Yoo Defends Himself, while Leahy Accuses and Holder Investigates

“The legal advice given about torture statutes and criminal law, I disagree with,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, told ABC News. “Authorizing severe interrogation techniques at the end of the day does not make us safer even though some good information may have been gained from it
Graham said, “the lawyers in question were not conspiring to hurt a particular individual; they were trying to protect the nation at a time when we had just been attacked. Clearly their motivation was to provide tools to the executive branch, you know looking at the law in a very aggressive fashion, to protect us as a nation. So no, they shouldn’t be criminally prosecuted…We’ve done enough damage by authorizing techniques that make us look bad.”
Wow what are the right wing torture lovers gonna say about this.

Obama appointees vow to enforce the law, GOP goes batnutz…film at 11

Eric Holder says that the damage done to the image of the United States might deserve legal consequences. But we already know that the CIA believes the controversial techniques prevented actual damage on the Library Tower in Los Angeles. The scale of the different consequences is certainly noteworthy.

So Lindsey Graham has developed the super-power of mind reading ability! What a great power to have – we should find a way to use it to fix the economy.
How could you let that kind of bald-faced statement go without a comment, Jake? What evidence if any are there to support his assertions about Bushco’s motivations?

“But we already know that the CIA believes the controversial techniques prevented actual damage on the Library Tower in Los Angeles.”
No, that is the claim by a former Bush official doing CYA.
Bush claimed the Library Tower attack was thwarted in 2002.
The former Bush official claims KSM being waterboarded is how that attack was stopped.
KSM was captured in 2003.

Khaled Sheikh Mohamed, the animal that beheaded jopurnalist Daniel
Pearl and plotted the 9/11 attacks and the foiled LA attack had water thrown in his face under the supervision of a medical doctor. That’s torture? He should be sleeping with the swine.

Interesting that “Leaky” Leahy is chomping at the bit to get at these charges. Payback for his own disclosures a while back?

Theres a storm coming…..
Conservatives are scared (what’s new)

So Woody
are you implying that someone is guilty. You said persecute. You can’t persecute someone that is innocent.
hmmmmmmm. interesting

The saying goes that a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich. Certainly in 4 years a Repub will find reason to indict Geithner and Treasury over TARP if the Dems go after this.

Omentum says: “So Woody
are you implying that someone is guilty. You said persecute. You can’t persecute someone that is innocent.
hmmmmmmm. interesting”
It is interesting to not that omentum uses the word persecute instead of prosecute. Freudian slip? hmmmmmmmm interesting

It’s hard to believe that we now live in a country where one administration considers prosecuting lawyers in the previous administration for reaching legal conclusions with which they disagree.
Think quietly for a moment about what sort of precedent will be set.

I sincerely want all the people on here to remember their words when hundreds of thousands of Americans are dead from a terror event, some of them their relatives.
Remember then that questioning people could have stopped it, but the misguided hatred of George W. Bush in wanting revenge by Obama, who just happens to be using the US Military as an assassination machine in Pakistan to help al Qaeda and the Taliban eliminate their “competition” as Mr. Obama’s new friends, which as good deal worse than waterboarding.
Amazingly Jake Tapper and others in the press can quote that waterboarding was conducted over 100 times, and yet no one mentions NO ONE DIED.
John McCain who was tortured almost died as many POW’s did under communist North Vietnamese real torture.
Here is a little hint on waterboarding that terrorists could not figure out. One simply holds one’s breath, until they pass out. If one disassociates themselves from the pouring of water, and concentrates on a self induced passed out state, it is quite peaceful and all the questioners end up doing is reviving the terrorist.
Waterboarding is child’s play compared to the Dutch torture of the 1600′s.
No one died and yet Obama wants to prosecute for “harmed reputations”.
The CFO of Freddie Mac was driven to double suicide himself. Someone involved in this was Barack Obama who has been hounding financiers.
When is Eric Holder going to hand down an indictment for the torture of David Kellerman and Mr. Obama’s hand in the suicide of this American.
Let the balance of Justice Scales weigh equally now that this little gem of Obama has been initiated.
Driving one’s own Citizens to murder themselves is certainly an equal torture in degrading America’s standing and harming it’s reputation.

A few reasons why no Bush administration officials will be prosecuted:
“Those officials won’t be the only ones who suffer if all of this goes forward. Congress will face questions about what the Members knew and when, especially Nancy Pelosi when she was on the House Intelligence Committee in 2002. The Speaker now says she remembers hearing about waterboarding, though not that it would actually be used. Does anyone believe that? Porter Goss, her GOP counterpart at the time, says he knew exactly what he was hearing and that, if anything, Ms. Pelosi worried the CIA wasn’t doing enough to stop another attack. By all means, put her under oath.
“Mr. Obama may think he can soar above all of this, but he’ll soon learn otherwise. The Beltway’s political energy will focus more on the spectacle of revenge, and less on his agenda. The CIA will have its reputation smeared, and its agents second-guessing themselves. And if there is another terror attack against Americans, Mr. Obama will have set himself up for the argument that his campaign against the Bush policies is partly to blame.”

“Obama has stated quite clearly that he will try to protect people on the lower level from prosecution,”
No he hasn’t. He has said he will protect those people who were not Bush political appointees. This is the kind of thing they do in Peru and Argentina. If he proceeds with prosecutions he will destroy his presidency, and so he won’t do it.

