Torture Memos Released

A slew of retirements? It seems to me that people who have engaged in this kind of behavior will have experienced some serious psychological damage in doing so and should be encouraged to leave to make room for a new generation of operatives untainted by this disaster. (And if they didn't experience such damage, they should be gone even sooner.)

President Bush should be indicted for War Crimes. He can present his case in a fair and impartial hearing - if he is innocent we can all rejoice. If not, then he should be held accountable. ................

http://thefiresidepost.com/2009/01/22/indicting-george-bush-for-war-crimes/

Your logic escapes me, Joe. You seem to think that the CIA is in danger of being wounded when it is, in fact, a corpse, and not even a walking one.

"But there are real concerns in the intelligence community."
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I'm sorry. There are real concerns in the public too. Which are more important.

FT: Many presidents before Obama have tried and failed to reform the CIA - notably Eisenhower and Nixon. In the past the CIA has closed ranks and basically ignored the civilian leadership, at least according to Tim Weiner's book Legacy of Ashes.
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One of the few presidents to have a good working relationship with the CIA was GHWB, not surprisingly. It's a cause of concern if you think we need a good clandestine service. Possibly the CIA should be dismantled and a new agency created from scratch.

I know there is a palpable desire to see the Bush administration pay for their various crimes and I can't say that I wouldn't derive some pleasure from it, but I would be lying to myself if I said my desire for prosecution is solely because as a patriot I believe every law should be followed. Clearly when it cones to marijuana that's a law that ought to broken and strewn by the wayside.
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Knowing that much of my desire for punishment is about revenge rather than what the country would gain I can defer to the president on this. I do agree, however, that he ought not reveal the rank and file CIA and throw them to the wolves. It is not their fault that we had the bad judgment to elect a president and vice president devoid of character.
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Bush went out of his way to prove that these extraordinary measures were legal and we ought not say to the careerists now: "Well we know you put it all on the line but you should have run your own independent inquiry and found your president in error and knowing he was asking for an illegal act you should have refused his request. Now that you didn't we have no choice but to do prosecute you. Sorry signed new administration." No, I think not.

This is about a lot more than vengeance.This position basically guarantees that our children will be having the same discussion. No consequences means more of the same down the road.

Even granting each and every concern that agents might have, the "state secrets" defense that Obama is deploying in courtrooms go far beyond the requirments that 'classification' requires. Since when are judges unqualified for security clearances?
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And my admittedly rushed readings of the memo's indicate that FBI interrogators have argued persuasively that more benign methods are more effective than stress positions or sleep deprivation in getting information from suspects is rather an understatement.
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Presumably punishing people via torture for lying might improve the quality of information extracted slightly, but the victims main motivation will be to provide as much information as possible without regard to the truth of any of it.
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I'm of course ignoring the moral implications. If the only recourse for dealing with enemies is to be every bit as evil as they are, then what's the point of calling them enemies?

"A potential rebellion"? So you're saying that the "intelligence community" will rebel against the President and the Congress? What will they do, start waterboarding US citizens? Wiretapping without a warrant? Oh, wait...
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Seriously, someone needs to remind these Federal Government employees that they work for the United States, not for their insulated "community". They are subject to the same laws as the rest of us and should face the same consequences for breaking those laws.
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It really chaps my hide that the assumption seems to be that the President needs to bend over backward to accommodate these federal employees, lest they get butthurt. Too f***ing bad. The director of the CIA answers to the DNI, right? In turn, the DNI answers to the President. Why does the President have to step lightly around his own employees, or face "rebellion"?
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Of what use are laws if they can be broken with such impunity? If I can find a lawyer somewhere who gives me advice that I can, for example, not pay federal taxes, I'll face the consequences if I do it. It makes not a sliver of difference that they had "legal opinions" that validated (or un-illegalized?) their actions. If these agents think that they were somehow immunized against the fallout of their actions because of Jay Bybee, then let them make that case in open court.
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I sure don't remember this level of outrage from the "intelligence community" when asset Valerie Plame was outed. Interesting.

I sure don't remember this level of outrage from the "intelligence community" when asset Valerie Plame was outed.
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That's because it was classified.......

