04-19-09
- Return to the Rule of Law and Legal Accountability:
- Overlords of US Torture Must Be Punished (independent/uk) "If, there or here, evidence points to high level, unpalatable, unethical and possibly criminal advice, the conductors should be called to public account."
- Mr. President, War Crimes Must Be Investigated (common dreams) "First, the men who wrote those memos should be investigated for disbarment. They acted in ways that are unconscionable and unprofessional, to put it mildly. Second,, neither the President nor Congress should investigate these crimes. They must be pursued by a special independent investigator who has no political ax to grind. Now you may well ask, who approves of torture? Well, hardly anyone, except those in the Bush administration who justified or directed these war crimes. Third, how can we allow a sitting federal judge to remain on the bench--for life-- when he provided legal justification for torture? I speak here, of course, of Stephen L. Bybee, who should resign or be impeached."
- The New York Times today called for the impeachment of Jay Bybee (nytimes) "Until Americans and their leaders fully understand the rules the Bush administration concocted to justify such abuses — and who set the rules and who approved them — there is no hope of fixing a profoundly broken system of justice and ensuring that that these acts are never repeated. . . . After eight years without transparency or accountability, Mr. Obama promised the American people both. His decision to release these memos was another sign of his commitment to transparency. We are waiting to see an equal commitment to accountability."
- UN Rapporteur On Torture: Obama’s Pledge Not To Pursue Torture Prosecutions At CIA Is Not Legal (thinkprogress) "The United States has, like all other Contracting Parties to the UN Convention Against Torture, committed itself to investigate instances of torture and to prosecute all cases in which credible evidence of torture is found."
- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in one month (thinkprogress) "The CIA wants you to believe waterboarding is effective. Yet somehow, it took them 183 applications of the waterboard in a one month period to get what they claimed was cooperation out of KSM. That doesn’t sound very effective to me"
- View Near a Black Hole (apod) -- This one looks like Israel to me. A fair representation of conservative Israeli government ambitions in the region -- and, it's insatiable hunger for U.S. aid, congressional support, and U.S. armaments with which to kill non-Jewish non-combatants (oh, along with a comparatively very few real combatants).
