Yoo and Bybee get hands slapped by Obama Justice_Part of his "reflection, not retribution" policy

[bigtree]

Saturday 20 February 2010 01.06 GMT

An inquiry by the US justice department last night reprimanded two senior Bush era lawyers who approved the use of torture at Guantánamo Bay. The department found the two lawyers, John Yoo and Jay Bybee, guilty of poor judgment but not professional misconduct.

The lawyers wrote controversial memorandums dating from 2002 after the 9/11 attacks that provided legal cover for the CIA to use torture and other harsh interrogation techniques. The conclusion of the report, which marks a significant softening of the original draft, will disappoint human rights organisations. Publication of the report has been delayed for months amid fierce internal debate. If the two had been found guilty of professional misconduct, it would have had consequences for their immediate careers and opened the way for legal challenges.

The techniques approved by the lawyers included waterboarding, which Barack Obama has described as torture but the former vice-president, Dick Cheney, insisted was not. Detainees accused of the 9/11 attacks such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were repeatedly subjected to waterboarding. Harsh techniques were used against others picked up in Afghanistan and Pakistan and taken to Guantánamo.

The assistant attorney-general, Ronald Weich, found the two lawyers "exercised poor judgment in connection with the drafting of the pertinent memoranda". No disciplinary action is to be taken.

Weich said poor judgment "differs from professional misconduct in that an attorney may act inappropriately and thus exhibit poor judgment even though he or she may not have violated or acted in reckless disregard of a clear obligation or standard". Yoo is a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and Bybee is a federal appeals court judge.

The Obama administration is reluctant to reopen the row over waterboarding and Obama last year ruled against prosecution of CIA agents involved in torture techniques. He said it was a "time for reflection, not retribution".Other techniques that were approved included walling (in which the suspect could be pushed into a wall), wall standing, and sleep deprivation.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/20/lawyers-who-approved-torture-cleared

[FiveGoodMen]

1. Change that was an utter lie from the word go.

[Subdivisions]

2. No one will ever be held responsible for torture by the United States. n/t

[bigtree]

3. I wonder if this ruling completely wipes out the possibility of civil action?

. . . using the standard of involvement and responsibility?

[totodeinhere]

5. Someone can try civil action. But that route cannot land them in jail where they belong. n/t

[Subdivisions]

8. I often wonder why they aren't pursued by international courts. But, then,

I am not familiar with how that would work, or not.

[Moochy]

9. Looking Forward and Moving Ahead

Since these 'Crimes' have taken place in the past.... that breaks the jingoistic narrative, so therefore it would be a tantamount to ceding the 2012 election to Sarah Palin if Obama dared hold anyone accountable. :patriot:

[Subdivisions]

15. Everyone who has ever been charged and convicted of a crime

committed their crime in the past. It's infuriating that nothing is being done.

[Moochy]

18. Infuriating

It's infuriating that we expected anything remotely resembling Justice or accountability from this administration. This is just like in the Siegelman case, the plan for continued policy of indefinite detentions... Sadly the list goes on.

[Kaleva]

19. There wasn't much public support for such...

so this ought not be a surprise.

[totodeinhere]

4. I knew those guys would skate.

But I still think that the main reason why the Obama Justice Department is letting them off is because they don't want some future administration to go after them for doing similar things.

[bigtree]

6. It all comes down to who is advising him at Justice

. . . and what 'career' Justice officials were allowed to remain to clean up their past transgressions and crimes.

[roguevalley]

7. it all comes down to him. he's a law professor. he has no excuse

in not knowing what is what and the long term effects. he's even worse than bush for me right now because he was supposed to be different and he isn't.

[depakid]

11. Worse than no excuse- an affirmative duty

I agree, worse than Bush in this regard, and based on the record of the Justice Department in many other areas- FAR WORSE objectively on the record than Bush I.

[roguevalley]

14. agreed. people had their hearts on their sleeves when they elected him. they

believed in him. I did. This moves me to despair.

[Vidar]

10. Wimpy, wimpy, wimpy!

[tekisui]

12. Sick.

[asdjrocky]

13. Shameless or shameful, I'm not sure which.

Again, show me justice in America.

[Solly Mack]

16. Sick country.

[Imagevision]

17. My "Hope" is beginning to dwindle...

[Marr]

20. People don't like to see it, but there is no law for the country's small handful of owners.

It's little different from an aristocracy, really. The reason these men aren't prosecuted is because they served the small clique that owns the country. That's all.

[Moochy]

21. And the rest is an Illusion

The ones for whom the illusions are neccessary are the elites.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessary_Illusions

As a genre of political thought, parallels exist between Niebuhr's "necessary illusions" and the "noble lies" of Leo Strauss, "public relations" of Edward Bernays and "myth making" of Niccolò Machiavelli. Likewise, Chomsky's analyses in Necessary Illusions represent a refocus on the use of these patterns of power, which he implies to underscore the failure of populations - particularly in a representative democracy - to learn from history in this regard.