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Criminal investigation into CIA treatment of detainees expected [edited]

PogueMoran said:
You didn't make any sense Celtic. Waterboarding is a crime and is illegal in this country. This has nothing to do with "dear leader". Waterboarding is a war crime that we've prosecuted since WW2 and is something we've prosecuted in this country under Reagan.
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We've already had this debate. Search my comments in previous threads on DP to understand the inanity of the AG's political persecution of the CIA.
 
WillRockwell said:
I certainly wouldn't run a business where the employees torture people just because someone told them to. Protecting the torturers is not a good enough excuse to end this investigation.
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You have never and will never run a business, anyway, so there's no way I expect you understand what I'm talking about. Are you even in the work force, yet?
 
celticlord said:
On prisoners of war. The terrorists warehoused at Gitmo are not prisoners of war, and thus this precedent does not apply.

Against criminals being interrogated as part of a criminal investigation. The terrorists warehoused at Gitmo are not criminals, confessions are not being sought, and so this precedent also does not apply.

Torture is torture. Waterboarding is not torture, and even if it were, torturing terrorists violates no international law.
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We're not classifying them as prisoners of war. Even so they're still detainees. The moment we pulled them off the battlefield and took away their weapons is the moment they became our prisoners. Yes torture is still illegal even if it is a terrorist or someone we have held in our prison system. We cover international prisoners under our system of laws that's why we have successfully prosecuted terrorists and have them in our jails in the US.
If another country held our soldiers as terrorists and tortured them you know damned well we'd be pushing for prosecution. If waterboarding was effective as a use of interrogation we wouldn't need to be pushing it 183 times on one prisoner and 80+ on another. Waterboarding is torture under our laws no matter how many times you try to say otherwise it's still torture.

If it was a criminal investigation we would be charging them.

Then you still have the fact that we have tortured people to death at Baghram, Abu Ghraib and Gitmo some even people we got no information out of and never charged or had any idea if they even were terrorists. We are above this celtic I'm sure you can agree that America is supposed to be the beacon for the world and we're above using torture.

The nazis were some pretty ****ed up people and we refused to torture them.

George Washington when fighting the british refused to torture. Abe Lincoln also refused to as well.
 
celticlord said:
We've already had this debate. Search my comments in previous threads on DP to understand the inanity of the AG's political persecution of the CIA.
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There's nothing political about investigations of illegal acts or something perceived to be illegal. If they get to the bottom of it we're a better country for it
 
Harshaw said:
You apparently don't understand what "elements" are and how the facts of each case must establish them beyond a reasonable doubt. Labels like "waterboarding" are meaningless.
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Waterboarding isn't a label. Its a specific act. I know specifically what the definition of torture is under our laws and geneva. Just because the prior administration tried to change it so almost anything but organ failure isn't torture, doesn't make it so.
 
PogueMoran said:
George Washington when fighting the british refused to torture. Abe Lincoln also refused to as well.
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Organized militaries fighting organized engagements. George Washington hung Major Andre, and Lincoln had the Redlegs.
 
PogueMoran said:
There's nothing political about investigations of illegal acts or something perceived to be illegal. If they get to the bottom of it we're a better country for it
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Hogwash. The "investigations" of illegal acts by HUAC can hardly be said have made the US a better country, nor can McCarthy's witch hunts.

Holder's persecution of the CIA is no better than these.
 
celticlord said:
Hogwash. The "investigations" of illegal acts by HUAC can hardly be said have made the US a better country, nor can McCarthy's witch hunts.

Holder's persecution of the CIA is no better than these.
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Joe McCarthy was a great American that did a great service to this country.
 
celticlord said:
Organized militaries fighting organized engagements. George Washington hung Major Andre, and Lincoln had the Redlegs.
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Major Andre was given a trial and was executed. Not torture. What did Lincoln do with the redlegs?
 
celticlord said:
Hogwash. The "investigations" of illegal acts by HUAC can hardly be said have made the US a better country, nor can McCarthy's witch hunts.

