Pruning Shears

No Associated Press content was harmed in the writing of this post

Since I’ve already made my points about the president’s plans on rendition I’ll just say that this is another early test for him, and I hope he handles this one better than it appears he did the first.  Pro Publica’s Dan Nguyen and Christopher Weaver write that “the former administration kept far more memos secret than has been previously understood. At least three dozen by our count.”  Will the president release them?

Andy Worthington reminds us that while we’re acting like the debate over Guantánamo is just one big Toastmasters International meeting there are real people suffering, some excruciatingly so.  It isn’t just a symbol - there are actual human beings whose lives continue to be affected by this.  Also, memo to David Vitter:  I know you’re eager to make a name for yourself for some other reason, but this really isn’t the one you want.

I missed this almost unrecognizably sensible post from Andy McCarthy last week (boo me) but it turned out not to matter because he quickly returned to form.  The first post takes James Pohl to task which I will admit was a very surprising stance to me.  It may have just been a rhetorical device to set up the stinging dissent.  He concludes, “September 10 America is back.”  When I become King of the Netroots my first command will be to respond as follows to anyone who sneeringly refers to a “September 10th” mindset as former vice president and current asshole Dick Cheney did this week to refer to an attitude of being “more concerned about reading the rights to an Al Qaeda terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans” (a perspective currently only held by fictional characters in the fevered dreams of the far right):  George Bush was president on September 10th.  The September 10th mindset does not mean an emphasis on law enforcement and judicial process, which worked just fine for the first World Trade Center attack, but the casual disregard of the hard won experience shared by your predecessors, the death by bureaucratic neglect of their cautions and refusal to take seriously threats when they make it to the top of the chain of command.  The September 10th mindset was wholly created by the Bush administration, and that group received unstinting support from Republicans and conservatives generally in the years that followed.  Physicians, heal thineselves.

McCarthy also brought up a point I’ve been waiting to hear from the right since Inauguration Day: “He is, moreover, the President of the United States and the commander-in-chief of our military forces in a time of war” (emphasis his).  I’m on the side that says the position of CIC is far too often exalted as a role and is used that way to attempt to conflate obedience to the president with patriotism.  I felt that way under Bush - and his predecessors - and feel that way about Obama, so de-emphasizing that now is fine with me, but it certainly seems to have conjured up some cognitive dissonance among the authoritarian right.  McCarthy’s description of the reaction to his column as well as the comment left for me in last week’s post (“The Joint Chiefs of Staff HAVE AN ABSOLUTE CONSTITUTIONAL DUTY to stand behind Guantanamo Military Judge James Pohl UNTIL OBAMA OVERCOMES ‘RES IPSA LOQUITUR’ BY SUPPLYING HIS LONG FORM BIRTH CERTIFICATE AND PROVING HIS ELIGIBILITY TO BE PRESIDENT UNDER ARTICLE 2 OF THE US CONSTITUTION.”) hints that a good number of Americans now believe that the military ought to be undermining, if not openly defying, the president.  Add that to what may be an attempt by Ray Odierno and/or David Petraeus to advance their own agendas and it becomes possible to envision an institutional challenge to his legitimacy and authority.

UNPACKING JANE:  Page 288, and Jack Goldsmith:

The 2004 Inspector General’s report, known as a “special review,” was tens of thousands of pages long and as thick as two Manhattan phone books. It contained information, according to one source, that was simply “sickening.” The behavior it described, another knowledgeable source said, raised concerns not just about the detainees but also about the Americans who had inflicted the abuse, some of whom seemed to have become frighteningly dehumanized. The source said, “You couldn’t read the documents without wondering, “Why didn’t someone say, ‘Stop!’”

Goldsmith was required to review the report in order to settle a sharp dispute that its findings had provoked between the Inspector General, Helgerson, who was not a lawyer, and the CIA’s General Counsel, Scott Muller, who was. After spending months investigating the Agency’s interrogation practices, the special review had concluded that the CIA’s techniques constituted cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, in violation of the international Convention Against Torture. But Muller insisted that every single action taken by the CIA toward its detainees had been declared legal by John Yoo. With Yoo gone, it fell to Goldsmith to figure out exactly what the OLC had given the CIA a green light to do and what, in fact, the CIA had done.

As Goldsmith absorbed the details, the report transformed the antiseptic list of authorized interrogation techniques, which he had previously seen, into a Technicolor horror show. Goldsmith decline to be interviewed about the classified report for legal reasons, but according to those who dealt with him, the report caused him to question the whole program. The CIA interrogations seemed very different when described by participants than they had when approved on a simple menu of options. Goldsmith had been comfortable with the military’s approach, but he wasn’t at all sure whether the CIA’s tactics were legal. Waterboarding, in particular, sounded quick and relatively harmless in theory. But according to someone familiar with the report, the way it had been actually used was “horrible.”