Yoo And Bybee Materials Sent To Bar Associations For Potential Discipline

By

on February 26, 2010 2:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

c/o TPM Muckraker:

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)

Justin Elliott | February 26, 2010

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) has forwarded materials on the writing of the torture memos to state bars where John Yoo and Jay Bybee are licensed, calling on the bar association to consider possible disciplinary action, Nadler's office announced today.

The torture memo report produced by the Justice Department's ethics office concluded that Yoo, now a professor at Berkeley, and Bybee, now federal judge on the ninth circuit, committed professional misconduct in their drafting of the memos that authorized report.

opening the book on "professional misconduct", part II: Leahy Calls For Justice Department Investigation Into Missing John Yoo Emails

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 26, 2010 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Newsweek reports that the National Archives is pressing the Justice Department to investigate the "possible unauthorized destruction of e-mail and other records" within the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.
video here, c/o ThinkProgress
commentary c/o The Awl:How Many Years Will It Take Us To Get John Yoo's Emails?

by Choire posted @2:28 PM

The number one thing I am pissed off about this month, right after NBC's Olympics coverage, is the disappeared John Yoo emails, which could probably shed a lot of light on how the previous administration created policies to torture people. This is such an unbelievable scandal, both on the issue of torture but also of government accountability. Pretty much, as a nation, everything should come to a standstill until this is dealt with. This morning, the Senate Judiciary Committee asked Gary Grindler, Acting Deputy Attorney General, about the emails, and got total mumbling in response. This is like, pitchforks and subpoenas and prosecution time, people. There are extremely explicit rules about this kind of thing, and in light of the Bush administration email-disappearing shtick, in which everyone had to go to court over and over again simply to get what should have been carefully-conserved White House emails, was bad enough. But these are actual lawyers, at the actualDepartment of Justice, who have engaged in disappearing critical emails.

Where Are John Yoo's Missing Emails?

Torture's "hired guns"

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 26, 2010 9:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

To the Editor [New York Times]:

Re "Report Faults 2 Who Wrote Terror Memos" (front page, Feb. 20):

About the report that concluded that John C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee were not guilty of ethical or professional misconduct in their memos justifying waterboarding and other interrogation techniques, just ask, "Who is the client?"

If lawyers at the Department of Justice are advocates hired to defend an administration's chosen policies, the report is right.

If lawyers at the Department of Justice are hired to defend American citizens' interest in a constitutional government, the report is wrong.

It is the difference between being a hired gun and being the holder of a public trust.

Robert H. Alsdorf
Seattle, Feb. 21, 2010

The writer was a Justice Department lawyer from 1973 to 1975.

"Torture Judge" Jay Bybee in San Francisco March 8 thru 12

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 26, 2010 9:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals calendar here; week's protests will focus on

latest Department of Justice revelations

The long-awaited release of the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) investigation of authors of memoranda sanctioning torture reveals damning new evidence of White House complicity in the drafting of those memos and other shocking revelations (such as John Yoo's assertion that the President has the power to massacre civilians).

Many of us are familiar with the August 2002 memo where Jay Bybee approved specific torture techniques, including waterboarding, for which he was rewarded with a lifetime appointment to the federal bench. For his advice in this and other memoranda the OPR report concludes that Bybee "acted in reckless disregard of his professional obligations."

...the OPR memo is not an exoneration. Read in its entirety, it is an indictment. And the indictment is not just of Bybee and Yoo. It is an indictment of a nation that tragically and unquestionably lost its way. - Sherilynn Ifill, The ROOT

Yoo Watch: University of Texas

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 26, 2010 9:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Report from one of the protesters:

The campus police would not let the general public in to hear John Yoo
speak even though it had been advertised as a public event the night
before.

About 15 activists decided to peacefully protest John Yoo about the
policy memos he drafted for the Bush administration including
warrantless wiretaps, rendition to foreign secret prisons,
torture/waterboarding, indefinite detention without legal council and
the overall suspension of habeus corpus. Representatives from the
American Civil Liberties Union, the World Can't Wait.net,
OpposeTorture.org, and War Criminal Watch were present at this protest.

Sabina Mora, center, and other critics of John Yoo, who was one of the architects of the Bush administration's basis for controversial interrogation techniques, protested outside his speech.

