The Torture President

Aside from the shoe, the bigger story is from the end of last week. Bipartisan Report on Detainee Abuse Blames Rumsfeld, Other Top Bush Officials. Here's the 19 page pdf of the executive summary.

"'In the most comprehensive critique by Congress of the military's interrogation practices, the Senate Armed Services Committee issued a report yesterday that accuses Rumsfeld and his deputies of being the authors and chief promoters of harsh interrogation policies that disgraced the nation and undermined U.S. security. The report, released by Sens. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), contends that Pentagon officials later tried to create a false impression that the policies were unrelated to acts of detainee abuse committed by members of the military.

The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own,' the report states. 'The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees.'

The report is the most direct refutation to date of the administration's rationale for using aggressive interrogation tactics -- that inflicting humiliation and pain on detainees was legal and effective, and helped protect the country. The 25-member panel, without one dissent among the 12 Republican members, declared the opposite to be true."

Dan Froomkin commented on the story in Pack of Liars and started going back and pointing out the lies of the administration, that a few bad apples did the torture. He points to other articles by various newspapers and includes other reactions such as from the ACLU.

Glenn Greenwald wrote Senate report links Bush to detainee homicides; media yawns. "This Report was issued on Thursday. Not a single mention was made of it on any of the Sunday news talk shows, with the sole exception being when John McCain told George Stephanopoulos that it was "not his job" to opine on whether criminal prosecutions were warranted for the Bush officials whose policies led to these crimes."

Scott Horton in The Torture Presidency mentions a little about what's in the still classified sections. "It studies with some care the introduction of specific torture techniques, showing how they were reverse engineered from the SERE program—used to prepare American pilots to resist interrogation techniques used by the Soviets, North Koreans, Chinese and North Vietnamese."

"And deep in its classified hold, the report looks into the use of psychotropic drugs which were, with Donald Rumsfeld’s approval, routinely administered to prisoners in order to facilitate their interrogation—in violation of international agreements and American criminal law."

Brian Kalt in Concurring Opinions wonders, Can the President Pardon Himself? His thought is no, but it's not at all clear. We might have to wait for it to actually happen to know. Isn't that broken?

Meanwhile, Jennifer Turner writes in the ACLU blog, The Chickens Are Coming Home to Roost. "Friday brought another pre-trial hearing in the military commission case against Canadian Omar Khadr, the last Western national still being held at Guantánamo Bay."

"Friday’s hearing revealed that this case should never have been brought before a military commission in the first place. The government could have properly charged Khadr in a U.S. federal court, but instead the current administration intentionally bypassed the U.S. legal system to create commissions outside the bounds of law. Now the chickens are coming home to roost: the government faces the possibility that the murder charges against Khadr will have to be thrown out as a result."

Overall, I think we have more evidence that Bush is a war criminal.