Tuesday, February 03, 2009

First,, Jail All Bush's Lawyers

By Robert Parry
February 3, 2009

If new Attorney General Eric Holder really means what he said in his oath – that he will “support and defend the Constitution of the United States” – then he must give serious consideration to prosecuting crimes committed by the Bush administration, including its torturing of detainees.

Read on.
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Bob Parry is to be congratulated, as always, on his insight, but my admiration goes beyond that merely to comprehend that he was able to contain himself long enough to read so many words by that despicable John Yoo.

(I am so glad he is mostly gone from Talk Shows these days. My own gag reflex was like unto his waterboarding.)

Yes, Yoo and Bybee should be the first on the witness stand. Who could believe that such highhanded rationalizations could be taken as legal justification for such a horrendous thing as torture? A lesson learned about incipient fascism here in the U.S.

But a key to understanding all the damage done to our country by John Yoo is that none of the so-called confessions or intelligence gathered through torture could ever be trusted. Indeed, some of that intelligence was used after the Wild Goose fashion to justify the harebrained invasion of Iraq.

People who are being tortured will say ANYTHING to stop the torture. How wrong to believe them? How wrong and stupid and self-serving to actually ACT upon that so-called "intelligence".

And the fact that those supposed criminals will probably never be prosecutable because their "confessions" were extracted through torture, thereby inadmissible as evidence, is the ultimate in the stupidity of torture.

The bestiality of torture is, of course, a whole different ball of Bush-Cheney wax.

Tue Feb 03, 06:05:00 PM 2009
Anonymous said...

MISSING MEMOS

Yoo and Bybee are prominent on this list...from ProPublica, journalism in the public interest

Wed Feb 04, 10:04:00 AM 2009
Anonymous said...

Before you have a witness list, you need an independent prosecutor. What about the DOJ staff who were there, participating under Yoo, et al? I'm pulling at my memory, to find an Attorney General who didn't identify with the government, meaning, Holder will look to the future of his boss, while looking back at the last administration, yes?

Wed Feb 04, 06:08:00 PM 2009
jeff davis said...

A million Iraqi's are dead, and the lives of millions more monstrously assaulted. Thousands of Americans dead, soldiers and civilians alike, and trillions wasted or cravenly absorbed by war criminals/profiteers, and Robert Parry adopts a judicious tone and says Bush/Cheney and their lawyers may have acted improperly. Where is your outrage? These people were nothing if not brazen. Their very philosophy -- Straussian neoconservatism -- holds that they are so much smarter and know so much better than anyone else what needs to be done, that they are honor/duty bound to set aside the quaint inconveniences associated with ethics in general and honesty in particular. Deliberate, dedicated, unapologetic, and unrelenting lying is their DECLARED method and intent. DECLARED. Do I have to say it again?: DECLARED!!!!!

After eight years of this philosophy in action, for Robert Parry to be so politic and judicious as to ignore this context, is itself a crime. The crime of enabling monsters by legitimizing a narrative which gives the benefit of the doubt to acts which are unambiguously monstrous.

What's needed is the course of action recommended by Vincent Bugliosi: Four million eight thousand counts of felony murder for every member of the Bush/Cheney cabal and all their helpers. When in doubt indict, and let a jury sort it out.

Import the gallows and rope that terminated Saddam, and put them to work "reeducating" our own political class.

And while we're at it, charge with war crimes every member of the military officer corps who, after the non-existence of wmd's and the Downing Street memo and minutes, did not seek a jag opinion on the legality of the Iraq war, (or if just such an opinion was provided to them unasked, a second opinion FROM A CIVILIAN LAWYER).

Thu Feb 05, 03:41:00 PM 2009

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