Deborah Cannon/AMERICAN-STATESMAN

ENLARGE PHOTO

Sabina Mora, center, and other critics of John Yoo, who was one of the architects of the Bush administration's basis for controversial interrogation techniques, protested outside his speech.see Ex-White House counsel Yoo speaks at UT

the importance of remembering what the Torture Memos were really about

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 25, 2010 4:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"We tortured people, we tortured many people, and we're arguing about whether two lawyers should get bar discipline?" - Georgetown law professor David Cole, speaking at the After the OPR Report forum hosted by Alliance for Justice. Cole said that the result of the report is that torture has became professionalized and regularized.

Other panelists Michael S. Frisch, Scott Horton and Bill Yeomans (photo by Ryan J. Reilly).

Criticizing the result of the investigation into authors of memos that authorized harsh interrogation methods used on terrorism suspects, participants concluded that the Internal DOJ Ethics Office is Broken.

NYTimes calls for real accountability for Yoo and Bybee's actions,

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 25, 2010 11:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

asks

"Is this really the state of ethics in the American legal profession? Government lawyers who abused their offices to give the president license to get away with torture did nothing that merits a review by the bar?"

see The Torture Lawyers

message to Boalt Hall: OPR whitewash of Yoo's actions will not stand, protests will continue

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 25, 2010 9:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Far from "clearing" John Yoo's crimes, the report reveals new evidence that Yoo engaged

in intentional professional misconduct, to say the least.

Read law school dean Edley's statement in today's Berkeley Daily Planet, where he

exposes his own vague notion of "morality".

Better yet, read Kenneth Theisen's piece in the same paper,

Yoo Must Be Held Accountable.

Then decide for yourself: will you allow an advocate for torture to further his agenda?

cracking open Congress' role in Torture

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 24, 2010 4:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

CIA inspector general was 'bothered' by 'excessive' waterboarding

By Muriel Kane, RAW STORY

Wednesday, February 24th, 2010

waterboarding CIA inspector general was bothered by excessive waterboarding

Last August, in response to an ACLU lawsuit, the Obama administration released a partially declassified 2004 report from the CIA's Inspector General on that agency's detention and interrogation programs. The report's descriptions of the treatment of detainees were sufficiently shocking to prompt Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a prosecutor to look into allegations of abuse.

Now additional documents (pdf), newly obtained by Judicial Watch under a FOIA request, make clear the depth of Inspector General John Helgerson's own concerns about the allegations in his 2004 report.

The documents include timeslines and redacted descriptions of CIA briefings of members of Congress -- primarily the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence oversight committees -- regarding the treatment of detainees and the use of enhanced interrogation techniques...

Continue reading cracking open Congress' role in Torture.

Yoo's "gift"

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 24, 2010 3:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

c/o Kathy Kattenburg @ Moderate Voice:

Yoo's mea magnifico is titled "My Gift to the Obama Presidency," and is here if anyone has the stomach to read it.

Catch her link to Glenn Greenwald's article on the way the right has been misrepresenting David Margolis' report on the OPR recommendation.

raising the bar on torture accountability: "The line that matters now is the one between 'poor judgment' and criminality."

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 24, 2010 1:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

excerpt from Who Told Yoo To Do Those 'Bad Things'?:

Among the many striking aspects of the Justice Department's recently-released ethics report on the creation of the "torture memos" are the repeated indications that John Yoo, the memos' principal author, was in frequent direct contact with the White House and under intense pressure to quickly approve abusive interrogation techniques that policymakers had already chosen to implement but knew might amount to torture.

The final report reveals that despite repeated criticism of Yoo's draft opinions and conclusions from the most experienced, knowledgeable senior attorneys and military officials within the Bush administration, the memos, written by a relatively junior attorney within the Office of Legal Counsel and representing an admittedly "aggressive" view of the law, were adopted and used to determine CIA and defense department interrogation policy.

Those facts underscore that the long-delayed final report from the DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility should be the beginning, not the end, of any investigation. What we still need to know is who was instructing the OLC lawyers and what exactly the lawyers were told. If White House officials were instructing them to create legal justifications for a program those officials knew was likely illegal, then we have evidence of a high-level criminal conspiracy...

Continue reading raising the bar on torture accountability: "The line that matters now is the one between 'poor judgment' and criminality.".

No exoneration for Torture Architects

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 23, 2010 3:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Associate Deputy Atty. Gen. David Margolis' report is far from a vindication for John C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee's shamefully narrow interpretations of laws against torture and extravagant views about presidential power.

see John Yoo and Jay Bybee's disgrace

World Can't Wait's response to Torture "Whitewash"

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 23, 2010 3:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

No Surprise, but Outrage, Over OPR Report

COMING EVENT: U.S. v. John Lindh...

