(Photo: Getty Images)

...the Constitution will require President Obama to faithfully execute the laws. That means prosecuting lawbreakers. When the United States ratified the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, thereby making them part of US law, we agreed to prosecute those who violate their prohibitions.

Senate Report Links Bush to Detainee Homicides; Media Yawns

By Glenn Greenwald
December 15, 2008 "Salon"

The bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee report issued on Thursday -- which documents that "former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior U.S. officials share much of the blame for detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba" and "that Rumsfeld's actions were 'a direct cause of detainee abuse' at Guantanamo and 'influenced and contributed to the use of abusive techniques ... in Afghanistan and Iraq'" -- raises an obvious and glaring question:  how can it possibly be justified that the low-level Army personnel carrying out these policies at Abu Ghraib have been charged, convicted and imprisoned, while the high-level political officials and lawyers who directed and authorized these same policies remain free of any risk of prosecution?   The culpability which the Report assigns for these war crimes is vast in scope and unambiguous:

The policies which the Senate Armed Services Committee unanimously concludes were authorized by Bush, Rumsfeld and several other top Bush officials did not merely lead to "abuse" and humiliating treatment, but are directly -- and unquestionably -- responsible for numerous detainee murders.  Many of those deaths caused by abusive treatment have been formally characterized as "homicides" by autopsies performed in Iraq and Afghanistan (see these chilling compilations of autopsy findings on detainees in U.S. custody, obtained by the ACLU, which reads like a classic and compelling exhibit in a war crimes trial). 

By Phillip Carter

When the Abu Ghraib scandal initially broke in April 2004, attention focused on a small group of players, composed of the soldiers depicted in the abuse photos and the senior officers directly in charge of them. In the myriad investigations, trials, and news reports that have followed, the scope of the abuse allegations has widened to include locations in Afghanistan, Cuba, and secretive detention facilities at unknown locations.

It would be impossible to catalog every private, sergeant, captain, and colonel involved with the abuses, let alone the long list of CIA officials, government lawyers, contractors, and others involved with the scandal. Instead, Slate has compiled this chain of command, from President Bush down to the soldiers who served at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo:

http://www.slate.com/features/whatistorture/ChainOfCommand.html

JAY BYBEE

Photograph courtesy AP

What he did then: Assistant Attorney General; Chief, Office of Legal Counsel, 2001-2003

What he does now: Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9 th Circuit

Reported involvement: Bybee served as the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's Office Legal Counsel from 2001 until his confirmation to the 9 th Circuit in 2003. OLC acts as a sort of in-house counsel for the executive branch, providing legal opinions to cabinet agencies. UC Berkeley law professor John Yoo worked as a deputy in Bybee's office and played a central role in developing many of OLC's most controversial memos on detention and interrogation. Bybee and Yoo's Aug. 1, 2002, "torture memo" created a legal framework for the authorization of abusive interrogation techniques by the president. Critics charge that this memo and its progeny amounted to a cookbook for unlawful conduct by the executive branch.

...and let's not forget the other war criminal in our backyard, William J. Haynes II, who resigned from his position as the Defense Department's general counsel.^[13] He started his new job as the Chief Corporate Counsel at the Chevron Corporate Office in San Ramon, CA on April 28, 2008.

ADDENDUM:

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Closing Gitmo is not enough 

President-elect Barack Obama has pledged to close the notorious Guantánamo prison camp. This will be a first step toward restoring America's reputation abroad, but it must not end there. To ensure that our fight against terrorism is consistent with U.S. laws and values, the new Administration must launch a full investigation into the treatment of detainees held in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba and other U.S. detention centers since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

We recently published the findings of our study of 62 released Guantánamo detainees from nine different countries. What we found was alarming. Most of the men we interviewed had been arrested or kidnapped and sold to the United States for bounties as small as $5,000 - simply because their captors said that they were members of Al Qaeda or the Taliban. Our research found that U.S. authorities failed to verify whether these men were really "enemy combatants" and a serious threat to the security of the United States.

Guantánamo is nothing more than an interrogation center where guards and interrogators work together to "break" detainees. Half of the respondents in our study (31 of the 55) willing to discuss their interrogation sessions called them abusive.

They described being subjected to short shackling, stress positions, solitary confinement and exposure to extreme temperatures, loud music and strobe lights - often simultaneously and over long periods of time.

The cumulative effect of these methods constitutes cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment that, in some cases, could amount to torture as defined by the UN Convention Against Torture, which the U.S. ratified in 1994.

While Donald Rumsfeld is highlighted in the following article, John Yoo is referrenced repeatedly throughout the Senate Armed Services Committee report, a summary of which can be found at http://www.democrats.com/senate-armed-services-committee-report-on-torture . Conclusion 14 is particularly damning:

Department of Defense General Counsel William J. Haynes II's direction to the Department of Defense's Detainee Working Group in early 2003 to consider a legal memo from John Yoo of the Department of Justice's OLC as authoritative, blocked the Working Group from conducting a fair and complete legal analysis and resulted in a report that, in the words of then- Department of the Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora contained "profound mistakes in its legal analysis." Reliance on the OLC memo resulted in a final Working Group report that recommended approval of several aggressive techniques, including removal of clothing, sleep deprivation, and slapping, similar to those used in SERE training to teach U.S. personnel to resist abusive interrogations.

