December 19, 2007
Torture Tapes are the Watergate of Our Times (Brent Budowsky)
As I write these words on the morning of Wednesday, Dec. 19, high- and low-level officials of the Bush administration involved in torture, and the destruction of the torture tapes, are consulting their criminal lawyers as The New York Times reports that highest-level lawyers in the administration had discussed the destruction of the tapes.
I predict there will soon be new stories about more torture tapes that were destroyed and new stories about more high-level officials that were either tainted or corrupted by this scandal, and others who opposed this travesty who will ultimately testify about who they approached to attempt to prevent it.
Washington and America will momentarily ask once again: What did the president and vice president know, and when did they know it?
In an administration facing an ocean of scandal on multiple and multiplying fronts, this scandal above all will be the Watergate of our times because it involves extremely probable crimes of torture, extremely probable obstructions of justice, and a steady stream of revelations that will only escalate until the inevitable special prosecutor is named.
Congress should, and I predict ultimately will, take the decisive action of seeking evidence, and if necessary file the great contempt case of the Bush years that will be defined clearly and specifically as follows:
Can executive privilege be claimed to hide acts that would be violations of criminal law?
I predict the answer of this Supreme Court, and any Supreme Court, will be unequivocally “no.”
Even a mass pardon by the president, which I have predicted and predict again here, will not solve their problem, because he would have to name so many recipients of pardons, and so many potential crimes that would be pardoned, that it would be both ridiculous and logistically impossible.
What follows is the column I wrote in The Hill newspaper published on Tuesday, Dec. 18 before this new information came to light, and before new revelations about more destruction of more torture tapes that I predict are coming soon:
In unprecedented congressional testimony Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann recently refused to say it would be illegal for American POWs to be tortured through waterboarding by our enemies. He couldn’t because a policy claimed to be legal when committed by our government would be equally legal when committed by our enemies against our troops and POWs.
The legal perversion of Gen. Hartmann’s testimony would outrage American military families.
It dramatizes how alien this torture policy is from two centuries of American military and legal tradition, when an American general cannot defend the time-honored rights of American POWs, and America’s enemies could use his testimony as their defense for torture against our troops.
From the days of George Washington, every president, every Congress and every Supreme Court has believed that torture is illegal and violates cardinal American values.
From the days of the Continental Army until today, torture has been opposed by virtually every commander of every branch of military service.
President Bush does not speak for any previous president, all of whom unanimously opposed what he does today.
With all of the discredited practices of the Bush years, his playing on the darker impulses of fear to justify what no previous president, no previous Congress and no previous Supreme Court has ever allowed is testimony to the damage this does to American honor and the threats this creates for American troops.
Of course, the CIA destroyed the torture tapes that were sought as evidence by the 9-11 Commission, courts and Congress.
They were destroyed because they were evidence of abuses that the weight of legal opinion would conclude constitutes criminal conduct under international and American law. Their destruction probably constitutes obstruction of justice, intended to cover up the underlying crimes of the torture itself.
In this warped reality-distortion field that history will condemn as the Bush years, a general cannot even stand up for the rights, protection and safety of American POWs because to condemn abuses against our POWs would condemn the abuses he defends before Congress.
It is outrageous for advocates of torture to say: “We are against torture, but” when every previous President, Congress and Supreme Court have said: “We are against torture, period.”
Torture is a cancer that metastasizes to everything it touches. Our international credibility collapses. Our POWs are exposed to grave new dangers. The destruction of evidence becomes inevitable. The obstruction of justice becomes a reality and the inevitably failed cover-up is exposed.
In fact, the CIA needs to be protected from the bad judgment of our president, as much as the bad actions of our enemies.
Torture corrupts the military chain of command, Civilians who never served in the military order uniformed officers to commit acts that they strongly oppose.
Torture corrupts military justice by creating a super-secret infrastructure of detention centers that enable torture, morphing into an infrastructure of secret courts and secret evidence that almost inevitably lead to secret crimes that are ultimately exposed.
Torture corrupts our democracy as these wrongs are committed without public disclosure, without congressional oversight, and without judicial review that Justice Jackson warned at Nuremberg protects the rule of law in a civilized world.
It is no coincidence that Attorney General Michael Mukasey pursues the doctrine of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, trying to exclude Congress yet again, in yet another attack on constitutional checks and balances.
An independent counsel is clearly needed because the Justice Department and CIA have been thoroughly integrated into the actions and justifications for the practices under investigation.
There is no credence when government agencies so thoroughly integrated into the torture policy investigate themselves without independent review.
This constitutes not merely the extreme perception of conflict of interest, but the extreme reality of conflict of interest.
This conflict is even more draconian because of the unexplained reversal of position by the attorney general himself, on this very subject, between his first and second days of testimony during his confirmation hearings.
Military families oppose torture because they have a profound respect for military honor, military justice and military values. Like every previous generation of American presidents and American commanders, they know that torture endangers those they love, who serve so bravely.
27 Comments
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Get ready for the chorus of kooks saying waterboarding is not toture. Ask these Bushevics; Why the destruction of the tapes? Why the secret prisons abroad? Why the effort to legislate the retroactive legalization of waterboarding?