I notice the first memo expressly cites SERE. SERE was intended to train captured Americans to resist NK/Soviet methods used to coerce false confessions. The torture techniques used in these instances were never intended to acquire intelligence.
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As for not prosecuting the people who only followed orders, first, I thought that it was a settled matter that this is not a valid defense, and second, that this doctrine wasn't applied to the "bad apples" at Abu Ghraib.
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Thing is, it is hard to know how this will play out. Once information starts to flow, it can take on a power of its own.

I think its easy for people who have little knowledge about our intelligence operations outside of their spectacular failures because their wins don't get publicized but they do indeed happen.
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We like to say we support the troops and they can do no wrong. Well, where do you think a lot of the operatives come from and as for the analysts and case officers they are a part of our defense as well. Why are we so eager to dismiss their contributions? It's as if we blame them for Cheney running amuck, when they are the ones who gave us the alternative info that showed he was a liar.

I can understand the concerns of the CIA employees and the Obama administration. The President doesn't want to prosecute people who were just doing their duty as their managers saw fit. However, I thought that the "I was just following orders" defense was debunked at Nuremberg. If we are going to absolve the CIA officers of any moral or legal responsibility for their behavior, then we need to apologize to the Nazis we hanged. If it was OK for Americans to torture people because of "legal cover", then we have no moral authority to accuse anyone else of torture or crimes against humanity. Every person in the USA knew that the Bush administration was twisting and "torturing" the law to justify what Cheney wanted. If we won't hold Americans accountable, then we have no right to hold anyone else accountable. We can't have it both ways.

Just when we were all beginning to forget about Bush and his abuses...

http://www.political-buzz.com/

their wins don't get publicized but they do indeed happen.
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I've heard this over and over again. I do not believe it for an instant. And even the "wins" we do hear about always seem to be ultimately reversed by blowback.
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Give me a break the only reason we ever even heard of the Valerie Plame story was because the CIA was furious.
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I'm not saying anyone was all the way right or wrong, I'm just saying that sometimes we can oversimplify something and some very real things get hurt in the process.
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I have family in harms way and I would hate for them to get hurt because of inadequate intelligence.
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Why are we not treating intelligence sources the same as our military don't they also put themselves in harms way? I think the president is just giving them the same level of respect we give our military.

"I was just following orders" is not the defense. The defense is that the Dept of Justice explicitly stated it was legal. The agents acted under those legal guidelines.

Were these the memos that John Cornyn threatened to filibuster all the judicial appointments if they were released?

Ivy_B
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Yes. Obama called the bluff.

let's not get it twisted Nuremberg was not about water boarding or enhanced interrogation or even torture for that matter. Nuremberg was about gross human experiments like turning human skin into lampshades, and putting folks in ovens and gas chambers, and sorry I am not going to equate the two. I think Nuremberg said that any reasonable person knows that these acts are wrong and inhuman. I don't think the interrogation techniques fall into that category.

Just posing a question - does anyone think this is Obama trying, like FDR, to be "made to do the right thing"?
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Anyone think he wants to appear the be dragged "kicking and screaming" into prosecutions at some future date?

I'm not saying anyone was all the way right or wrong, I'm just saying that sometimes we can oversimplify something and some very real things get hurt in the process.
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Dee,
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I know what you're saying but, at least from my point of view, even as a military member, there are certain things I KNOW are morally wrong and don't need the cover of a memo to know that it's wrong to do them.

Last I heard, there aren't supposed to be any prosecutions of spooks for what they did involving torture, so they should count themselves very lucky.

The dismissal of the concept of basic human rights by the Bush administration is unforgiveable, and any actions taken should be taken against those who set the policies regarding torture. As another poster said, the underspooks were "only following orders" dictated by those who claimed what was going on was legal.

afguy
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I think Obama's willingness to accurately state opposing views, and explain why he disagrees will play a role in how this plays out.Presumably he does this internally as well. The arguments Joe lays out, expressed as well as he can express them (which is pretty well) are not terribly persuasive. They amount to insisting on a coverup because 1) they know they were wrong and 2) they thought they had cover.

jayackroyd,
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Hope there's something noble in all of this because it's all looking pretty shabby from where I sit.