Holder's persecution of the CIA is no better than these.
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Really you want to compare HUAC's investigation to investigations of torture? One was spurred by exaggerated nationalism. Nothing McCarthy did bettered the country but instead made it more fearful. We're talking about the rule of law here which is something the republicans used to stand for
 
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PogueMoran said:
Really you want to compared HUAC's investigation to investigations of torture? One was spurred by exaggerated nationalism. Nothing McCarthy did bettered the country but instead made it more fearful. We're talking about the rule of law here which is something the republicans used to stand for
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HUAC and McCarthy talked about the rule of law as well. You're not helping your case here. The comparison stands because it is a good comparison--criminalizing politics for political gain. It was wrong then, and it is wrong now, and all the pontifications on behalf of Dear Leader and his sycophantic AG are not going to make it right.
 
celticlord said:
HUAC and McCarthy talked about the rule of law as well. You're not helping your case here. The comparison stands because it is a good comparison--criminalizing politics for political gain. It was wrong then, and it is wrong now, and all the pontifications on behalf of Dear Leader and his sycophantic AG are not going to make it right.
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Last time I checked not having a full sense of patriotism was not illegal in this country. McCarthy was going after an imagined enemy anyone he thought was a communist. Where in our laws was it illegal to be a communist?

Your comparison is completely without merit. You're comparing a witchhunt over something not even illegal with an investigation of a perceived war crime. Torture is illegal in this country and it should be investigated
 
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PogueMoran said:
Torture is illegal in this country and it should be investigated
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Enhanced interrogations are illegal? Then why does Dear Leader still permit them? Why is Leon Panetta willing to use them?
 
celticlord said:
Enhanced interrogations are illegal? Then why does Dear Leader still permit them? Why is Leon Panetta willing to use them?
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Waterboarding was outlawed under the new provisions. It was still illegal when the Bush administration did it. You can fancy up torture all you want but its still illegal and should be investigated. And if "Enhanced interrogations" are investigated then maybe Holder isn't as sycophantic as you claim. BTW the supreme court ruled in Hamdan V. Rumsfeld that enemy combatants are covered under Geneva. Also in Boumediene v. Bush the supreme court decided that detainees do have a right to Habeus Corpus under US law and that Military Commissions Act created an unconstitutional suspension of it. By all means they should be investigated
 
celticlord said:
Enhanced interrogations are illegal? Then why does Dear Leader still permit them? Why is Leon Panetta willing to use them?
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PogueMoran said:
Waterboarding was outlawed under the new provisions. It was still illegal when the Bush administration did it. You can fancy up torture all you want but its still illegal and should be investigated. And if "Enhanced interrogations" are investigated then maybe Holder isn't as sycophantic as you claim. BTW the supreme court ruled in Hamdan V. Rumsfeld that enemy combatants are covered under Geneva. Also in Boumediene v. Bush the supreme court decided that detainees do have a right to Habeus Corpus under US law and that Military Commissions Act created an unconstitutional suspension of it. By all means they should be investigated
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You failed to answer my second question. All these things that are presumably illegal have been continued by Dear Leader. Why, if doing so is presumably a crime?
 
celticlord said:
You failed to answer my second question. All these things that are presumably illegal have been continued by Dear Leader. Why, if doing so is presumably a crime?
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I did answer your question they should be investigated. Just because something is continued doesn't make it any less criminal. Investigate all of it.
 
PogueMoran said:
I did answer your question they should be investigated. Just because something is continued doesn't make it any less criminal. Investigate all of it.
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Obama’s Torture Loopholes

Loophole 1: Torture is prohibited only of persons detained in an “armed conflict.”
The executive order applies only to “armed conflicts,” not counterterrorism operations.
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Interestingly enough, Dear Leader's executive order, applied during the Bush administration, would not have precluded the use of waterboarding. So Dear Leader should be investigated for continuing to permit the use of such techniques, thus becoming party to what, following your reasoning, must be regarded as a criminal conspiracy?

Loophole 2: Only the CIA must close detention centers.
President Obama has ordered the CIA to close detention centers, except those “used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis,” which can stay open indefinitely. Exactly how long a duration is “short-term” and “transitory” is unclear.
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Dear Leader wants Gitmo closed, but not Bagram Air Base. So should Holder be investigating the doings at Bagram?

Loophole 3: Officials may still hide some detainees and abusive practices from the Red Cross.

On the Red Cross’s monitoring of detainees, the executive order reads:

All departments and agencies of the Federal Government shall provide the International Committee of the Red Cross with notification of, and timely access to, any individual detained in any armed conflict in the custody or under the effective control of an officer, employee, or other agent of the United States Government or detained within a facility owned, operated, or controlled by a department or agency of the United States Government, consistent with Department of Defense regulations and policies.

Here again, if a detainee is not one captured on the battlefield by US soldiers in an armed conflict, Obama’s order provides no guidance as to his fate. Government and private thugs may evidently still brutalize detainees obtained in counterterrorism operations and hide them from the Red Cross, unless and until the president issues a further executive order, or Congress passes a law, closing this loophole.
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Seems like Dear Leader is directly thumbing his nose at SCOTUS and the Hamdan and Boumediene decisions. When does AG Holder plan on issuing a subpoena to Dear Leader to explain himself?

