Obama is so committed to nonexistent bipartisanship that he can't even punish war criminals from the Bush/Cheney administration. WTF! ******************** DOJ: No Misconduct for Bush Interrogation Lawyers By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: February 20, 2010 Filed at 1:54 a.m. ET WASHINGTON (AP) -- Justice Department lawyers showed "poor judgment" but did not commit professional misconduct when they authorized CIA interrogators to use waterboarding and other harsh tactics at the height of the U.S. war on terrorism, an internal review released Friday found. The decision closes the book on one of the major lingering investigations into the counterterrorism policies of George W. Bush's administration. President Barack Obama campaigned on abolishing the simulated drowning technique of waterboarding and other tactics that he called torture, but he left open the question of whether anyone would be punished for authorizing such methods. Liberal Democrats had pressed for action against the authors of the so-called torture memos, and they indicated they aren't finished discussing the matter. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said he was "deeply offended" by the legal memos and planned to hold a hearing Feb. 26. An initial review by the Justice Department's internal affairs unit found that former government lawyers Jay Bybee and John Yoo had committed professional misconduct, a conclusion that could have cost them their law licenses. But, underscoring just how controversial and legally thorny the memos have become, the Justice Department's top career lawyer reviewed the matter and disagreed. "This decision should not be viewed as an endorsement of the legal work that underlies those memoranda," Assistant Deputy Attorney General David Margolis wrote in a memo released Friday. Margolis, the top nonpolitical Justice Department lawyer and a veteran of several administrations, called the legal memos "flawed" and said that, at every opportunity, they gave interrogators as much leeway as possible under U.S. torture laws. But he said Yoo and Bybee were not reckless and did not knowingly give incorrect advice, the standard for misconduct. The Office of Professional Responsibility, led by another veteran career prosecutor, Mary Patrice Brown, disagreed. "Situations of great stress, danger and fear do not relieve department attorneys of their duty to provide thorough, objective and candid legal advice, even if that advice is not what the client wants to hear," her team wrote in a report that criticized the memos for a "lack of thoroughness, objectivity and candor." The internal report also faulted then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and then-Criminal Division chief Michael Chertoff for not scrutinizing the memos and recognizing their flaws, but the report did not cite them for misconduct. Yoo is now a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and Bybee is a federal judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals based in San Francisco. The decision spares them any immediate sanctions, though state bar associations could independently take up the matter. The memos authorized CIA interrogators to use waterboarding, keep detainees naked, hold them in painful standing positions and keep them in the cold for long periods of time. Other techniques included depriving them of solid food and slapping them. Sleep deprivation, prolonged shackling and threats to a detainee's family were also used. The memos have been embroiled in national security politics for years. The memos laid out a broad interpretation of executive power, one the previous administration also used to authorize warrantless wiretapping and secret prisons. Democrats say the Bush administration used shoddy lawyering to legitimize such policies. Republicans said the memos, authored by two well-respected attorneys, gave the CIA the authority it needed to keep America safe in the panic-filled months after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The memos were hurriedly put together in days, and supporters of Yoo and Bybee note that investigators have had years to dissect them. Many have criticized the Obama administration for trying to politicize legal advice. "We can only hope that the department's decision will establish once and for all that dedicated public officials may have honest disagreements on difficult matters of legal judgment without violating ethical standards," Bybee's lawyer, Maureen Mahoney, said Friday. Yoo's lawyer, Miguel Estrada, was more pointed. During the lengthy investigation, Estrada accused internal investigators of trying to be "Junior Varsity CIA" that second-guessed intelligence decisions. Friday, he said the two lawyers never deserved to be investigated in the first place. "The only thing that warrants an ethical investigation out of this entire sorry business is the number of malicious allegations against Professor Yoo and Judge Bybee that leaked out of the department during the last year," Estrada said. Obama has said CIA interrogators who relied on the memos will not face charges for their behavior. A separate criminal inquiry is under way into whether a handful of CIA operatives crossed the line, leading to the death of detainees. ------ Associated Press writers Devlin Barrett and Pete Yost contributed to this report.
