -- along with real accountability. We simply cannot, in good conscience, maintain productive relations with a country that fails to take "torture" seriously. We are, after all, the United States.

UAE 'Torture' Scandal and Cover-up Sparks Outrage in the US, by Glenn Greenwald, May 3rd, 2009, Salon.com