Veracity Radio

To read the many headlines this week on the Supreme Court decision regarding animal abuse videos, you’d think that the justices had personally stopped on little kittens and bunnies for their own sexual amusement. A quick scan of most of the headlines read:
-Supreme Court Overturns Animal Cruelty Conviction (NewsReleaseWire.com)
(Robert Stevens wasn’t convicted of animal cruelty. He was convicted of distributing videos which were collections of existing dog fighting videos from the 60s, 70s, and from Japanese videos. He was not charged in relation to any production of the original videos in any way. Additionally, the conviction had already been overturned, this was a decision that reviewed the appeal. This is called a Write of Certiorari, where SCOTUS calls on a lower court to review their decision)

-Supreme Court says fetish videos depicting animal cruelty deserve free speech protections
12:00 AM CDT on Wednesday, April 21, 2010 (McClatchy)
(Completely false. The court said no such thing.)

-Top US court protects animal cruelty images as free speech (AFP)
(Sweeping and thus misleading. The Court actually found that the language in the state was to broad to effectively prosecute without leaving too much in the hands of prosecutors to decide what constituted abuse, depiction, and the conditions under which the video was filmed or the animal was harmed related to the film.)

-The Supremes’ film review: 8-1, animal cruelty films are free speech (Justice Alito gives them a thumbs-down) (LATIMES OP-ED)
(Again, not the case. There was no such sweeping comment in the decision. The focus was on how broad some of the terms were in the statute and how the government asserted its case.)

-SCOTUS Strikes Down Animal Cruelty Law (AM Law Daily)
(Techinically correct, but doesn’t show why. This leaves the reader, if they don’t catch all or any of the article, to conclude that the decision was based on animal cruelty instead of broad language in the statute.)

Then there is the sort of neutral stance:
-Supreme Court overturns law banning animal cruelty videos
(Getting warmer. But the winner for best headline slug will need to be better than this.)

But then there was NPR:
Supreme Court Calls Animal Cruelty Law Too Broad – Nina Totenberg
(And this week’s winner is Nina Totenberg, though I might have missed some others like this.)

So…what’s the point? Only the NPR title actually tells you in one slug what the story is. The rest do not. They lead to a conclusion that is not inline with the actual case or opinion. I think the worst one in this list was “SCOTUS Strikes Down Animal Cruelty Law” because it didn’t even let you know there is a video tape side of this or that the court argued about language used to craft and prosecute under the statute.

These things matter when the public reads articles to learn what the courts decide. The irresponsible headlines are often the work of editors in position of power, so why would they dumb down the language to such an obscure level that renders a reader virtually inept to describe what happened? I had to completely rewrite this article because I started my view based on the collective articles. Even in the articles you can’t often tell on what grounds the court based its opinion.

All day yesterday my mail and my wife’s facebook (I don’t really facebook well) were filled with people upset that the Supreme Court was so willing to personally stop kittens, puppies and rabbits to death under with their black robed stilettos. Only Samual Alito appeared to be willing to stand up for the poor little animals.

I understand the court’s decision and even Alito’s dissent. But this story is about how the news media’s irresponsible headlines and narratives are preventing readers from understanding the case and thus the decision.

For those who don’t know, I’ll summarize the case. Robert Stevens made a film about pit bull fighting. It was found to have violated the 1999 law intended to make “crush videos” illegal. A ‘crush video’ features a woman in stilettos killing a small animal with them for some sick sexual pleasure. Clearly as a society we believe this to be highly criminal. But because of the way the law is actually written, Mr. Steven’s film was in violation because it too showed violence towards and among animals. He had not had any part on the original manufacture or production of these videos but had compiled videos from the 60s, 70s and older Japanese fighting videos.

He was convicted under the 1999 federal statute and the conviction was overturned by the Federal appeals court when (Roberts: “Stevens moved to dismiss the indictment, arguing that §48 is facially invalid under the First Amendment.”).