Another Cheney win. Palin stops healthcare with "death panels" now Cheney stops this stupid investigation. Obama is being rolled by both the left and the right.
Ain't it always a bitch when them lawyers win one for the other side? Maybe if truth, justice, right and wrong were the actual objectives we would see more justice being done. The radical left created this atmosphere of hair splitting, word twisting, evidence withholding, witness manipulation, and now we live with the mockery the courts have become. Nice job lefties! Don't always go your way though, now does it? :eek:
Any solid evidence that only the left is responsible for this mockery, and no blame at all falls on the right? ... I didn't think so.
This topic is so fuckin stupid. Seriously, if u have a problem with torturing admitted terrorists for info then u get the Darwin award, Your genes just weren't meant to last. Same with profiling. Foreign terrorists (radical muslims etc) ARE NOT US citizens, so they don't share the same rights we do, that simple. BTW they do it everywhere else. I don't care what the international community has to say about it.
And you get the stupid reichtard of the day award. Almost none of the people tortured at Gitmo were "admitted terrorists." Lots of times some Iraqi "informant" would point out some neighbor he didn't like as a "suspected terrorist" and the sadistic torture-happy goons in Blackwater or the CIA would drag the poor neighbor off to Gitmo and start torturing on no fucking rational basis at all. That's just one of the problems with torture. We have a proven track record of getting cooperation and good intel by treating prisoners decently. So to say torture is necessary displays either a profound ignorance of what works or just some deep-seated desire to torture, probably sexually based.
What a steaming pile of shit. The majority didn't end up in Gitmo by accident, they were suspected for a reason. The innocents were in the wrong place at the wrong time, happens in every violent conflict, just remember who threw the first punch (first several punches actually). Also what a vast generalization of the agents performing said "torture". Waterboarding is to torture what papertrading is to trading. Stop talking like your some military insider, about getting good intel, and proven track records, they can lie or just say nothing. I never said they should be indiscriminately tortured, or that only torture works, nor do I believe that. But in cases where they won't cooperate I don't give a shit what happens to them. Their suffering<<<<<< our lives, get it. As to my non existent, deep-seated sexual dysfunction, give it a rest Freud, not everything revolves around sex. Everything does revolve around survival however.
"Stop talking like your[sic] some military insider" That would be Saudi Arabians (15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers). We didn't invade Saudi Arabia, we invaded Iraq, which had NOTHING to do with 9/11. Dude, your little paper-tiger ass wouldn't last 5 seconds under waterboarding. Not. Five. Seconds.
1)I am not acting like an insider, I am making assumptions based on the FACT that info has been retrieved from prisoners at Gitmo, you are saying if someone doesn't feel like talking we should play nice and somehow they will change their mind... based on? 2)That would be RADICAL MUSLIMS, doesn't matter where they originated from just where they are now. If Iraq has NOTHING to do with terrorism then why are we fighing al-qaeda in Iraq? Answer: cause they harbor(ed) radical muslims, and now Iraq is a front in our war against them. 3) Yes. it. would. But it has absolutley nothing to do with the topic, now does it? douche, u are one of the most dishonest posters on the board, you just make shit up or are incapable of comprehension. Now why don't u go back and try to address my ENTIRE post, and try not to make misplaced assumptions about what I think, or personally attack me. *bitch-slaps kut2k*
Based on the fact that the FBI gets confessions all the time without "enhanced interrogation" (torture). Based on the fact the FBI refused to have anything to do with the Gitmo mess because they knew it was fucked up from the start. You're like a small child who refuses to listen or to learn anything. It was known before the invasion that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, or with harboring Muslim terrorists. Saddam Hussein and OBL hated each other. The entire WMD excuse was a lie, and al-Qaeda had no presense whatsoever in Iraq until after we invaded and deposed Hussein. Save it for somebody gullible, Walter Mitty. Waterboarding has been known to be very effective torture for centuries. It was regarded as torture in this country until Bush and Cheney. Your ignorance is willful; that's makes it stupidity. "you just make shit up or are incapable of comprehension." Anybody still minimizing waterboarding at this late date is just an imbecile.