Great post Brent. Impeachment proceedings are way past due.
Comment by Lester — December 19, 2007 @ 11:40 am
Brent,
I asked you before and I'll ask again.
Since some special US forces are waterboarded as part of their training, were they / are they being tortured?
Is this a crime?
Should it stop?
Comment by Jon Pemberton — December 19, 2007 @ 11:44 am
It is telling that an administration so willing to advocate the irrelevancy of US and international law, is equally willing to obstruct any independent judicial review of what is claimed to be "legal actions."
Under normal circumstances any administration that is so emphatically defending and hiding possible war crimes would, and should, be fair game to the media which now are blissfully ignorant(?) of the multitude of suspected crimes that not even Congress appears to want to investigate.
Many have already said this: what exactly is the difference with a dictatorship when the ruling class can violate the law and oversight (checks and balances anyone?) is refused as "parrtisan politics?"
Comment by Nescio — December 19, 2007 @ 2:09 pm
The article is excellent, and I salute Mr. Budowsky for his excellent writing skills. I take slight exception with comparing this scandal with Watergate. To me it's kind of like comparing Hiroshima to a Fourth of July firecracker. The magnitude of the crimes committed by the Bush administration make Nixon look like an amateur piker. That impeachment hasn't happened yet will be the eternal shame of this Congress and this generation. I want my country back. I do not recognize it any more.
Comment by NCBlueneck — December 19, 2007 @ 4:48 pm
Somehow Brent, I don't know how, this story will slowly disappear, dissolve. Like all the other stories of Bush crimes. It'll just go away. Torture? What torture? I don't know what you're talking about?
There'll be no special prosecutor. There'll be no accountability. The FCC just guarnteed that major city newspapers would come under the ownership of conservative corporations. So who will tell the American people this story? AM radio? Ridiculous. Corporate TV news. Equally ridiculous? Newspapers? That little problem was just solved. Progressive Websites? Audience still too small.
I know Brent you're convinced that FINALLY Bush and Cheney are cornered. Their day of accountability is here. I don't yet know exactly how Brent, but it ain't gonna happen.
Comment by Larry from C — December 19, 2007 @ 6:59 pm
Talk about a hysterical rant! One would almost assume that this had been written by Andi Sullivan. Apparently, the writer doesn't even keep up with the latest developments on this story.
Comment by R. Bork — December 19, 2007 @ 7:13 pm
Abu Ghraib & Guantanamo are the Watergate of our time,but NOBODY seems to care.They don't want to be bothered
Comment by Frank Elkins — December 19, 2007 @ 7:32 pm
may god have mercy on our country.
Comment by joe c — December 19, 2007 @ 7:56 pm
Watergate was in my time too… and this is worse… much worse
Comment by Nell — December 19, 2007 @ 9:20 pm
This is just one more of those scandals the Bush admin will end up getting away with - unless the Courts step in. Congress sure has got the courage to do it.
They should be impeached and immediately before they do any more harm to our nation.
Coonsey's View
www.freewebs.com/coonsey/
Comment by Coonsey — December 19, 2007 @ 10:18 pm
"Congress should, and I predict ultimately will, take the decisive action…"
The first part, yes, but what action by this Congress gives you any hope for the second?
Comment by Ian — December 19, 2007 @ 10:53 pm
The people subjected to waterboarding were not POWs.
Comment by edh — December 19, 2007 @ 11:07 pm
if this is really a "war," then the people who were waterboarded were POWs.
Comment by AlanSF — December 20, 2007 @ 2:59 am
Watergate, the burglary, was small potatoes compared to the systematic violations of our civil rights perpetrated by this bunch. Its cover-up was also much smaller than what's happened over the last few years.
Comment by BobN — December 20, 2007 @ 4:49 am
Nothing will come of it.Most bribed media is silent.All investigative commitees are a farce.Just like the JFK killing and the 911 attacks.Problem is that USA acts like Israel thugs but in a greater scale–world wide. Nothing will come of it because both parties are liars and crooks. This is why the tapes were distoried–No Arabs did 911 WTC bombings– a continious cover-up.The CIA torture tapes are small bannanas. Get on with it- done deal-Americans are saps!
Comment by JoJo — December 20, 2007 @ 6:49 am
A number of Michigan congresspersons, including the infamous Mike Rogers of the 8th district, voted their support for torture. Every Michigan 8th district voter that respects the rule of law should remember Rogers' torture vote during his next reelection bid.
Find how your representative voted on the torture bill.
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2007/roll1161.xml
Comment by BobbyV — December 20, 2007 @ 7:07 am
edh said, "The people subjected to waterboarding were not POWs."
Yeah, "enhanced interrogation techniques" Bush, his admin, and his Rethug replacement wanna-bes are always correct in their POW–er, "illegal enemy combatant" semantics: we do not torture.
LOL!
Comment by Will — December 20, 2007 @ 8:26 am
Nell is right. These affairs are far, far worse than the Watergate affair–and it was _very_ serious.