Here’s the statute:

TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 3 > § 48

Prev | Next

§ 48. Depiction of animal cruelty

How Current is This?

(a) Creation, Sale, or Possession.— Whoever knowingly creates, sells, or possesses a depiction of animal cruelty with the intention of placing that depiction in interstate or foreign commerce for commercial gain, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.

(b) Exception.— Subsection (a) does not apply to any depiction that has serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical, or artistic value. (emphasis mine)

(c) Definitions.— In this section—

(1) the term “depiction of animal cruelty” means any visual or auditory depiction, including any photograph, motion-picture film, video recording, electronic image, or sound recording of conduct in which a living animal is intentionally maimed, mutilated, tortured, wounded, or killed, if such conduct is illegal under Federal law or the law of the State in which the creation, sale, or possession takes place, regardless of whether the maiming, mutilation, torture, wounding, or killing took place in the State; and

(2) the term “State” means each of the several States, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, and any other commonwealth, territory, or possession of the United States.

The Supreme Court then issued a writ of certiorari. This is a request sent to lower courts to review settled cases for constitutional concerns.

When Congress writes laws, the final bill is usually filled with the language and perspectives of the many lawmakers, staffers, and lobbyist who influence the bill. The bills usually follow discovery of some specific problem in our society, in this case the mutilation of animals in “crush videos”. Inevitably in every bill will be loopholes or areas where even in the most perfect moment of a purely noble intention the law will have side effects that were not realized during drafting. The Supreme Court exists entirely to review the constitutionality of these final laws and the execution by the executive branch.

In this case the argument is rendered by Roberts for the majority and Alito as the lone activist judge. If I had to summarize the two views in a single sentence, and thus the case, Roberts is saying, “words matter.” to Alito’s “we know what they meant, close enough.” approach.

Roberts points out that portions of the language in the bill are clear and unambiguous while others are not nearly as clear as you might think. And while the intent of the prosecutor was to end a terrible act, but put in the context of a case, they often gave too much subjective discretion in determining the “value” of what is expressed in these “depictions”:

“The Government thus proposes that a claim of categorical exclusion should be considered under a simple balancing test: “Whether a given category of speech enjoys First Amendment protection depends upon a categorical balancing of the value of the speech against its societal costs.”
“As a free-floating test for First Amendment coverage,that sentence is startling and dangerous. The First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech does not extend only to categories of speech that survive an ad hoc balanc-ing of relative social costs and benefits.”

The Government argued much of its case based on previous opinions from the court that seemed to categorize speech that wasn’t protected, one example is Chaplinsky which is the “fighting words” example. Roberts contends that the court has never created categories of First Amendment exempted speech but described their decisions  and such descriptions do not become law:

“But such descriptions are just that—descriptive. They do not set forth a test that may be applied as a general matter to permit the Government to imprison any speaker so long as his speech is deemed valueless or unnecessary, or so long as an ad hoc calculus of costs and benefits tilts in a statute’s favor.

When we have identified categories of speech as fully outside the protection of the First Amendment, it has not been on the basis of a simple cost-benefit analysis.”

To cut to the chase, Roberts points to Ferber and says in this case the government showed that child pornography videos were  “intrinsically related” to the crime itself and thus “an integral part of the production of such materials, an activity illegal throughout the Nation.” but that this decision does not “establish a freewheeling authority to declare new categories of speech outside of the scope of the First Amendment.”

Here’s the key portion, from my view:

“Our decisions in Ferber and other cases cannot be taken as establishing a freewheeling authority to declare new categories of speech outside the scope of the First Amendment. Maybe there are some categories of speech that have been historically unprotected, but have not yet beenspecifically identified or discussed as such in our case law.But if so, there is no evidence that “depictions of animal cruelty” is among them. We need not foreclose the future recognition of such additional categories to reject the Government’s highly manipulable balancing test as a means of identifying them.

