Tag: petition for a special prosecutor

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One of the big changes in my thinking over the last couple of years has been to begin to see the depths to which US exceptionalism has been embedded in most of our thinking in this country. I owe that awareness to several people who have helped me get a glimpse of my own exceptionalist thinking. But no one more than a dear soul whose blogging name was Ductapefatwa. Most of us who blogged with him think he has moved on from this world as we know it. But thanks to the internet, alot of his writing remains. I wouldn’t advise clicking through that link if you’re faint-hearted about reading someone who is sure to both make you laugh and trip a certain amount of rage.

Ductapefatwa had a way of communicating that got under your skin. It made you uncomfortable. And many people disliked (some even hated) him for that. I know that’s how I felt initially. And then I began to sit back and listen. It changed me. That happened mostly because he had a knack for showing us what we, US citizens, look like from the viewpoint of the people we condemn, invade, torture, etc. And its not a pretty sight. You see, we can blame Bushco all we want…and they do need to be held accountable. But what Ductapefatwa did so well is show us that its not just Bushco – this kind of thing has been going on for a very long time – and if we are ever going to really stop it, we are going to have to grapple with our own understanding of ourselves as a people and as a nation.

As we glance through the headlines of our busy world and see all of the places where humans are killing, torturing, discriminating against and hating each other, we see that they all have one common factor: Humans acting like humans.

But are they?

Or are they acting more like the animals that humans once were, the animals that we are descended from?

Throughout the centuries and millennia of recorded human history, we as humans have struggled with this reality. We have the capacity to be so much more than just animal-like creatures behaving in the animal-like programmed behavior of instinct. This behavior is in many ways the raison d’etre of religion, of philosophy, of the quest for ‘civilization’ itself. But still to this day, all of these millenia later, we still quite often act as savages, as beasts, we act and especially react in thrall to our lower instincts and motivations. I. Me. Mine. Eye for an Eye. THEY started it.

We see it everywhere, from children playing to great nation-states clashing, nation states bullying or invading smaller nation states….and so often it ends in hurt, or blood. And then come the justifications for the blood. And then the justifications for revenge. And then more blood.

Religion at its best seeks to provide a moral code, ethical and behavioral guidelines, in the attempt to lift us above this savage behavior. Religion at its worst is far to often the cause of the very behavior it proscribes. Thou shalt not kill. Except in the name of Religion.

However, humans have also invented another code for dealing with our lingering state of savagery, with our capacity for animal-like behavior…the legal code.

You’ve gotta love MSM reporters. “I do?“, you ask. “Why?“

Heh. Well, some of them anyway!

Image courtesy of: www.arimelber.com

Ari Melber is:

[…] a monthly columnist for Politico and […] a commentator on public affairs, Melber frequently speaks on national television and radio, including NBC, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Bloomberg News, FOX News, FOX Business, NPR and Air America, on programs including The Today Show, American Morning, Washington Journal, Power Lunch, The Live Desk, MSNBC Reports with David Shuster, The Ron Reagan Show and The Rachel Maddow Show, among others.

Melber has been a featured speaker in forums sponsored by the Yale Political Science Department; Harvard Law School, Kennedy School of Government at Harvard; The Park Center for Independent Media at Ithaca College, TimeWarner Summit; Campaign for America’s Future; Young Democrats of America; Cornell University Democrats; Columbia University Democrats; Democracy for America; New York’s Blogging Liberally; Personal Democracy Forum, [as well as] Netroots Nation and the YearlyKos netroots conventions.

[…] Melber’s writing has been widely cited by publications across the spectrum, such as the New York Times Magazine, The Week, The Washington Times, Slate, ABCNews.com, MSNBC.com, WashingtonPost.com, NYTimes.com, Economist.com, Wired.com, Wall Street Journal Online, National Review Online, American Conservative Online, Atlantic Monthly Online, American Spectator Online and Reason.com.

[…] his writing has also appeared in The Baltimore Sun, Philadelphia Daily News, New York Daily News, New York Post, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Forward, Huffington Post, CBSNews.com and The Stranger, among others. He was born and raised in Seattle, Washington, and received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

So Ari is an educated, smart, experienced and good reporter, and Ari gets around. So what, you ask? Big deal? Who cares? Who’s side is Ari on?

Well, Ari’s on our side. Ari now writes for The Nation.

And Ari has an article up yesterday on the front page of The Nation, an article that is also the lead article at Huffington Post on their “Eric Holder: Some news is so big it needs its own page” page.