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 23, 2010 3:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Implications of an Extraordinary Case

Monday March 1, 12:45 pm, room 100, Boalt Hall

Frank Lindh, Boalt lecturer, General Counsel for the California Public Utiliites Commission, and the father of John Walker Lindh. Introduction by Amnesty International field organizer William Butkus.

Labeled the "American Taliban" by the media, 29-year-old John grew up here in the Bay Area, converted to Islam at age 16, studied overseas, and found his way to Afghanistan several months before the 9/11 attacks. One of few survivors a Fall 2001 prisoner massacre, John suffered torture and abuse by American forces, and was referred to by President Bush and other powerful officials as an "al Qaeda fighter" and a terrorist. John is now quietly serving a 20-year sentence in federal prison, after pleading guilty to providing "material services" to the Taliban government, in violation of economic sanctions President Clinton had imposed on the Taliban. As part of John's plea bargain, the government agreed to drop all terrorism-related charges.

Brought to you by the Boalt Alliance to Abolish Torture, Amnesty International, Boalt Hall Committee for Human Rights, Boalt Muslim Students Association, Journal of Middle Eastern and Islamic Law, Middle Eastern Law Students Association, National Lawyers Guild - Boalt Chapter, and Native American Law Student Association.

Boalt Alliance to Abolish Torture (BAAT) press release

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 22, 2010 7:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

February 22, 2010 mschuller@berkeley.edu

abolishtorture@gmail.com

Berkeley Law Students Applaud DOJ Report Findings, Torture Memo Lawyers Engaged in Misconduct:

Urge Congress, State Bar and University to Investigate

Student members of the Boalt Alliance to Abolish Torture (BAAT) at Berkeley Law School, where John Yoo is a tenured professor, applauded the findings in the report and expressed dismay over the new facts revealed, including that Yoo "knowingly provided incomplete and one-sided advice." OPR Report, p. 252. As a tenured professor of law, the OPR report concludes "by a preponderance of the evidence" that Yoo "knowingly failed to present a sufficiently thorough, objective, and candid analysis" through "his failure to carefully read the cases, and his exclusive reliance on the work of a junior attorney." OPR Report, p. 253.

Full statement here

OPR report confirms need for disciplinary proceedings

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 22, 2010 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The DisbarTortureLawyers Campaign will file findings today to supplement fifteen disbarment complaints already being reviewed by state bar disciplinary committees.

""The Department of Justice, through the actions of DOJ attorney David Margolis, wants to keep the OPR report from reaching the various disciplinary committees that have active disbarment complaints pending," said attorney and campaign spokesperson Kevin Zeese. "Fortunately, we are not bound by the DOJ's obstructions, and will therefore be filing the OPR report with the disciplinary boards today. And of course, as Mr. Margolis admits, those boards are required to make an independent determination of the information and evidence in the report. Moreover, even if the boards only considered Margolis' finding of 'poor judgment,' they can still order disbarment. But in combination with the OPR report and all the other overwhelming information we have already provided, we believe that the boards will find that the torture attorneys, such asJohn Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, William Haynes, Alberto Gonzales and Stephen Bradbury, must be disbarred."

see Department of Justice Finds That Its Torture Lawyers Engaged in Professional

Misconduct by Advocating Torture During the Bush Administration

remembering Nuremburg

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 21, 2010 5:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"...this [Yoo] is not some Nazified German jurist empowering Hitler in the 1940s, causing the rest of us decades later to wonder how something like this could have happened, and where all the good, decent people were who might have stood up and said 'No!' This is now, this is us. - Ira Glasser, Executive Director ACLU (1978-2001, Retired)

see Can the President Override Any Law He Wants?