 Leading lawyer calls for Rumsfeld prosecution

John Byrne
Published: Friday December 12, 2008

The President of the legal nonprofit Center for Constitutional Rights, Michael Ratner, has resumed calls for a formal prosecution of ex-Bush Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld following revelations by a Congressional report that Rumsfeld was to blame for the Pentagon's policy allowing torture.

In a statement, he said that the report reaffirms findings he spelled out in his book published this September, The Trial of Donald Rumsfeld: A Prosecution. Ratner's group was the first to volunteer an attorney to meet with one of the CIA's "ghost detainees."

"The Committee's report reaffirms that high-ranking administration officials, including Donald Rumsfeld, were directly responsible for the abuse and torture of detainees in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan," Ratner said in a statement to RAW STORY. "The brutal interrogation techniques used on our clients and many others were carried out despite well-documented opposition from military lawyers and others concerned by the illegality and ineffectiveness of the techniques."

"There is no question that Rumsfeld and the others must be held individually accountable, and it must be before a court of law. There must be consequences for their illegal activities," he said. "A special prosecutor should be appointed. To do otherwise is to send a message of impunity that will only embolden future administrations to again engage in serious violations of the law."

photo: Hiromi Yasui for The New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/us/10gitmo.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

CVillarreal's Blog, DECEMBER 5, 2008

http://open.salon.com/content.php?cid=56956

 

The National Lawyers Guild San Francisco Bay Area Chapter, the organization I work for, has asked the University of California to "initiate an investigation into whether Professor Yoo's 'outside professional conduct,' as an attorney of the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, violated the Faculty Code of Conduct as set out in the University of California Academic Personnel Manual (Section 015)." The University, through a statement written by Law School Dean Edley, a letter written by Chancellor Birgeneau, and a statement by a University spokesperson, has refused to do so misstating University regulations and the need for a criminal conviction (and possibly even jail time) before they can move forward with any sort of disciplinary action. Such a policy would be illogical; which is probably why it really is not the policy at all.

As our letter to the University points out, the UC Academic Personnel Manual's Faculty Code of Conduct "specifically identifies outside professional conduct that can lead to formal investigation. While it includes violations of the law resulting in convictions, the list of unacceptable faculty conduct it enumerates is specifically noted as 'not exhaustive.'" So there is no need to wait for a criminal conviction before the University takes action. 

Seems like a yes or no question, but John Yoo visibly struggled on an answer.

House Judiciary Subcommittee Hearing on Detainee Interrogation, June 26, 2008

"The Bill of Rights Defense Committee joins with the Berkeley Peace and Justice Coalition, as well as many concerned citizens and other activist organizations, in condemning the use or authorization of torture (or "enhanced interrogation techniques") by any U.S. official.  Torture, degradation, and inhumane treatment of prisoners are unconstitutional, violate international treaties which the U.S. has signed, and betray the values and ideals that define this country.

We now know that John Yoo, Professor of Law at Boalt Hall School of Law in Berkeley, California and former legal advisor to the White House, along with other legal advisors, counseled the Bush administration on how to use torture and other unconstitutional and inhumane interrogation techniques without legal consequences.  BORDC supports the resolution introduced to the Berkeley City Council by the Berkeley Peace and Justice Coalition, which calls on the City Council to hold John Yoo accountable for his actions.  The passage of this resolution would be an important step toward rebuilding the international reputation of the U.S. and restoring Americans' faith in their government."

Berkeley City Council to Consider Urging Prosecution of John Yoo

Support the Peace and Justice Commission Recommendation that the Berkeley City Council adopt the following resolution:

HOPE IS DYING...  

By Marjorie Cohn, Jurist Legal News and Research. Posted November 29, 2008.

Since the Bush administration began transporting men and boys to Guantánamo Bay in January 2002, it has tried to prevent them from presenting their cases before a neutral federal judge. Indeed, the naval base was turned into a prison camp precisely to keep the detainees away from impartial courts. The government argued that federal courts had no jurisdiction over men detained on Cuban soil. Twice, the Supreme Court rejected that argument, finding that the United States exercises complete jurisdiction and control over the Guantánamo Bay base.

Finally, on November 20, in a stunning development, U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Leon ordered the government to release five Guantánamo Bay detainees "forthwith." Finding that the government failed to prove the men were "enemy combatants," the judge, in a rare comment, urged senior government leaders not to appeal his ruling. 

"Seven years of waiting for a legal system to give them an answer ... in my judgment is more than enough," he said.
 

The five detainees the judge ordered released are Lakhdar Boumediene, Mustafa Ait Idir, Hadj Boudella, Saber Lahmar and Mohammed Nechla. Judge Leon did, however, find that a sixth detainee, Belkacem Bensayah, was properly classified an enemy combatant...

http://www.alternet.org/rights/109083/