Obama To Revive Military Tribunals For Gitmo Detainees, With More Rights

More thumbing of nose at SCOTUS. Such a scofflaw Dear Leader is.

Obama Endorses Indefinite Detention Without Trial for Some Now at Guantanamo - washingtonpost.com

Even more.

So why is what Dear Leader doing ok when these things were crimes under Bush? Why is only a crime for it to have been done by the Bush Administration?
 
celticlord said:
Enhanced interrogations are illegal? Then why does Dear Leader still permit them? Why is Leon Panetta willing to use them?
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I love people who use euphemisms to make things sound less bad. EIT's are inflicting pain to gain information, or, in other words, torture. President Obama does not make laws, and the country should not be using them. If we are, we need to stop. One way to ensure that every thing is on the up and up is to investigate.
 
Redress said:
I love people who use euphemisms to make things sound less bad. EIT's are inflicting pain to gain information, or, in other words, torture. President Obama does not make laws, and the country should not be using them. If we are, we need to stop. One way to ensure that every thing is on the up and up is to investigate.
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So when is Holder planning on investigating Bagram Air Base (theater headquarters for Task Force 6-26, commanded by General Stanley McChrystal, appointed by Dear Leader to be top commander in Afghanistan)? When is Holder planning on investigating Dear Leader's current policy on indefinite detention without trial?

All these laws that Bush's Administration presumably broke, Dear Leader's Administration is currently breaking. Where's the investigation of that?
 
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celticlord said:
So when is Holder planning on investigating Bagram Air Base (theater headquarters for Task Force 6-26, commanded by General Stanley McChrystal, appointed by Dear Leader to be top commander in Afghanistan)? When is Holder planning on investigating Dear Leader's current policy on indefinite detention without trial?

All these laws that Bush's Administration presumably broke, Dear Leader's Administration is currently breaking. Where's the investigation of that?
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You know me better than that. I firmly believe that if there is credible reason to suspect wrongdoing, it should be investigated, no matter who it is. Stop obfuscating the issue. The wrong way to handle possible wrongdoing is to point to some one else doing something wrong and use that as a justification.
 
Redress said:
You know me better than that. I firmly believe that if there is credible reason to suspect wrongdoing, it should be investigated, no matter who it is. Stop obfuscating the issue. The wrong way to handle possible wrongdoing is to point to some one else doing something wrong and use that as a justification.
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No obfuscation this time, just pointing out the politically convenient nature of Holder's "investigation".

If the Bush Administration's policies violated the law, then Dear Leader's current policies violate the same laws, because they are the same policies. That's the double standard Holder is applying here--investigating the Bush Administration for "crimes" while not also investigating the current Administration for the same "crimes".

If the interrogation methods used and approved by the Bush Administration were criminal, then why is Dear Leader promoting men like Stanley McChrystal? This is the officer who ran Camp Nama, which Human Rights Watch highlighted in their 2006 report "No Blood, No Foul". Dear Leader is the one who promoted him--rewarded him for his conduct in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress, in his confirmation hearings, scrupulously avoided asking any questions about any of this, even though McChrystal's name has been linked in the media to both Camp Nama and Bagram Air Base:

Stanley McChrystal on Torture - New Afghanistan General Approves Torture? - Esquire
TASK FORCE 6-26: Inside Camp Nama; In Secret Unit's 'Black Room,' A Grim Portrait of U.S. Abuse - New York Times

Only Holder won't be examining any of this, will he? No, according to the article in the OP:
A senior Justice Department official said that Holder envisioned an inquiry that would be narrow in scope, focusing on "whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized" in Bush administration memos that liberally interpreted anti-torture laws.
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Holder plans to investigate Bush Administration "crimes", while carefully skirting around anything that might link Dear Leader and his Administration's involvement in acts identical to these "crimes" in every legal particular.

Frankly, I don't see any of it as being a crime. Terrorists have no legal protections they may claim as their own, and I'm quite at ease with the idea of both the military and the CIA literally squeezing every last bit of useful intel out of captured terrorists before tossing the broken carcasses on the garbage heap. However, if folks are going to piss and moan about these things being crimes, then they had better get their brains around the reality that these policies have not been ended, have not been altered in any substantive way (excluding the CIA from their continuance is not a substantive change), and that these "crimes" are the policy and practice of the current Administration just as much as they were of the Bush Administration.