III Because we decline to carve out from the First Amendment any novel exception for §48, we review Stevens’s First Amendment challenge under our existing doctrine. “

This law should be rewritten and the accepted assumptions examined by the staffers and reps. This is a great exercise in our democracy’s integral systems. In this case, the system worked. You might criticize Robert Stevens for his interest in dog fighting, but to prosecute him, you’ll have to write laws intended to stop dog fighting and not use some blanket law that can just as easily become precedent for other speech cases.

In the end, this is not as much a decision about dog fighting as it is about statutory language and free speech rights. The extension of concern in this case isn’t entirely about Stevens but how the government would be allowed to create a “free floating” standard for judging what it sees as offensive. Congress got close, even by the justices admissions, but too much was left unspecified that can create a conflict with Constitutionally protected expression.

If the populace cannot understand why the Supreme Court renders particular decisions, confusion arises, confusing policy clashes ensue, and time is wasted in outrage instead of a focused attempt to clarify the law with better language and model.

To read the stories, you’d think that these cold blooded justices just told us all, “its ok to kill little animals and film it because that’s free speech”, when nothing of the kind is in these opinions.

Congrats to NPR and others who got it right, and shame on the lazy, narcissistic news sources who yet again duped their own readers. No wonder people thought there was WMD in Iraq.
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For those of you who don’t know Emptywheel, you should. She’s done a stellar job at piecing together information for the last several years in order to help us understand what the government doesn’t seem so eager to share.

Today she wrote:
Full article

As al-Haramain has made clear from the beginning, what got the organization put on the terrorist list in the first place was probably a conversation in which one of its lawyers mentioned Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law. It’s likely, in other words, that al-Haramain Oregon is only on the terrorist list because of a conversation that was illegally wiretapped.

I mention Bin Laden in calls all the time because I’m covering these issues and it wouldn’t surprise me that an organization like al-Haramain might likely mention Bin Laden, his family members, or any number of people. If a conversation is enough to provoke putting you on a watch list, if you cannot know what got you on a watch list, and if you have to defend yourself from the phantom accusation, then how can anyone operate in this country without fear of government intrusion, misinterpretation, and inappropriate action?

As a result of the recent decision that stated the Bush administration’s wiretapping was illegal, we know that the efforts along the way by al-Haramain were not in vein. But what about current and future programs? Will we be willing to abide by our constitution in passing surveillance law? Are we willing to adhere to the existing laws? Perhaps more important, do we understand how we came to have the 4th Amendment and Habeas review?

We’ll stay tuned to the upcoming Holder hearings and will ask representatives and senators to probe into contemporary use of domestic surveillance and what actions the DOJ will take in response to the recent decision.

The ongoing mantra from war apologists is still, “war is hell”. This phrase sounds as if it is an inevitable part of life or we should simply accept that “war is hell”. What seems to be missing in this theme is human accountability for creating hell on earth. In the days following the Wikileaks video showing us all how inhuman our soldiers are trained to be while gunning down human beings, thus..liberating them. The savage attack wasn’t the most shocking part of the video. The part that shocked many people was the com chatter as a trigger happy gunner murdered people who were of no threat. Fog of war? No. This is a manufactured apologist response.

One way we can learn about what we’re doing to our soldiers and to civilians in countries we war upon.

Please read the following from:
Josh Stieber, former specialist, U.S. Army
Ethan McCord, former specialist, U.S. Army

AN OPEN LETTER OF RECONCILIATION & RESPONSIBILITY TO THE IRAQI PEOPLE
From Current and Former Members of the U.S. Military

Peace be with you.

To all of those who were injured or lost loved ones during the July 2007 Baghdad shootings depicted in the “Collateral Murder” Wikileaks video:

We write to you, your family, and your community with awareness that our words and actions can never restore your losses.

