This blog will discuss many issues pertaining to current events and encourages others to discuss and do the same. The goal is to raise the level of discourse and hopefully have a good time sharing thoughts and ideas.
The parade of torture sympathizers from the Bush Administration continued last night on The Daily Show with former Bush speech writer Marc Thiessen making an appearance. Thiessen has been vocal in his support of the the interrogation policies that were implemented during the Bush Administration and has most recently jumped to the defense of Liz Cheney and her organization for questioning the loyalty of some DOJ lawyers.
One lawyer in the National Security Division of Holder's Justice Department, Jennifer Daskal, has written that any terrorist not charged with a crime "should be released from Guantanamo's system of indefinite detention" even though "at least some of these men may ... join the battlefield to fight U.S. soldiers and our allies another day." Should a lawyer who advocates setting terrorists free, knowing they may go on to kill Americans, have any role in setting U.S. detention policy? My hunch is that most Americans would say no.
Do other lawyers in question hold similarly radical and dangerous views? Without the information Holder is withholding, we cannot know if such lawyers are affecting detainee policy.
Yet for raising questions, Cheney and the Republican senators have been vilified. Former Clinton Justice Department official Walter Dellinger decried the "shameful" personal attacks on "these fine lawyers," while numerous commentators leveled charges of "McCarthyism."
I was wondering how Jon Stewart would treat Thiessen after John Yoo seemed to get a big pass in his recent appearance on the Daily Show, but Stewart did a pretty good job. Here is the full discussion in three parts:
I still think Stewart doesn't give himself enough credit by telling Thiessen that their views are "not that far apart". Clearly this is not the case. It was nice to see Thiessen's views challenged and Stewart take him to task for his support of the shameful ad that was put out by Liz Cheney's organization.
Thiessen is another individual who defends the use of torture, is unapologetic about the affects of using such techniques on detainees, and is critical of those who refuse to use these same policies. It is these views that show a disrespect and some could argue, a certain level of contempt for the American justice system. These individuals want the power to be able to torture detainees and will continue to level attacks against anyone who defends the rule of law and appropriate interrogation tactics. Interviews like the one above only continue to re-enforce this point.
Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol's organization, Keep America Safe, has produced a new video that criticizes Attorney General Eric Holder and other Justice Department lawyers. Take a look:
This campaign is an extension of actions being advanced by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) for the Obama Administration to disclose potential "conflicts of interest" in the Justice Department surrounding detainee policies. Grassley has said:
“The decisions to bring detainees into the United States and afford them civilian trials are highly questionable. I want to know more about who is advising the Attorney General. I understand that there are attorneys at the Justice Department working on these issues who either represented Guantanamo detainees or worked for groups who advocated for them. This prior representation creates apparent conflicts of interest,” Grassley said. “My request is about establishing transparency and holding the Administration to its word to make the Government’s business public.”
When Eric Holder disclosed that 9 Obama Administration appointees had represented Guantanamo detainees, Grassley demanded to know their identities. Holder released the names of two of the nine and now the other seven are being portrayed by Cheney's organization as having questionable motives...even being labeled "The Al Qaeda Seven".
Many on the right have conveniently neglected to mention that the United States Supreme Court sided with the Obama attorneys. One of the targeted attorneys is Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, the lawyer who won Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the case that struck down the Bush administration’s military commissions system. Another target, Justice Department lawyer Jennifer Daskal, had signed her name to an amicus brief in the Boumediene v. Bush case arguing that Gitmo detainees be accorded habeas corpus rights to challenge their convictions. The Supreme Court sided with Daskal’s position.
So now we have an organization attacking DOJ lawyers because they have represented detainees in accordance with the rule of law. Earlier today, Glenn Greenwald posed an interesting view on his Twitter feed. He stated:
Many GITMO detainees have been represented by military lawyers - would like to hear Cheney/Kristol call them part of the "Al Qaeda Seven"
Remember this past Sunday when former Vice President Dick Cheney declared that he is a "big supporter" of waterboarding and effectively solidified his support for torture?
Remember how others have stated that is is pretty much a confession to conspiring to torture and how the Department of Justice should investigate and prosecute Cheney based off his claims?
Well I wonder how Cheney would be received at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) when he was announced as a surprise guest by his daughter Liz:
What an ovation! Check out this report from Ben Smith at Politico:
Chris Barron, organizer of "Draft Cheney," emails this morning that he's organizing a write-in vote for the former Vice President at the CPAC straw poll.
“We urge the grassroots conservatives who will be attending CPAC to join us in sending a powerful message about the future of our party, by writing in the name of the only person with the experience and conservative credentials necessary to lead our party in 2012 – write in Dick Cheney,” Barron says.
