US exonerates authors of Bush torture memos

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US exonerates authors of Bush torture memos
2 February 2010

Bush administration lawyers whose secret memos justified waterboarding
and other forms of torture will not be referred to authorities for
possible sanctions, according to a forthcoming ethics report.

Unnamed sources who spoke to Newsweek magazine said the Obama Justice
Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) has concluded
that John Yoo and Jay Bybee, who penned the infamous memos, used “poor
judgment” but will not be subject to disciplinary action. Yoo and
Bybee worked in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel,
along with Steven Bradbury, who is also named in the report.

The conclusions of the OPR report provide yet another demonstration of
President Barack Obama’s defense of the anti-democratic and criminal
practices of the Bush administration in the “war on terror,” and the
current administration’s resolve that no one—especially those at the
highest levels of government—will be held to account.

An earlier version of the OPR report completed in December 2008
concluded that Yoo, presently a University of California at Berkeley
law professor, and Bybee, now a federal appeals court judge on the 9th
Circuit, violated professional standards when they drafted an August
2002 legal opinion authorizing brutal methods by the CIA in the
interrogation of suspected terrorist detainees.

The OPR recommended referral of their cases to state bar associations,
which could have revoked their law licenses. Bybee also could have
faced an impeachment inquiry before Congress. However, under a new
review of the OPR report ordered by Attorney General Eric Holder
shortly after he took charge of the Justice Department, the two will
not face even these weak sanctions.

In early 2009, the Obama Justice Department began to water down the
conclusions of the OPR probe, which was initiated in mid-2004 during
the Bush administration following disagreements between the Office of
Legal Counsel and White House lawyers over the Bush administration’s
defense of “enhanced interrogation” techniques justified by the
Yoo-Bybee opinions.

David Margolis, a 34-year career prosecutor at the Justice Department,
was eventually tasked by Holder with reviewing the final version of
the OPR report. It was reportedly Margolis who downgraded the report’s
initial findings against Yoo and Bybee from “professional misconduct”
to “poor judgment.”

As recently as December, Obama administration lawyers under the
direction of Holder supported the dismissal of a case brought against
Yoo by Jose Padilla, the US citizen held incommunicado and tortured
for more than two years after his arrest at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport.

Earlier last year, Obama administration attorneys supported the
dismissal of suits brought by a wide range of victims, including those
subject to “extraordinary rendition,” targets of government
eavesdropping, and detainees transported from the Middle East to US
military bases in Afghanistan.

The Justice Department’s defense of Yoo and Bybee testifies to the
Obama administration’s continuation of the police-state structures
developed under Bush. The memos drafted by Yoo, Bybee and Bradbury
were solicited by the Bush White House to provide pseudo-legal
justification for systematic torture that was already being carried
out by CIA interrogators.

The memos made the gruesome and legally absurd argument that “enhanced
interrogation techniques” such as waterboarding, threats of death,
sleep deprivation, extreme variations of temperature, and the use of
psychotropic drugs do not rise to the level of torture unless they
inflict pain equivalent to “major organ failure” or death.

Since authoring the memos, Yoo has gone on to write three books in
which he defends his doctrine that the president as the “commander in
chief” in wartime possesses unlimited powers, including the right to
authorize torture and other illegal acts. In one of his August 2002
memos, he asserted that CIA agents accused of torturing Al Qaeda
suspects could claim they were acting in “self-defense” to prevent
future terror attacks.

Newsweek notes that the OPR report is “sharply critical” of the “legal
reasoning used to justify waterboarding”’ and other torture methods
used by CIA interrogators after September 11, and that it will provide
“many new details about how waterboarding was adopted and the role
that top White House officials played in the process.”

This is, however, merely window dressing for a cover-up of war crimes
and crimes against the democratic rights of the American people and
tacit sanction for the continuation of such practices. Obama has
frequently touted his “ban” on torture, but this remains an empty and
cynical gesture under conditions where the government protects former
government officials who authorized these crimes.

There are two major reasons why the Obama administration continues to
block any prosecution of those responsible for authorizing torture.
First, the Democratic Party is complicit in the crimes of the Bush
administration. Democratic congressional leaders were briefed by Bush
officials on the torture practices and violations of democratic rights
and international law, and supported them.

Second, such policies continue under the current administration.

One year after assuming office, Obama has broken his pledge to close
the Guantanamo detention camp and blocked suits by Guantanamo
detainees challenging their detention. He has explicitly defended the
Bush administration policies of indefinite detention, extraordinary
rendition, and military tribunals. The US military prison at Bagram
Air Base in Afghanistan continues to hold hundreds of prisoners,
without charge or trial, under barbaric conditions.

Obama is going one step further than Bush by seeking to establish a
military prison in Illinois where prisoners will be held indefinitely
without charge or trial and subjected to treatment defined by
international and US law as torture. He is thereby institutionalizing
on US soil the illegal, police-state methods improvised by Bush.

Obama has moreover upheld the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war, with
Yemen becoming the latest target of US threats, along with Iran.

The administration’s de facto support for John Yoo and his torture
memo accomplices is of a piece with these policies, which are
supported by both big business parties. Under conditions of expanding
militarism abroad and deepening social inequality at home, there is no
section of the political establishment committed to the defense of
democratic rights.

Democratic rights can be defended only through the independent
mobilization of the working class against the Obama administration,
the Democrats and Republicans, and the capitalist system which is the
source of war and repression.

Kate Randall

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/feb2010/pers-f02.shtml

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