We are both soldiers who occupied your neighborhood for 14 months. Ethan McCord pulled your daughter and son from the van, and when doing so, saw the faces of his own children back home. Josh Stieber was in the same company but was not there that day, though he contributed to the your pain, and the pain of your community on many other occasions.

There is no bringing back all that was lost. What we seek is to learn from our mistakes and do everything we can to tell others of our experiences and how the people of the United States need to realize we have done and are doing to you and the people of your country. We humbly ask you what we can do to begin to repair the damage we caused.

We have been speaking to whoever will listen, telling them that what was shown in the Wikileaks video only begins to depict the suffering we have created. From our own experiences, and the experiences of other veterans we have talked to, we know that the acts depicted in this video are everyday occurrences of this war: this is the nature of how U.S.-led wars are carried out in this region.

We acknowledge our part in the deaths and injuries of your loved ones as we tell Americans what we were trained to do and what we carried out in the name of “god and country”. The soldier in the video said that your husband shouldn’t have brought your children to battle, but we are acknowledging our responsibility for bringing the battle to your neighborhood, and to your family. We did unto you what we would not want done to us.

More and more Americans are taking responsibility for what was done in our name. Though we have acted with cold hearts far too many times, we have not forgotten our actions towards you. Our heavy hearts still hold hope that we can restore inside our country the acknowledgment of your humanity, that we were taught to deny.

Our government may ignore you, concerned more with its public image. It has also ignored many veterans who have returned physically injured or mentally troubled by what they saw and did in your country. But the time is long overdue that we say that the value of our nation’s leaders no longer represent us. Our secretary of defense may say the U.S. won’t lose its reputation over this, but we stand and say that our reputation’s importance pales in comparison to our common humanity.

We have asked our fellow veterans and service-members, as well as civilians both in the United States and abroad, to sign in support of this letter, and to offer their names as a testimony to our common humanity, to distance ourselves from the destructive policies of our nation’s leaders, and to extend our hands to you.

With such pain, friendship might be too much to ask. Please accept our apology, our sorrow, our care, and our dedication to change from the inside out. We are doing what we can to speak out against the wars and military policies responsible for what happened to you and your loved ones. Our hearts are open to hearing how we can take any steps to support you through the pain that we have caused.

Solemnly and Sincerely,
Josh Stieber, former specialist, U.S. Army
Ethan McCord, former specialist, U.S. Army

I’m reading into intricate details of Haiti and Dominican Republic history. I’m reading on the slave rebellions, the colonial oppression and subsequent “justice” in particular. I’m reading this due to the not so surprising but still amazingly un-Christian like attack by Pat Robertson on the history of Haiti. Robertson said that Haiti was cursed because its slave rebellion leaders (notably Dutty Boukman) had made a “pact with the Devil”. In fact, this pact got a response from the Dark Lord of the Underground, oh yes, it did. But we’ll get to Dick Cheney in a minute. Yes, the one, the only, Satan The Monty Hall of Evil  said, “‘OK, it’s a deal.'”

Now, just like with Liz Cheney and other whack jobs and their claims, the easiest way to dismiss Robertson is through evidence or the mute button. I’d ignore him but I am fascinated by mythology, history, and lore, so it didn’t take me minutes to hit the ground running on the search for this “pact” with the devil. Along the way I found stories of rebel leaders who were beheaded by the French, like Dutty Boukman 1791, or who were burned alive, like François Mackandal 1758. In part of this story is the narrative being dominated by the French and subsequent European overtone of Slaves rebelling using voodoo (or vodou) versus the internal narrative of a people overthrowing the devil in the form of French slave masters and bosses. Depending on which view you come from, you will arrive at different conclusions.

Mackandal  was an interesting chap. He was well informed on poisons and was a threat to the French control and even the people themselves. He would distribute poisons to other slaves who would then poison their slavemasters and their families. In The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution from Below by Carolyn E. Fick, there is a translation of the tortured interrogation of one of the slaves who betrayed Mackandal. Mackandal was executed at Cap-Haïtien.

