"There's no legal basis for withholding the photographs, so this must be a political decision.” -Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's National Security Project

Torture Memos: Cover for illegal actions Growing voices now able to support the notion that the memos were drafted after the fact, to justify the illegal activities long since carried out.

David Luban, a law professor at Georgetown University, also testified at the hearing and called the Bush era legal memos "an ethical train wreck."

"I believe it's impossible that lawyers of such great talent and intelligence could have written these memos in the good faith belief that they accurately state the law," Luban said. He added that Justice Department lawyers had a special responsibility not to "rubber stamp administration policies" or "provide cover for illegal actions."

Instead, Luban concluded, memos written by Yoo, Bybee and their successor in the office, Steven G. Bradbury, "cherry pick" legal precedents and fail to consider or mention a 1983 case in which law enforcement officers were prosecuted for waterboarding prisoners to make them confess.

"A legal adviser must use independent judgment and give candid, unvarnished advice," Luban said.

But the law professor noted that it would be a "high bar," requiring by "clear and convincing evidence," to find that the authors of the memos had violated professional, ethical standards.

Other legal experts told The Post last week that state bar associations could have difficulty conducting an investigation into the underpinnings of the Bush program and said it was unclear whether Yoo and Bybee had acted in bad faith. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/13/AR2009051301281_pf.html

Obama and Those Pictures: Cover-Up or… Strategic Purpose ? Speculation continues as to whether Obama has some grand strategy. Otherwise, it is a grand error / inconsistency, since he’s joining the ‘better to keep hidden than to reveal’ camp and has even used the ‘few bad apples’ argument. Yet, some- including Sy Hersh- claim the pictures are disturbing and they would serve to further diminish the few bad apples argument.

“These photographs provide visual proof that prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel was not aberrational but widespread, reaching far beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib,” said Amrit Singh, a staff attorney with the A.C.L.U., which sued for release of the pictures under the Freedom of Information Act....

Disclosure of the latest pictures “is critical for helping the public understand the scope and scale of prisoner abuse as well as for holding senior officials accountable for authorizing or permitting such abuse,” said Ms. Singh. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/25/us/politics/24web-prison.html?_r=1

And, the Obama line has already been rejected by a federal district court and the 2^nd Circuit Court of Appeals

The request for what's effectively a legal do-over is an unlikely step for a president who is trained as a constitutional lawyer, advocated greater government transparency and ran for election as a critic of his predecessor's secretive approach toward the handling of terrorism detainees.

Eric Glitzenstein, a lawyer with expertise in Freedom of Information Act requests, said he thought that Obama faced an uphill legal battle. 'They should not be able to go back time and again and concoct new rationales' for withholding what have been deemed public records, he said.

The timing of the president's decision suggests that a key factor behind his switch of position could have been a desire to prevent the release of the photos before a speech that he's to give June 4 in Egypt aimed at convincing the world's Muslims that the United States isn't at war with them. The pictures' release shortly before the speech could have negated its goal and proved highly embarrassing. Even if courts ultimately reject Obama's new position, the time needed for their consideration could delay the photos' release until long after the speech. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/68103.html

Andrew Sullivan comments:

David Ignatius describes the president's about-face on torture photos as a "Sister Souljah" moment. The MSM cannot see the question of torture and violation of the Geneva Conventions as a matter of right and wrong, of law and lawlessness. They see it as a matter of right and left. And so an attempt to hold Bush administration officials accountable for the war crimes they proudly admit to committing is "left-wing." And those of us who actually want to uphold the rule of law ... are now the equivalent of rappers urging the murder of white people. And the authorization of torture is reduced, in David's words, to "controversial Bush-era issues such as interrogation."

There is truth and power. In this town, you know what side the MSM is on. Just keep on walking. And let's have no more curiosity about this bizarre cover-up ... http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/05/sister-souljah.html

CHENEY AND TORTURE: In summary, it’s increasingly, officially confirmed that the Bush Administration became increasingly desperate to establish a connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Months of making the case- Atta’s alleged meeting, training al-Qaeda in wmd, allusions to nukes, etc.- without evidence were enough to secure the Congressional vote and get us to invade. Ultimately, much water-boarding- from orders coming from the office of the VP- produced some temporarily ‘usable intelligence,’ i.e. lies, to claim that the tie was made

Lawrence Wilkerson on Cheney: He too thinks the use of torture was political- intended to manufacture the tie between Saddam and al-Qaeda so as to justify the Iraq invasion the following year, and that the culprit was the former VP:

… what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002--well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion--its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.

So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney's office that their detainee "was compliant" (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa'ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, "revealed" such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.