I only wish we had a judiciary today with half the sccuples of that which was capable of seeing that Nixon was not allowed to write his own "Get Out of Jail Free" pass.
Comment by proximity1 — December 20, 2007 @ 11:05 am
No one wants to see Bush and Cheney impeached more than I do but I'm sitting here wondering why this crime would/should get Bush impeached when none of his other crimes have even created a ripple on the pond. If spying on Americans without a warrant didn't do it, if destroying millions of emails in direct violation of the Presidential Records Act didn't do it, if firing U.S. attorneys because they refused to do your political bidding didn't do it, why would anyone think torturing suspected terrorists will do it. Is there anyone left out there, including loyal Bushies, who doesn't believe that Bush has never met a justice it didn't want to obstruct? (And if you want your hair curled, wander on over to www.usatoday.com, find an article about this issue, and then read some of the comments made by neocons who would clearly stand by and watch their own mothers be tortured if they thought it would keep THEIR sorry asses safe!)
Comment by reddogs — December 20, 2007 @ 12:38 pm
So, are you saying that this refusal to cooperate with Congressional investigaiton by the administration and the Justice Department will not work for them? It seems to be working so far, as long as we have people willing to look the other way… so he can slip out of office.. defeated, but free.
I don't believe this will ever happen.. I want it too, but I have lost such faith in our own system that I seriously doubt it.
And that is a sad statement that is being replayed all across this country by citizens who feel they have no role in what is going on in our country today.
Comment by Steven Mosher — December 20, 2007 @ 12:55 pm
To Jon Pemberton; If you think waterboarding is legal, why the cover up? Why the effort to make waterboarding legal? Pemberton, 7/11 has clues on sale; 10 for $1. Consider picking yourdelf up a six pack, or maybe a case or two.
Comment by Lester — December 20, 2007 @ 3:28 pm
Lester,
Nice non-answer and way to participate in the conversation, attack!
Afraid to answer my questions?
Comment by Jon Pemberton — December 20, 2007 @ 4:35 pm
Jon Pemberton,
Torture is inflicting severe mental and/or physical pain and suffering on a prisoner - someone that is under your control or custody. US forces are not prisoners, so any water boarding that they undergo as part of their training is not a crime.
Comment by el_longhorn — December 20, 2007 @ 4:56 pm
el_longhorn,
So waterboarding is not torutre when applied to people in a training exercise but is when applied to a prisoner.
Interesting point and I respect your view.
Though we disagree at least I have a better understnding of your reasoning.
Thanks
Comment by Jon Pemberton — December 21, 2007 @ 11:32 am
The very first comment in this thread: "Get ready for the chorus of kooks saying waterboarding is not torture." True and they will have missed the important point which is to say we know longer have a problem with it being done to our own.
"In unprecedented congressional testimony Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann recently refused to say it would be illegal for American POWs to be tortured through waterboarding by our enemies."
P.M. Carpenter has a good one on the same topic:
http://pmcarpenter.blogs.com/p_m_carpenters_commentary/2007/12/the-see-it-your.html?cid=94572282#comment-94572282
Lost in the dross, is the bigger point ,which is as Mr. Carpenter says:
"all one really needs to nail it down with is the sighting of the name, David Addington. (snip)
In his view, we don't actually have any (laws). We have, instead, merely one voice of authority — the president — which is otherwise known as authoritarianism.
You may recall what the former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Goldsmith, had to say about the redoubtable Mr. Addington, whom Goldsmith encountered in meeting after Constitutionally hair-raising meeting. (snip)
Once, after Goldsmith had argued the enduring validity of the Geneva Conventions in relation to U.S.-held prisoners, Addington snapped back: "The president has already decided that terrorists do not receive Geneva Convention protections. You cannot question his decision." Never mind that the questioning of presidential decisions happened to be Mr. Goldsmith's job. He had gotten the memo, loud and clear. And Addington's ruling, siphoned through the vice president from the president himself, has stood within White House circles as the only relevant Constitutional Crypto-Article ever since.
So when the NYT story asserted that "one former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been 'vigorous sentiment' among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes" — that is, destroy evidence — that sentiment was merely a vigorous reaffirmation of one-man rule. There is nothing illegal if the autocrat says it isn't. Case closed. See Addington Memo."
Sorry for the length of this post but I will close with this:
"Can executive privilege be claimed to hide acts that would be violations of criminal law?
I predict the answer of this Supreme Court, and any Supreme Court, will be unequivocally no.
I wouldn't bet a dime on your prediction. Just read the Bush v Gore decision and you will see how "creative" these robed criminals can be, especially when they can say their decisions can not become precedent.
Comment by myers — December 22, 2007 @ 1:44 pm
Jon Pemberton when someone gets in a boxing ring and gets punched on the nose that is acceptable because by getting in the ring they consented to that possibly happening. If you were to walk up and punch someone on the street you do not know in the nose that is assault. It is a matter of consent, it is pretty simple really.
Comment by Simon C — December 24, 2007 @ 1:27 pm
Simon C,
You are right. Lets just kill them on the battlefield instead.
Comment by Jon Pemberton — December 26, 2007 @ 1:35 pm