"Mr. Bybee and Mr. Yoo... will not escape the verdict of history." - Senator Richard J. Durbin

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 21, 2010 1:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"The Office of Professional Responsibility Investigation into the Office of Legal Counsel Memoranda"

Senate Judiciary Committee
Full Committee

DATE: February 26, 2010
TIME: 10:00 AM
ROOM: Dirksen-226

OFFICIAL HEARING NOTICE / WITNESS LIST:

February 19, 2010

NOTICE OF COMMITTEE HEARING

The Senate Committee on the Judiciary has scheduled a hearing on "The Office of Professional Responsibility Investigation into the Office of Legal Counsel Memoranda" for Friday, February 26, 2010 at 10:00 a.m. in Room 226 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

more John Yoo protest, this time in Philadelphia

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 21, 2010 1:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Photos by Bill Perry and Rich Gardner 18 Feb 2010

Accused war criminal John Yoo spoke at the Federalist Society on Thursday. As one can tell by our signs, we're not in any doubt as to Yoo's guilt. There's a very strong case against Yoo that was brought by Jose Padilla, the fellow who spent several years in solitary confinement and suffered severe mental damage as a result. - Rich Gardner reports

opening the book on "professional misconduct": just what did those e-mails say?

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 21, 2010 2:32 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

BREAKING: CREW urges probe into destruction of emails relating to torture memos

...the Office of Professional Responsibility report is just the beginning of a bigger and more important battle. Legal ethics investigators concluded that former Office of Legal Counsel lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee committed "professional misconduct" in advising the Bush administration that it was not against the law to torture, humiliate and abuse detainees despite longstanding domestic and international prohibitions against doing so. The battle now will be over whether the U.S. government will meet its obligations to thoroughly investigate what happened and hold the perpetrators accountable. - Daphne Eviatar, Senior Associate in Human Rights First's Law and Security Program

WANTED poster c/o AfterDowningStreet.org

see The OPR Report Is Only the Beginning

facilitating torture

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 20, 2010 6:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yoo "told Justice Department investigators that the president's war-making authority was so broad that he had the constitutional power to order a village to be 'massacred,' according to a report released Friday night by the Office of Professional Responsibility."

Human Rights Watch: Lawyers' Misconduct Shows Need for Torture Inquiry

release of OPR torture report making waves...

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 20, 2010 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

destined to be a tsunami

"It is the lynchpin of the legal case for prosecuting the war criminals of the last administration. We have known for a while that the Justice Department's old guard was going to protect itself and even those who violated basic norms of legality and morality within it. We have known for a while that president Obama and attorney-general Eric Holder have decided to remain in breach of the Geneva Conventions and be complicit themselves in covering up the war crimes of their predecessors - which means, of course, that those of us who fought for Obama's election precisely because we wanted a return to the rule of law were conned." - Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic

overview here

"Dick Cheney is putting torture on trial...

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 19, 2010 10:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Self-righteous and controlling, Dick Cheney is counting on the acquittal of his baby, a monster named Torture, in a public court of opinion. And he's winning. It's not just the victims of our violence who have and will continue to suffer, though. Our humanity has and will, as well. - Missy Beattie

see Cheney's Baby

Abu Ghraib: where is the outrage?

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 18, 2010 1:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Philip Gourevitch, staff writer for the New Yorker and author of the book "The Ballad of Abu Ghraib," asked a crowd of UT students Thursday why college campuses weren't overrun by protests following the Abu Ghraib scandal...

see Author questions student reaction to prison scandal

Drawing on more than two hundred hours of Errol Morris's startlingly frank and intimate interviews with Americans who served at Abu Ghraib and with some of their Iraqi prisoners, as well as on his own research, Philip Gourevitch has written a relentlessly surprising account of Iraq's occupation from the inside out-rendering vivid portraits of guards and prisoners ensnared in an appalling breakdown of command authority and moral order.

confronting torture, part II: accepting responsibility

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 17, 2010 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

American Catholics protest former Bush aide Marc Thiessen, self-appointed spokesperson for the Church...

what Thiessen is defending is, from a Catholic point of view, intrinsically evil and something that cannot be done under any circumstances.

see "May The Judgement Not Be Too Heavy Upon Us"

Guantanamo's Prisoners Constitution Project

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 16, 2010 1:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One Year and Counting:

When and How Will Guantanamo Close?

January 22, 2010 marked the passing of President Obama's self-declared deadline to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay. To take note of the missed deadline, the Constitution Project joined with the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Open Society Institute to cosponsor a panel discussion examining what prevented the administration from reaching its goal and what obstacles remain to closing the detention facility. Titled "One Year and Counting: When and How Will Guantanamo Close?," the program featured an array of voices, including current and former government and military officials, a sitting federal judge, a former federal prosecutor in New York City, advocates, and litigators.

Video of the program is available here.

Rewriting the Law to accommodate Torture? We think NOT.

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 15, 2010 3:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

: Lindsey Graham says the White House now seems open to a new law to lay out the standards for open-ended imprisonment.