Then it occurred to me. The narrative about Mackandal implies immediately that the betrayal story itself is suspect because it comes at the hands of torture. The odds of torture producing some positives in intelligence seems statistically inevitable, aka sometimes you’ve got the right guy and he will cough it up. But…sometimes, you don’t and he will say anything including recite rumors he may not know for sure and the case is sealed. This crude method has been a part of our controlling authorities tool box for most of our history. In some crude way, I’m sure occasionally busting someone’s toes to the point of powder did really get them to betray their allies. The odds say its entirely likely if you torture enough people you’ll get something as a result.

The Art of Brain Surgery or The Pick and Rock Cavity Clearance Sale
I remember being in the science museum when I was young and seeing our Cro-Magnon pre-TV Dinner ancestors and hearing about the ways that migraines and brain swelling would be eased. The various ways we tore people up to help them is rather nauseating. But keeping time in context we must acknowledge that to many this was advanced science at the time and now it is nothing short of criminal. No doctor today would simply start sawing your skull open to relieve pressure for a headache or Harvey Cushing would roll over in his grave. Yes, there are some procedures where removing the skull can create positive effects but you wouldn’t use it to cure what a good glass of water, lowering your salt intake and a bit of exercise would solve. Perhaps there is your remedy for what ails you.

It occurs to me that those who advocate for ‘any means necessary torture’ thinking wouldn’t exactly like the crude pick and rock technique should they require an aneurysm to be treated. No, I’m sure at this point they would want to trust the professionals. Certainly sawing their domes open to get at relax a headache wouldn’t be preferred. Yet when it comes to gaining actionable intelligence about “terrorist threats”, they’ll take the Neanderthal route and take what comes.

Professional interrogation by the FBI is a science that has long evolved since the days when tortured slaves or common criminals were burned or whipped into telling anything that would come out of their mouths. Yet in the world of Marion Gordon Robertson (aka Pat) and other extremely ignorant people who hate evolving, these methods are perfectly suitable to telling themselves that they are safe and clean from impurity. See, in the minds of people like Robertson, they are pure. Everyone else is sinful and whatever happens to those sinful people is completely justified because God on high smote them. It is this ignorant view of Christianity and history that propagates more discord about torture. Those who continue to support the resist of evolution are just about the same folks who support torturing anyone with the name Abdul in order to figure out if they know a bad guy. They know if they detain a Christian named then that couldn’t possibly be a terrorist. Nobody with the name Richard Reid could be a bad guy or a big danger right? Certainly not Timothy McVeigh. Why would anyone be so afraid of those names? Some very Anglo folks might be afraid of Jose Padilla but David Hicks or John Walker Linde?

If I’m to be superstitious may it simply be in asking, “Lord, please bless me with just enough cynicism to not fall prey to Pat Robertson. Amen.”

There is little to be surprised about when it comes to the Cheney clique. I always can predict the garbage that will come out of the mouths of Dick Cheney, Liz Cheney, Frank Gaffney, Ron Christie, Mary Matalin, David Rivkin, and others associated with the disgraced former Vice President. These tools are entirely without compunction when they distort the public record and pitch to our base fear instincts as a way to maintain some pseudo moral high ground.

These people are not the center of my ire. They are liars. Their credibility is zero to none. There is almost nothing Dick Cheney says that isn’t parroted by his draft deferment daughter, Liz Cheney. I don’t expect her to change her tune. This isn’t going to be an examination of how Liz Cheney is wrong because the facts do that well all by themselves. No, my comment is entirely focused at CNN and ABC News for giving this blathering fool the space to talk in the first place.

THIS WEEK with George Stephanopolis has been quick to invite Liz Cheney to sit on their panel along side veteran reporters or politicians and give her equal voice as if she’s got something, equal, to say just because the nepotism that placed her in the State Department is its own endorsement of her credibility on security and foreign affairs.