Obama should just let this rot now that Bush is slowing fading in our memories.
We all know the man was as twisted and warped minded as Saddam. This country should move forward and concentrate on puting people back to work

Although I am of the opinion of ‘moving forward’, it is past time to air the dirty laundry. Those involved need to have their reckoning. There are ways of punishing short of criminal convictions and it begins with disbarrment of the so-called “lawyers” who came up with this nonsense. Congress can officially condemn the actions/decisions of those involved without stringing them up by their toes. Ultimately, as I joked below, although they deserve the “eye for an eye” punishment, it is an untenable option as each succeeding administration would try the previous one in a fascist frenzy.

“This country should move forward and concentrate on puting people back to work.”
If you’re waiting for Barack Obama to give you a job, you’re in a world of hurt.

jcw
re: ‘He just may want to think about what he’s in for when he leaves office on Jan 20, 2013′
well, if Obama lies and pre-emptively starts a war, gets 4500+ american military killed, 35K+ maimed and wounded, crashes the economy, tortures prisoners for personal vindication, leaves New Orleans to drown, sub-contracts out the government and the war to his buddies, spies on Americans, and on and on…. maybe Obama would have something to worry about ..
4 years after your time frame for him leaving office.

Obama is investigating the people who have kept us safe, while at the same time he’s closing Guantanamo and giving the terrorists rights they do not deserve.
Now that’s change you can belive in.

“Whether or not the president intended to set this dynamic into motion, Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill now seem headed for a collision on this contentious issue.”
By all means, let’s have them. Let’s get Pelosi, Harman, Graham and Rockefeller under oath. Let’s ask them why they did not object back then. Let’s ask Pelosi why she thought they weren’t going hard enough on the detainees.
Let’s get all of the US Congress under oath and ask why they refused to call waterboarding torture.
Yes, let’s do that.
Obama has destroyed any chance of “looking forward” or bringing the country together. He will rue this day.

Harsh interrogation techniques prevented an attack on Los Angeles.
So let’s prosecute those who are responsible for saving lives.
Obama is one huge coward.
He hasn’t got the guts to stand up to his own party.
So much for a new kind of politician.
He’s just as vengeful and vindictive as the rest of his party.

If Obama moves on and lets Bush go–who will he have to blame?
I guess Obama can still blame America.

So much for a new kind of politician.
He’s just as vengeful and vindictive as the rest of his party.
Posted by: millie | Apr 23, 2009 9:27:27 AM
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This is a new kind of politician. Just not the one advertised. He is a viscious self promoter.
Making criminals out of those you disagree with, no matter the disagreement, is definitely a new kind of politician.
Just look at what the dems did with Valerie Plame. The prosecutor knew almost immediately that Richard Armitage was the leaker (not Libby or Rove) and threatened Armitage into silence so he could have a two year political witch-hunt.
Revealing her name wasn’t a crime. In the end he got his political prosecution of Libby, for lying to a grand jury, even though Libby came back and tried to correct the information.
And it turned out her slimy husband did not debunk the yellow cake thing after all, but nobody reported that.
Imagine the years of BS assaults on republicans that will be endured if this is allowed to proceed.

Obama seems to love a spectacle that puts him in the spotlight.
I can’t wait to see how he and the Democrats start to panic and cover their tracks when the facts begin to show who knew what.
If they thought the techniques were so horrible why did they sit back and do nothing?

gotta love Republican ‘outrage’…. sort of like the way they do their politics….. never address the issue at hand, but…. change the issue , next topic, and blame everything and everyone else..
… and don’t you just love Republicans wanting America to be attacked so they can make political points.

… and don’t you just love Republicans wanting America to be attacked so they can make political points.
Posted by: Dewde | Apr 23, 2009 11:20:31 AM
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Predicting that Obama’s daily assault on our national security will leave us open to attacks IS NOT the same as hoping one will occur.
We yell and scream to stop the travesty. If we wanted an “I told you so ” moment there would be no need to have these conversations, the attacks would be inevitable.
Republicans are trying to wake up the rest of you who have truly forgotten the 9/11 attacks which were being planned 2 years before Bush took office.
If anyone is ignorant enough to believe that dismantling our security makes us safer you need a shrink, and please take the god-complex Obama along for a consult too.

re: ” 9/11 attacks which were being planned 2 years before Bush took office. ”
too bad Bush & Co. ignored the intelligence that stated America was going to be attacked…..they were warned and they ignored it….

FH: I do not defend torture as you do and as someone fairly conservative, I worry about my government doing these things. Saying it is your “legal opinion” that torture is okay does not make it okay. Morality is not something that loose and clearly the right seems to have as slippery morals as the left.

What laws did the lawyers for the administration break? Is it against the law to give legal opinions concerning policy?
We are heading down a dark alley here. Prosecuting former administration’s staff members for giving opinions that are not illegal but just merely, in hindsight, disagree with the current administration’s policy smacks of totalitarianism.
If the Republicans develop a loud united front on this issue, the administration will have to back down because the American People aren’t that stupid and won’t tolerate Obama doing the extremist wing of the Democratic Pary’s dirty work for them.
It makes you wonder who is really in charge at the White House, the president or his extreme left wing wacko friends who couldn’t gin up enough idiots in Congress to impeach Bush while he was in office but now would be just happy to see anyone who worked for Bush prosecuted for anything.
If this happens we will see the next administration prosecuting members of the Obama administration for all the policy decisions that they have made. The Obama staff members had better start lawyering up because we know what payback is.
This administration is a joke. It is completely rudderless and clueless. They have no idea what they are doing in foreign policy and in what to do about turning the economy around. It is led by a former community organizer who is now in community organizing heaven with a blank check book and no restraints.