If Holder isn't going to investigate Dear Leader, then investigating Bush is a political persecution and a criminalization of policy that is absolutely not in the best interests of this country.
 
celticlord said:
Obama’s Torture Loopholes

Interestingly enough, Dear Leader's executive order, applied during the Bush administration, would not have precluded the use of waterboarding. So Dear Leader should be investigated for continuing to permit the use of such techniques, thus becoming party to what, following your reasoning, must be regarded as a criminal conspiracy?

Dear Leader wants Gitmo closed, but not Bagram Air Base. So should Holder be investigating the doings at Bagram?

Seems like Dear Leader is directly thumbing his nose at SCOTUS and the Hamdan and Boumediene decisions. When does AG Holder plan on issuing a subpoena to Dear Leader to explain himself?

Obama To Revive Military Tribunals For Gitmo Detainees, With More Rights

More thumbing of nose at SCOTUS. Such a scofflaw Dear Leader is.

Obama Endorses Indefinite Detention Without Trial for Some Now at Guantanamo - washingtonpost.com

Even more.

So why is what Dear Leader doing ok when these things were crimes under Bush? Why is only a crime for it to have been done by the Bush Administration?
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You're all over the map once again. First you claim its not torture then you post information saying things are torture. Make up your mind. The executive order clearly said anything not covered by the Army Field Manual is prohobited. Splitting words doesn't change the fact that the so-called EITs are against the army field manual and the executive order.

So tell me why do you call him dear leader?
 
celticlord said:
No obfuscation this time, just pointing out the politically convenient nature of Holder's "investigation".

If the Bush Administration's policies violated the law, then Dear Leader's current policies violate the same laws, because they are the same policies. That's the double standard Holder is applying here--investigating the Bush Administration for "crimes" while not also investigating the current Administration for the same "crimes".

If the interrogation methods used and approved by the Bush Administration were criminal, then why is Dear Leader promoting men like Stanley McChrystal? This is the officer who ran Camp Nama, which Human Rights Watch highlighted in their 2006 report "No Blood, No Foul". Dear Leader is the one who promoted him--rewarded him for his conduct in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress, in his confirmation hearings, scrupulously avoided asking any questions about any of this, even though McChrystal's name has been linked in the media to both Camp Nama and Bagram Air Base:

Stanley McChrystal on Torture - New Afghanistan General Approves Torture? - Esquire
TASK FORCE 6-26: Inside Camp Nama; In Secret Unit's 'Black Room,' A Grim Portrait of U.S. Abuse - New York Times

Only Holder won't be examining any of this, will he? No, according to the article in the OP:
Holder plans to investigate Bush Administration "crimes", while carefully skirting around anything that might link Dear Leader and his Administration's involvement in acts identical to these "crimes" in every legal particular.

Frankly, I don't see any of it as being a crime. Terrorists have no legal protections they may claim as their own, and I'm quite at ease with the idea of both the military and the CIA literally squeezing every last bit of useful intel out of captured terrorists before tossing the broken carcasses on the garbage heap. However, if folks are going to piss and moan about these things being crimes, then they had better get their brains around the reality that these policies have not been ended, have not been altered in any substantive way (excluding the CIA from their continuance is not a substantive change), and that these "crimes" are the policy and practice of the current Administration just as much as they were of the Bush Administration.

If Holder isn't going to investigate Dear Leader, then investigating Bush is a political persecution and a criminalization of policy that is absolutely not in the best interests of this country.
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The truth in a nutshell, I think, is this. While the Bush laws remain on the books, no one is being tortured. As for the excuses Bush made to abrogate the Geneva Convention, they were never legal, are not being used, and are no longer honored.
 
Redress said:
You know me better than that. I firmly believe that if there is credible reason to suspect wrongdoing, it should be investigated, no matter who it is. Stop obfuscating the issue. The wrong way to handle possible wrongdoing is to point to some one else doing something wrong and use that as a justification.
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I don't get the point he's trying to make. He seems to think we're hyperpartisans like he comes across. We both want torture investigated no matter who does it.
 
PogueMoran said:
I don't get the point he's trying to make.
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My point is obvious and simple: Holder is investigating Bush while pointedly not investigating Dear Leader when both Administrations have the same policies and activities. The same "evidence" that presumably makes Bush's policies a crime makes Dear Leader's policies a continuation of that crime.

You claim this investigation is not political--until parts of Dear Leader's Administration are mentioned as targets of investigation, it is not and cannot be anything but political.
 
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