It looks like Conservatives at CPAC are more than willing to accept a man who openly embraces torture and openly thumbs his nose at the rule of law.
Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, and Bill Kristol have launched a new organization called "Keep America Safe" whose mission statement reads in part:
Since 9/11, the United States Government, through our armed forces and our intelligence and law enforcement professionals, has succeeded in preventing any further attacks on the American homeland. This is a major achievement. By turning away from the policies that have kept us safe, by treating terrorism as a law enforcement matter, giving foreign terrorists the same rights as American citizens, launching investigations of CIA agents, cutting defense spending, breaking faith with our allies and attempting to appease our adversaries, the current administration is weakening the nation, and making it more difficult for us to defend our security and our interests.
Keep America Safe believes the United States can only defeat our adversaries and defend our interests from a position of strength. We know that America has, for 233 years, been an unparalleled force for good in the world, that our fighting forces are the best the world has ever known, and that the world is a safer place when America is trusted by our allies and feared and respected by our enemies. Keep America Safe will make the case for an unapologetic approach to fighting terrorism around the world, for victory in the wars this country fights, for democracy and human rights, and for a strong American military that is needed in the dangerous world in which we live.
They have also launched a new web ad:
Cheney's group is obviously targeting MSNBC in this ad though it is unclear whether the "they" that are referring to in the ad is MSNBC specifically or anyone who opposes the agenda of this conservative group. Regardless, Rachel Maddow responded last night on her show:
Considering that Rachel Maddow has invited many guests on her show to debate substantive issues in a respectful manner, it is going to be interesting to see if Cheney decides to take up Maddow's offer. I know one thing, if this does happen, it will be must see TV and I would like to see Maddow's full hour show devoted to this discussion.
It had been expected that the Obama Administration was going to comply with a court order stemming from a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and release photographs which depict abuse of detainees that were held in U.S. custody. The ACLU wanted the release of these photographs to counter the arguments of the Bush Administration that the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib was an isolated incident and not part of government policy.
Ever since the Obama Administration announced that they would comply with the court order, there has been an outcry from both lawmakers and commentators on the Right claiming that the release of these photos would make those serving in the United States military less safe. Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) even wrote a letter to President Obama in which they asked for the photographs not to be released because they would serve "no public good" and "endanger our men and women in uniform".
It is now being reported that the Obama Administration has reversed itself and that President Obama has now directly decided to oppose the release of these additional photos citing a concern for the safety of U.S. troops. Speaking to the New York Times, one anonymous administration official stated:
"The president strongly believes that the release of these photos, particularly at this time, would only serve the purpose of inflaming the theaters of war, jeopardizing US forces and making our job more difficult in places like Iraq and Afghanistan."
and another senior administration official stated:
"The president would be the last to excuse the actions depicted in these photos. That is why the Department of Defense investigated these cases, and why individuals have been punished through prison sentences, discharges, and a range of other punitive measures."
Aside from this last interesting quote (Obama is apparently in favor of prosecutions and investigations for some who carried out torture, but not for those who ordered it), the outcry over the release of these photos takes on an interesting dynamic.
On one hand you have people like Sean Hannity, Liz Cheney, Joe Lieberman, and others claiming that the release of these photos will depict American troops in a "negative light" and would cause us national harm, while on the other hand you have this same group of people actively defending the use of torture as necessary to our safety. Here is a compilation put together by ThinkProgress:
Note how in the video clip the acts in the photos are denounced by many as something that happened "in the past" and they speak of these actions as if they are obviously wrong. This does two things, first this deflects from the obvious point that the appalling act is not the release of the photos, but that these acts of torture were occurring in the first place and authorized by the last Administration. Secondly, it deflects from the aforementioned point that these same people who are so against the release of these awful photos are the exact same people who are advocating and justifying the use of torture over the last eight years.
It is situations like these which allow for Liz Cheney to state in one breath that by releasing these photos Obama is in fact "siding with the terrorists" and claim in another breath that the United States never engaged in torture and that techniques like waterboarding are vital to saving American lives.
Liz Cheney joins the ranks of those who are defending torture. Somehow she thinks that because the United States used waterboarding as part of the SERE training and that since we would not torture our own people, that this means that waterboarding (along with the other techniques described in the torture memos) are not torture. She even goes so far as to say that the memos were very careful in outlining how far we could go before it was considered torture. (Waterboarding for 39 seconds = not torture, waterboarding for 41 seconds = torture?) Nevermind the fact that the Bush Administration did not even abide by the regulations set out in their own legal memos.