CNN occasionally honors Cheney, the younger, to stand up for her cowardly lying father by placing her up against James Carville. The combination never changes much. I remember her “debating” James Zobgy who looked at her as if she were nuts. (I mean how do you feel good about debating an zombie wingnut?)

Liz Cheney has launched “KeepAmericaSafe.com” as a bully pulpit on America’s “War on Terror”. Then this ‘organization’ is used to prop up the validity of Liz Cheney as a spokesperson. This is just like Judith Miller publishing an article in the NYTimes handed to her by Dick Cheney’s tool only to have Cheney do a call back for credibility. Might work on the ill-informed, but it insults my intelligence. The truth is, you can start a dot com by purchasing a name for about $10. If you seek to add privacy, you can do that for about $10. You can then get cheap hosting with few frills (won’t need them for this effort) for $10 or so….What’s our total? $30? Lets say, you go with deluxe sign up, $25 to $100. We total that up for a year’s expense…$20 for domain and privacy, $120-$1200 for hosting (high end of $100 is unjustified so the real total is $120-$200).

To get the layout, either pay lots of money or hire a zealot.
In many years of activism, I’ve never found it hard to give or get free labor for a cause we believe in. Not everyone will do all things, but they will likely contribute freely to a poster painting, web development, or publication. Some of the ideologues love to write copy so they can propagate their ideas of perfection to everyone. The Cheney clan is made up of almost nothing BUT ideologues and zealots so it shouldn’t be hard to do this.

If they are paying anyone beyond this, for what we’ve seen so far, then where is that money being spent?
If they are paying staff, who is the staff, what are they paying for?
Is this a 501(c)3 style organization or just another “think tank” sans office?

Truth is:
This is another canard.
This is another Weapon of Mass Distraction. No Traction, All Dis.

Nobody should say Liz Cheney can’t have an opinion. But her opinion isn’t there because she earned a right to the table. In the game of princes and pawns, Liz got access solely because her cowardly father won’t answer to his messages. His rantings are unchecked. He never faced a national referendum on his insanity. His continued cowardice is in the form of a ignorant Sourcrat who is now welcome to the Sunday talk show tables.

Yes, FoxNews has brought Liz Cheney on, but who cares. Fox News has no credibility for these matters as far as I’m concerned.
But ABC and CNN are really dragging bottom in continuing to allow this tool to talk at the table.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will be tried in lower Manhattan. Republicans immediately went into their highly predictable panic attack. Below is AG Holder’s announcement:

As of today, there are 23 agents who are international fugitives after an Italian court ruled in the abduction of a cleric in Milan.

NYTimes Article:
An Italian judge sentenced 23 Americans to up to eight years in prison on Wednesday for the abduction of a Muslim cleric, in a symbolic condemnation of the CIA “rendition” flights used by the former U.S. government.

Updates coming as they roll out…

First, here are the documents that have been released by the FBI detailing the interview with Dick Cheney:

Cheney Interview Transcript

FBI Outline Notes

FBI Interview Notes

BIG THANKS: To Melanie Sloan and the hard workers at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) for their tireless effort to keep accountability and access a priority. Without their effort much of what we know would be hidden and our work would be infinitely harder. We thank you CREW.

There are few aspects of the Cheney story as well as I know the CIA leak case. At first this case eluded my attention because I was more focused on the Iraq war, the lies that led to them and who was in a position of the most gain from this catastrophic historical decision. I remember early on that many in the media were more focused on Karl Rove than Dick Cheney. Names like I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby were unknown to the general population, but Karl Rove..was a known turd. Blossoming from there we learned more about how reporters gain access to the powers of our government and are subsequently or consequently used by those powers to feed the media cycle specific memes and directions for the general masses to chomp on while the oligarchic powers enjoy playing out their various ideologies on the world stage.