Ari’s article at The Nation is titled: BREAKING: Ask Obama For a Torture Special Prosecutor. The HuffPo version is on the top of this page.

The second link in Ari’s opening paragraph is to the Docudharma/Democrats.com sponsored Citizens Petition for a Special Prosecutor, at Democrats com.

Obama promised that he would investigate and prosecute Bush team for “genuine crimes”  because no one is above the law, but he would not prosecute “really dumb policies.” Obama plans to have his AG review the available information to determine if investigations are needed.   Well, AG nominee Eric Holder knows that many crimes have been committed:

Our government authorized the use of torture, approved of secret electronic surveillance against American citizens, secretly detained American citizens without due process of law, denied the writ of habeas corpus to hundreds of accused enemy combatants and authorized the use of procedures that violate both international law and the United States Constitution…. We owe the American people a reckoning.

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Why should they get a fair trial?  Why should there be a special prosecutor who investigates thoroughly the torture of human beings that has been going on in our name?

One reason is because so many have not gotten a fair trial, both here in the USA and abroad.

David Swanson writes today…

Yes We Can Unpardon War Criminals

Dear President Elect Obama,

On his third day in office President Grant revoked two pardons that had been granted by President Andrew Johnson. President Nixon also undid a pardon that had been granted by President Lyndon Johnson. There may be other examples of this, as these two have somewhat accidentally come up in a discussion focused on numerous examples of presidents undoing pardons that they had themselves granted, something the current president did last week. (See http://pardonpower.com ). In 2001, President George W. Bush’s lawyers advised him that he could undo a pardon that President Clinton had granted.

Much of the discussion of this history of revoking pardons deals with the question of whether a pardon can still be revoked after actually reaching the hands of the pardonee, or after various other obscure lines are crossed in the process of issuing and enforcing of the pardon. If President Bush issues blanket pardons to dozens of criminals in his administration for crimes that he himself authorized, he will probably — with the exception of Libby — not even name them, much less initiate any processes through which they are each formally notified of the pardons. He will be pardoning people of crimes they have not yet been charged with, so the question of timing is something you are unlikely to have to worry about (except perhaps with Libby).

Virtually none of the discussion of these matters ever addresses the appropriateness or legitimacy of the pardons involved or of the revoking of them. The history would appear to establish that you will have the power to revoke Bush’s pardons. I want to stress that you will also have a moral responsibility to do so and a legal requirement to do so. Morally and legally, you have no choice in this matter. When you take the oath of office, you will be promising to faithfully execute the laws of the land. Through Article VI of our Constitution, the Geneva Conventions and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment are the supreme laws of this land. Those laws bind you to prosecute violations, including torture and other war crimes of which Bush, Cheney, and their subordinates are guilty and which Bush is likely to try to pardon.

Give Bush and Cheney a fair trial — something they have not bothered with since they stole office.

It’s funny how the powers that be in the media and government are running around with their big fat excuses as to why we can’t hold these criminals accountable for their crimes.  It all boils down to “It’s too hard!!!”

It’s too hard.  It would affect too many people.  It would interfere with the crucial work of restoring our economy.  Blah blah blah.  Not one of these folks say, however, that no crime has been committed, no law has been broken.  No one says that.

I find that stunning.  We all know, at least those of us who have been paying attention, that Bush and his crew of crooks have broken the law over and over again.

And Cheney says “What you gonna do about it?”  And Cheney says “oh, the Dems knew about this and approved it, hell they wanted us to be even tougher than we were!”

And we should believe Cheney … why?

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Both Greenwald and Booman have pieces up on torture. Which is of course the subject of The Citizens Petition: Special Prosecutor for Bush War Crimes. Both highlight the arguments FOR torture by folks who can only be classified as morally confused torture apologists, arguing that torture is necessary under certain circumstances. Booman, Greenwald and I all seem to think that War Crimes are called War Crimes for a reason, but these folks seem to be saying that War Crimes are okay under extreme conditions….such as… war.

Ignoring that the whole point of having a specific set of moral codes and treaties and laws dealing specifically with those circumstances exist, and have been violated. One is tempted to even go so fr as to call them Holocaust deniers, since it was after those terrible events that it became obvious that a clear set of laws was needed so that men in time of war were not lead into those same temptations.

The most cited excuse for torture is of course the (as far as we know) completely mythical Ticking Time Bomb Scenario. Wherein through some vast set of coincidences you have in custody someone who knows of an urgently imminent attack that will kill a theoretically unacceptable amount of hypothetical people and the only way to prevent there possible demise is to torture information out of the person who has been miraculously put in your power at just the right time. Mythical, because no one anywhere has ever pointed to a specific, verifiable situation where this far-fetched scenario has actually occurred.