Photo: AP

It would be hard to overestimate the danger of John Yoo's "teachings". Acceptance of his platform requires rejection of 'The Great Writ' of habeas corpus, the basis for 800 years of law. Yet the Obama administration appears poised to do just that; see White House mulling indefinite detention.

"If they are in fact considering preventive detention legislation today, I think it would be a mistake both substantively and politically... legislating preventive detention for the future would turn the Guantanamo anomaly into a permanent legal norm. It would give every future president an authority that hasn't existed since the Alien and Sedition Acts - the authority to detain people without trial not because they were captured on a military battlefield but because [they] are considered a threat to national security. There is no way to write that law to prevent a less scrupulous president from abusing such authority in a moment of national crisis." - Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch

Yoo and Bybee did "what we asked them to do"

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 14, 2010 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Comments on ABC's "This Week" suggest that former Bush administration officials are confident that they will face no accountability for war crimes.

see Cheney Exposes Torture Conspiracy

click on photo for video

secret deliberations of the Yoo clan

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 14, 2010 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If the proposal [constitutional convention] does qualify for the ballot and passes later this year, it would require all of the convention's meetings to be open to the news media, the public, and even Mr. Yoo's Berkeley law students, who, thanks to that provision, just might get a chance to hear some of their other ideas debated.

see At Berkeley, Yoo Tackles California Constitution

s_ _ t or get off the pot

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 12, 2010 4:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The author of the following post doesn't reveal his own stand on torture policy, but

disparages efforts of those committed to accountability for war crimes:

Protesters Bored With Yoo?

Unless his intention is to protect the Torture Professor, its time for Andrew Ramonas to

get off his butt...

Everyone has to decide - are you for torture or against it - because the world can't wait.

accommodating torture, part II: Joint Special Operations "Bermuda Triangle" of prisons

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 12, 2010 2:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Today, Bagram is being given a $60m expansion, allowing it to hold five times as many prisoners as Guantanamo Bay currently does... abuse is leaking out to other, more secretive sites across Afghanistan... British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith estimates there are 18,000 people trapped in these "legal black holes" by the US:

see Obama's secret prisons in Afghanistan endanger us all

Convention Against Torture

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 12, 2010 2:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Countries all too frequently seek to cover up their own acts of torture, so the convention obligates signatory states to investigate credible allegations of torture, and it also recognizes that such crimes can be prosecuted anywhere. - David Cole, author of The Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable (New Press)

see Torture Lawyers on Trial?

representing the voices of Guantánamo prisoners

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 12, 2010 12:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Torture survivors refuse to forget those left behind, stand up to attacks on

Amnesty International:

[Moazzam Begg] has reflected to the world the shadows of the horrors of such places. He has, with his words, drawn the pictures that no one else could, the pictures which I, and the hundreds like me who were in Guantánamo, and the thousands who are in their cells today in the so-called black sites, are living with and having nightmares about. - Bisher al-Rawi, Former Guantánamo detainee, Internment Serial Number: 906

see 'Torch of hope told me I was not forgotten at

Guantánamo'

San Mateo, CA: hardly the place you'd expect to encounter a war criminal

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 11, 2010 7:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dozens of cops fail to arrest John Yoo
Protesters greet Yoo
Anti-Torture Protestors Greet Yoo Book Tour

Chicago denounces Torture

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 11, 2010 9:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Chicago chapter of World Can't Wait and other anti-torture activists have not given up on the righteous demand that John Yoo and other U.S. war criminals be held to account. We are out there with the truth that these were indeed crimes that committed against humanity and that no amount of reality twisting justification can disappear the physical and emotional scars of the victims. Nor will these reality twisting justifications stop torture. Imagine if there were such a mass outpouring from the people demanding the end to torture and that war criminals be held to account. If the likes of Yoo were prosecuted then we would begin to see the dismantling of the U.S. torture state. To hold one war criminal to account would mean that others would have to be held to account and thus the use of torture could no longer be legitimated...

Peek A Boo:Confronting Yoo To Put Reality Back on It's Feet

"embarrassing and shaming" torture secrets revealed...