There in fact were no such contacts. (Incidentally, al-Libi just "committed suicide" in Libya. Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan government to allow them to interview al-Libi....) http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/05/14/the_truth_about_richard_bruce_cheney/?ref=fp2

…backed also by this account by Charles Windrem:

In his new book, Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq and in an interview with The Daily Beast, [Charles, head of Iraq Survey Group] Duelfer says he heard from “some in Washington at very senior levels (not in the CIA),” who thought Khudayr’s interrogation had been “too gentle” and suggested another route, one that they believed has proven effective elsewhere. “They asked if enhanced measures, such as waterboarding, should be used,” Duelfer writes. “The executive authorities addressing those measures made clear that such techniques could legally be applied only to terrorism cases, and our debriefings were not as yet terrorism-related. The debriefings were just debriefings, even for this creature.”

Duelfer will not disclose who in Washington had proposed the use of waterboarding, saying only: “The language I can use is what has been cleared.” In fact, two senior U.S. intelligence officials at the time tell The Daily Beast that the suggestion to waterboard came from the Office of Vice President Cheney. Cheney, of course, has vehemently defended waterboarding and other harsh techniques, insisting they elicited valuable intelligence and saved lives. He has also asked that several memoranda be declassified to prove his case. (The Daily Beast placed a call to Cheney’s office and will post a response if we get one.)

Without admitting where the suggestion came from, Duelfer revealed that he considered it reprehensible and understood the rationale as political—and ultimately counterproductive to the overall mission of the Iraq Survey Group, which was assigned the mission of finding Saddam Hussein’s WMD after the invasion. http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-05-13/cheneys-role-deepens/full/

Afghan Bombings: Villagers Recount Chaos

The number of civilians killed by the American airstrikes in Farah Province last week may never be fully known. But villagers, including two girls recovering from burn wounds, described devastation that officials and human rights workers are calling the worst episode of civilian casualties in eight years of war in Afghanistan.

“We were very nervous and afraid and my mother said, ‘Come quickly, we will go somewhere and we will be safe,’ ” said Tillah, 12, recounting from a hospital bed how women and children fled the bombing by taking refuge in a large compound, which was then hit.

The bombs were so powerful that people were ripped to shreds. Survivors said they collected only pieces of bodies. Several villagers said that they could not distinguish all of the dead and that they never found some of their relatives.

Government officials have accepted handwritten lists compiled by the villagers of 147 dead civilians. An independent Afghan human rights group said it had accounts from interviews of 117 dead. American officials say that even 100 is an exaggeration but have yet to issue their own count.

The calamity in the village of Granai, some 18 miles from here, illustrates in the grimmest terms the test for the Obama administration as it deploys more than 20,000 additional troops here and appoints a new commander, Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, in search of a fresh approach to combat the tenacious Taliban insurgency.

It is bombings like this one that have turned many Afghans against the American-backed government and the foreign military presence. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/world/asia/15farah.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print

Jim McGovern resists:

"Sometimes great presidents make mistakes," declared Massachusetts Congressman Jim McGovern as he announced his intention to vote against $97 billion in "emergency" supplemental funding for the continued U.S. occupation of Iraq and President Obama's dangerously misguided plan to surge 21,000 more U.S. troops and trainers into Afghanistan.

McGovern is a Democrat who supported Barack Obama for president last year.

But McGovern is not willing to write Obama a blank check for endless warmaking.

And he is not alone.

The congressman was one of five dozen House members who voted Thursday against the "emergency" supplemental, which passed the House on a 368-60 vote. Of the 60 "no" votes, 51 came from Democrats, almost all of them members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Nine Republicans, some of them anti-war, some of them budget hawks, voted "no."

The level of Democratic opposition was significant and reflected concerns that were summed up by McGovern.

"The mission has greatly expanded and the policy is vague," the Massachusetts congressman explained Thursday. "The more stuff I'm exposed to the more uneasy I get about what we're doing here. I get this sinking feeling that we're getting sucked into something that we'll never be able to get out of." http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat/435878/house_backs_obama_s_afghan_surge_amid_calls_for_exit_strategy

Populist Obama: Attacking the Credit Card folk:

President Obama stepped up his populist campaign against the credit card industry on Thursday, pressing Congress to pass new limits on “anytime, any-reason rate hikes,” unfair late fees and misleading policies.

As the Senate deliberated on legislation, Mr. Obama convened a town-hall-style meeting here led off by a woman who complained of being gouged by her credit card company. The president cited her story to make the case that banks and credit card companies have been taking advantage of loose rules to make money at the expense of hard-working Americans.

“We’re lured in by ads and mailings that hook us with the promise of low rates while keeping the right to raise those rates at any time for any reason — even on old purchases,” he told hundreds of people gathered in a high school auditorium. “You should not have to worry that when you sign up for a credit card you’re signing away all your rights. You shouldn’t need a magnifying glass or a law degree to read the fine print that sometimes doesn’t even appear to be written in English.”

Appealing to popular resentment in a time of economic trouble, he cast himself as a reformer taking on a powerful industry. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/15/us/politics/15obamacnd.html?hp=&pagewanted=print

-R