Yet the torture apologists constantly harp on this scenario, ostensibly one must think, for the purpose of stretching this supposedly moral point to excuse ALL of the torture that has been done in our name.

Even though none of that torture fits the mythical scenario, and ignoring the fact that any human being tortured (as has been well documented in any serious study on torture) will tell the torturers whatever the hell they want to hear….to get the torture to stop. They will…gasp…lie or invent facts to satisfy the torturers.

But most incredibly, the torture apologists use the Ticking Time Bomb Scenario to argue against having laws and penalties for torture.

I would like to ask Mort Kondracke (the subject of Booman’s piece) one question: If you were the intelligence officer in question and could save these hypothetical thousands of lives…but had to break a law to do so and suffer the consequences of that law….if you were certain that torturing would prevent that terrible loss of life….would you NOT voluntarily suffer any and all legal consequence?

In other words…if you could save thousands of lives…but might have to go to jail for it, would you then decline to torture to get that information? Or is that hypothetical moral choice so unclear that a law to prevent the more ‘casual’ use of torture stop you from saving those lives?

That choice NEVER occurred.

But would you let the fact that others had been tried for torture in lesser circumstances dictate that moral choice for you?

That choice NEVER occurred.

And yet the Bush Administartion still developed and extensively used a huge, nearly industrial, network of secret prisons, rendition flights, and methods that are clearly and unequivocally recognized as torture. With FAR less motivation than any Ticking Time Bomb.

They should be tried and punished to the full extent of the law. And the only thing preventing that is the patently false and morally bankrupt excuses of the torture apologists.

John Odum had an interesting post up at OpenLeft yesterday. Good food for thought.

The Rise of the Angry Center?

Odum, December 23, 2008, OpenLeft

This will be a short essay. I just watched the first episode of the video Edger talks about in his essay: Torturing Democracy. I hope everyone will watch it. Its hard, but provides a powerful reminder of why this petition drive is so important.

While I was watching, I remembered that last year a book was published titled Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak. One of the poems by Jumah Al Dossari was reprinted in the Boston Globe. Here’s some information about the author.

Jumah al Dossari, a 33-year-old Bahraini national, is the father of a young daughter. He has been held at Guantánamo Bay for more than five years. Detained without charge or trial, Dossari has been subjected to a range of physical and psychological abuses, some of which are detailed in “Inside the Wire,” an account of the Guantánamo prison by former military intelligence soldier Erik Saar. He has been held in solitary confinement since the end of 2003 and, according to the US military, has tried to kill himself 12 times while in the prison. On one occasion, he was found by his lawyer, hanging by his neck and bleeding from a gash to his arm.

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“The Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendements to the Constitution of the United States prohibit cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment.“

With that sentence begins the documentary film “Torturing Democracy“, a documentary to be aired on PBS television stations nationwide on January 21st, 2009, one day after President Bush leaves office.

One day after President Bush leaves office will be the first day of President-Elect Barack Obama’s new administration.

Between today and that day, we have a date with Attorney General-Designate Eric Holder and President-Elect Barack Obama. Everyday.

As netizens reading this at the founding site of the Citizens Petition for a Special Prosecutor to Investigate and Prosecute Bush War Crimes we have a date every day with those two men as we work to generate as many signatures to the petition that we can possibly generate to bring the war criminals in the Bush administration to justice. Principally Mr. Bush himself, Vice President Richard Cheney, and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. They were the leaders. The instigators. And the approvers. But there are many others as well, and they all deserve fair trials. it is the very least we can do for them, and for the world.

These crimes are being euphemistically referred to as “abusive interrogation techniques” by such respected figures as Senator John McCain. These are euphemisms for torture. Torture is a War Crime. Waterboarding is a War Crime. The CIA has admitted waterboarding detainees. Recently, Vice President Cheney has brazenly admitted authorizing the program that led to waterboarding, other forms of torture too numerous to list, and ultimately, the deaths by homicide of detainees.

As is often the case, we are because of our insatiable interest, curiosity and determination to be as well informed as we can be, much farther ahead of the millions of people who will see Torturing Democracy on January 21st, 2009.

Before the PBS broadcast the documentary in its entirety can be viewed at TorturingDemocracy.org

The following video is the first eight and a half minutes of the full documentary. Watch the rest at the link above.

Torturing Democracy