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 10, 2010 10:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

UPDATE: Legal gloves come off in row over 'torture'

and Release the 42 CIA Documents on Binyam Mohamed's Brutal Torture

continuing coverage of Binyam Mohamed case:

Mr Mohamed, 31, an Ethiopian granted refugee status in Britain in 1994, was detained in Pakistan in 2002 on suspicion of involvement in terrorism and then "rendered" to Morocco and Afghanistan. He was sent to Guantanamo Bay in 2004. Now back in the UK, he is fighting to prove he was tortured and that the British authorities helped to facilitate his detention and knew about his ill-treatment in Pakistan...

see torture case evidence published after Miliband loses appeal

timeline of case here

c/o dailymail.co.uk

"It is the essential role of the judicial branch to prevent the 'war on terror' from becoming the blank check for official torture that Yoo and the United States (Justice Department) seek"

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 10, 2010 10:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

San Francisco Chronicle writer Bob Egelko covers latest developments in Jose Padilla lawsuit charging Justice Department attorney with responsibility for abuse of prisoners:

Lawyers petition court to hold Yoo accountable

Torture's Rewards

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 9, 2010 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We've followed Jay Bybee's lifetime appointment to the bench for his approval of specific torture techniques; Obama follows Bush's lead in promotion of torture advocates:

Key Figure in Bush's Military Commissions Set for Obama Job

Marine Colonel Tapped for Detainee Policy Post Worked for Top Rumsfeld Aide

By SPENCER ACKERMAN 2/9/10 WASHINGTON INDEPENDENT

William Lietzau (Defense Department photo)

A key behind-the-scenes architect of the Bush administration's first version of the military commissions for terrorism suspects -- which the Supreme Court found to unconstitutionally restrict the legal rights of detainees -- will take a central Pentagon position dealing with detainee policy for the Obama administration...

Continue reading Torture's Rewards .

The Bagram Project

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 7, 2010 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

c/o Jeff Kaye: Andy Worthington has begun a project on Bagram prisoners not dissimilar to the research he conducted on the Guantanamo prisoners, which culminated in the excellent book, The Guantanamo Files. Ever since the Pentagon released a list of the names of 645 prisoners it was holding at Bagram as of September 22, 2009 (PDF)...

Andy is producing an annotated version of the Bagram prisoner list, and you can read the initial form of it here. He asks that if anyone has any further information about any of the names on this list to email him.

see "Hitherto Acceptable Norms of Human Conduct Do Not Apply"

dissenting opinion of torture case: "utter subservience to the executive branch"

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 7, 2010 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Denying Arar opportunity for redress undermines US justice system

JURIST's Hotline, February 6 2010

Andrea Prasow [Senior Counterterrorism Counsel, Human Rights Watch]: "On February 1, 2010, Maher Arar asked the US Supreme Court to overturn a lower court ruling that he cannot sue federal officials for damages even though they allegedly conspired with Syrian officials to subject him to torture in Syria. A powerful dissent [PDF file] by Judge Guido Calabresi in the Second Circuit's en banc review of the case criticized the majority for "utter subservience to the executive branch" and engaging in "extraordinary judicial activism" to deny Arar relief...

see Center for Constitutional Rights press release here

Continue reading dissenting opinion of torture case: "utter subservience to the executive branch".

a chronology of torture-related events: putting Yoo and Bybee's memos in their proper context

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 6, 2010 1:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"...there is a deeper question in play here: Why were they really asked to render these opinions in the first place?" - Charlotte Dennett

"Charlotte Dennett is trying to awaken the conscience of the nation. She wants us to recognize not just that our government officials at the highest level--the president and the people around him--have committed war crimes, but that they should be prosecuted as we prosecute ordinary criminals. She has been carrying this campaign forward with extraordinary persistence and courage, demonstrating that grassroots action can be powerful. Her book is a clarion call for the people to confront the crimes of government, for democracy to come alive."

--Howard Zinn, author of A People's History of the United States

see Why We Can't Afford to Let Obama Give Bush's War Criminals a Free Pass

Will Obama's mentor respond to John Yoo's attack on his former student?

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 6, 2010 12:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Obama is failing because he has turned the constitutional functions of the presidency upside down." - John Yoo, Getting It Backwards

Boalt Hall Dean Edley is critical of the President's performance, but how does he fall out on the issue of executive power? Better yet, what is being taught in the classroom?

Unrepentant: UC professor affirms Torture

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 5, 2010 2:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday, constitutional lawyer and writer Stephen Rohde questioned Berkeley Law representative John Yoo about limits to presidential power, whether it was still OK for the Chief Executive to order crushing the testicles of a person's child.