Take for example the story of Judith Miller who was used to foster the case to go to war on Iraq. She’d publish what the White House would say, then the White House would refer back to their interview with her and say, “see..the New York Times said”…It is ironic that she would also become the face of the oppressed “journalist” by being thrown in jail to force her to testify. Dick Cheney used her via Scooter Libby to manipulate the public into views that the raw facts might not have yielded. Could we have seen a war with Iraq if the New York Times was publishing articles that remained in doubt about WMD? The NYTimes relation to the same Dick Cheney who blasted the NYT for leaks about wiretaps and other programs is something that journalists should study as fundamental ethics for the next 10,000 years. He hated them?

There were several meetings between Judith Miller and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby regarding the Joe Wilson article and clearly Libby met with her 3 times in the days after Wilson’s op-ed, “What I didn’t find in Africa“, published. All of these were intended to foster a story, false at the root, about the case for Iraq. The story that follows is one of the biggest betrayals of national trust in modern times. We will not understand many of its consequences for many generations, I assume.

We should still ask the questions about the motivation to invade Iraq. The CIA leak case is only one of its aspects but we can learn much about manipulation and lies through this case because it became such a public spectacle. We are going to be representing the case in detail soon on this website complete with documents and archival news coverage. During this, I ask that you consider whether it is at all possible that Dick Cheney could forget the key details that he tells the FBI he “cannot recall”. I ask that you consider whether a person so intent on pushing a nation to war by toying with the reporters’ drive for a scoop can so easily forget how he was Right In The Middle Of The Action?

Dick Cheney is a bald face liar about the CIA leak. I’m not going to make bones about it. He lied to the FBI. His case for forgetting was a legalistic avoidance tactic that doesn’t even fool idiot gumshoes on TV.  Because he was not under oath doesn’t mean he didn’t lie or mislead without consequence. But we’ll consider the consequences after we represent the evidence.

Coming next, we’ll go back to the sworn testimony and evidence presented in the United States v Libby case and see if Dick Cheney’s memory can be restored.

Andy Worthington has a good new article on Judge Baltasar Garzon’s investigation of John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, Donald Rumsfeld and others who set up the U.S. Guantanamo interrogations. Read Article

The investigation is being defined within the “universal jurisdiction” and whether a judge in Spain has the authority to investigate foreign leaders. Before this notion cements it is key to note that the United States policy abroad clearly demonstrates that the policy has been for universal jurisdiction so long as it is in the interest of the United States. When justice calls for toppling, trying, or even executing foreign leaders, the United States has been involved in all aspects. There seems little room for credibility to anyone criticizing Garzon for this endeavor.

If Eric Holder were to avoid prosecution despite evidence then the United States would be in violation of its treaties to investigate war crimes. If the accused are found innocent before a jury, then the jury has spoken. But don’t let the elephant in the room, the screaming lobby of people who call investigations politically motivated or somehow illegitimate, go unnoticed. These people who do so are almost 100% on record as favoring universal jurisdiction by their advocacy of toppling Saddam Hussein for what they didn’t approve of. He had never attacked the United States but he was a bad guy and that was enough for this same gaggle to launch a war. They would topple Iran using the same universal jurisdiction.

There may be no end to the shame the obstructionists of justice would subject this country to in order to prevent accountability by U.S. officials. There can be no moral high ground when U.S. officials or citizens commit crimes and face no prosecution. Nor is there justice when low level tools of these programs (torture, wiretapping, etc) get used and discarded to prevent culpability of the crafters and executors of such programs. When you have too many bad apples you need to investigate the tree.

http://www.cheneywatch.org/documents/torture/cia-ksm-docs08242009.pdf

The documents Cheney requested are now released, redacted of course, and they do little to foster his view. Reading over the reports above, its clear to see that normal interrogation techniques were clearly productive. There is no portion of these reports, unredacted portions, that defend Cheney’s views on torture as necessary and fruitful.

If you see anything in these that demonstrates this, we’d love to know. Its a busy news day.