See President's Authority to Torture Depends on What Is "Necessary" for his response.

Berkeley Law promulgates discredited views of torture law...

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 5, 2010 1:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"As I absorbed the [post 9/11 Office of Legal Counsel] opinions, I concluded that some were deeply flawed: sloppily reasoned, overbroad and incautious in asserting extraordinary constitutional authorities on behalf of the president....I was astonished, and immensely worried, to discover that some of our most important counterterrorism policies rested on severely damaged legal foundations." - Jack Goldsmith, Harvard Law professor and head of the OLC in 2003

with promotion of torture professor's latest book;

see John Yoo Argues for Broad Presidential Power in Crisis and Command

Failure to faithfully execute the laws against torture

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 3, 2010 2:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

an excerpt from Obama's Continuing 'Terror War' Policies by Ernest A. Canning,

c/o the Brad Blog:

But for me, as an attorney, who like all attorneys has taken a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution and laws of these United States, and as the son of a man who was tortured --- waterboarded --- by the Japanese during World War II, it is the question of torture which has led me to join with Pilger in asking, again, who is this man?

Early in this new administration, even before I published a five part series on "The History of CIA Torture" (Part I, II, III, IV & V), in which I traced the current torture scandal to a more than 50-year history of CIA torture transcending multiple administrations, I wrote in "Prosecute or Perish," warning that nothing less than the very survival of our Constitutional democracy and the rule of law hinged upon factually warranted criminal investigations and prosecutions of all who authorized or participated in torture inside the Bush/Cheney cabal.

In "Fixing the Facts and Legal Opinions Around the Torture Policy," I expressed dismay when the President told CIA employees, who tortured under the quasi-legal sophistries authored by the likes of John Yoo and Jay S. Bibee, they would not be prosecuted. The President said this was "a time for reflection, not retribution...nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past." White House Press Secretary Robert Gibb explained that the President insisted on "looking forward."

Continue reading Failure to faithfully execute the laws against torture .

"Afraid of the Dark in Afghanistan...

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 2, 2010 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

photo by Trevor Paglen

The Salt Pit
Northeast of Kabul, Afghanistan

Even if inherited from the Bush administration, the Afghan night raids, the accompanying killings, disappearances, incarcerations, and abuses, as well as the secret military detention centers are now, after a full year in office, Obama's. - TomDispatch.com

see Obama's Secret Prisons by Anand Gopal

OPR report won't stop battle against torture...

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 2, 2010 5:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

adds to mounting evidence calling for full-scale investigation

Emma Anderson of the Daily Californian speaks to Boalt Alliance to

Abolish Torture organizer Gretchen Gordon here

Protesters Take a Stand Against Torture

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 2, 2010 5:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

DisbarTortureLawyers is joining with many allied organizations to lobby for immediate impeachment hearings and the introduction of a bill that would create such hearings.

Coverage of February 4 protest in Pasadena here.

For info on next demonstration text/call Sharon at 949.257.8501

February 7: final program of Botero exhibit

By

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait

on February 2, 2010 4:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Fernando Botero: The Abu Ghraib Series

Abu Ghraib 66, 2005; oil on canvas; 13 x 12 5/8 in.; gift of the artist. Photo: Sibila Savage.

Gallery Talk

February 7, 2010; 3:00 p.m.

Nandini Iyer, Alexa Koenig, and Daniel Marcus
Gallery 6

Representing a range of perspectives relevant to Fernando Botero's Abu Ghraib series, three accomplished graduate students from diverse disciplines will converse with the audience and each other in this final public program celebrating the exhibition. Nandini Iyer, J.D. candidate at Boalt School of Law; Alexa Koenig, Ph.D. student in jurisprudence and social policy at Boalt; and Daniel Marcus, Ph.D. candidate in the history of art, will bring their research and expertise to bear in what promises to be an engaging and enlightening discussion.

"The Office of Professional Responsibility Investigation into the Office of Legal Counsel Memoranda"

We've followed Jay Bybee's lifetime appointment to the bench for his approval of specific torture techniques; Obama follows Bush's lead in promotion of torture advocates:

Marine Colonel Tapped for Detainee Policy Post Worked for Top Rumsfeld Aide

Abu Ghraib 66, 2005; oil on canvas; 13 x 12 5/8 in.; gift of the artist. Photo: Sibila Savage.

Gallery Talk

Search

About this Archive

Curt Wechsler, The World Can't Wait: Monthly Archives