Saxby, You're Torturing Me

This blog has been idle lately. I'm going to post things that I write for other reasons just to keep it lively. I need to get a good print out of this illustration to send along with my letter to Senator Chambliss.


Dear Senator Chambliss,

I read your Friday email newsletter and I have a few comments for you about the torture memo section. It is not clear what you stand for. On the one had you say that the Bush Administration should be embarrassed by the release of these memos, thus acknowledging that it did something wrong for which America too should be ashamed. On the other hand, you apparently do not want to know what that wrong was. I am troubled that you, my representative in Washington, oppose investigating probable lawbreaking and wrong doing. Let me walk us through your message.

Last Thursday, the administration released memos on interrogation techniques used to obtain information from those who seek to destroy our way of life.

First, I do not accept your issue framing. This was not interrogation. It was torture. During World War II Japanese soldiers waterboarded American troops. After the war these enemies were tried for their torture. Either these Japanese lawfully tortured American troops and were wrongly convicted of war crimes, or the US government was wrong and unlawfully tortured suspected terrorist prisoners. Both cannot be right. Your colleague Senator McCain was tortured by his Vietnamese captors to obtain information about the American military in Vietnam. I do not think these Vietnamese who were seeking to preserve their way of life were justified in torturing Senator McCain, just as I do not think that the US government was justified in torturing its prisoners.

If you agree torturing Americans in Japan and Vietnam was wrong, then you must also agree that Americans torturing their prisoners is wrong. Earlier in this same newsletter you described your recent visit with US troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. If Americans torturing prisoners is acceptable then you must have let our troops know that when they are captured by an enemy you fully support that enemy's legal right to torture them.

It seems that this administration looks for every opportunity they can to seek to embarrass the previous administration.

President Obama is not responsible for President Bush's actions, thus he cannot embarrass President Bush. Only President Bush can embarrass himself. In order to be embarrassed he would have to be ashamed of his own behavior. I agree that the Bush administration should be embarrassed and ashamed. I am embarrassed and ashamed that my President authorized torture. I am also embarrassed and ashamed that my Senator does not want to investigate and if appropriate punish these unlawful acts. We all should be embarrassed that the Bush administration authorized torturing prisoners.

I think this is one time they really overstepped their bounds.

Senator, did you just call the President uppity? You and I have lived in Georgia long enough to understand racial code words. Now I don't think that you are a racist, but we both know that we have more than a few racists here in Georgia. Your word choice seems to intentionally call out to those people who oppose President Obama because they think that a black man getting himself elected president is "overstepping his bounds." Appealing to coarse racism is not a substantive policy debate.

The president has a legal duty to classify only those documents that must be secret and to permit the release of all others. Sometimes that means releasing politically embarrassing documents. But that is the whole reason for having an open government. When the executive knows that he cannot keep secret his mistakes he will try harder to run the government competently and not do things that are embarrassing

Barack Obama is the president. And just as George W. Bush had the authority to classify Executive branch information when he was the president, President Obama has the authority to classify, or declassify, information as he sees fit. If the previous administration wrongly classified the memos, or the President determined that whatever reason to classify them in the first place no longer exists, then he has the Constitutional power to declassify them. What bounds exactly are you suggesting that the President overstepped? It must either be Constitutional or statutory, so please cite exactly what law you accuse him of breaking. Otherwise, it is quite clear you used this phrase as an appeal to race.

Georgians from across the state have told me they believe we should be able to get information from these individuals and, while we don’t want to see them tortured, we do think that measures – extreme measures – need to be taken in some situations to get information.

Whatever Georgians happen to believe, torture is illegal and 24 is not a documentary. President Bush on a number of occasions said to the country that we do not torture. Apparently he was lying. We have a large number of law enforcement professionals in this country who can obtain important information from suspects without torturing them. When you suggest that only torture can obtain important information you demean competent, successful law enforcement professionals.

And let's not forget – and the American people haven't forgotten this, but I think the Congressional Democrats have – that we have not suffered another domestic attack since September 11th. 

What about the Anthrax attacks on Capitol Hill in November 2001? Your statement cannot prove whether torturing prisoners had anything to do with attacks in America. Further, there were no attacks following the first bombing of the World Trade Center until September 2001. President Clinton's administration used standard lawful intelligence and interrogation methods, caught the suspects, tried, convicted, and jailed them. The same is true of the terrorist bombing in Oklahoma City. Again, found, tried, and convicted without torture. Finally, it is well reported that the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib was a significant recruiting tool for more terrorists in the middle east to come and fight against the US. It just is not true that torturing prisoners has in any way made us safer. If President Bush had heeded the advice of President Clinton, that it was al Qaeda and not Iraq that was the threat, then possibly the September 11 attack would not have occurred. Certainly it is arguable that President Bush's actions made us all a lot less safe.

So whatever the previous administration did under the guise of the legal opinions that the Justice Department issued, it has worked. And the American people have a great appreciation for that.

Again, lack of attacks in the US proves nothing, you merely assert without evidence that torture makes us safer. We will see what the American people think as we learn further details of the Bush Administration's torture policy. Senator, we have both been to law school and we have both read those memos. Do you truly believe that these memos contain the sound legal reasoning that is the duty of a lawyer to provide to a client? In my view these memos reach the result that the White House wanted, without providing the appropriate contrary authority that allows the client to fully understand the state of the law.

As a member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, I believe there are some things that, when you operate in the cloak-and- dagger world of the intelligence community, need to remain within the intelligence community.

I agree that gathering intelligence often requires secrecy so that possible enemies do not know who our spies are. For example, Valerie Plame was a CIA spy whose identity was made public by Scooter Libby, an official in the Bush Administration. Did President Bush "overstep his bounds" when he commuted Libby's sentence? Many reports suggest that Vice President Dick Cheney played a key role in publicly outing the identity of this US spy because her husband correctly predicted that there were no WMDs in Iraq. So yes, if you want to protect cloak and dagger activities, you should see if you can further investigate the public outing of Ms. Plame and Vice President Cheney's role in disclosing the identity of a spy. Illegal activities such as outing a US spy to the world or torturing prisoners should not go unpunished. If the previous administration tortured prisoners it broke the law. Do you support the rule of law?

I think it's unfortunate that those memos were turned over to the press.

I do not think it correct to say "turned over to the press." The memos were made public so that we citizens can see what our government was doing for the past eight years. It is only unfortunate if you believe that the executive is accountable to neither the people nor the legislature. I suspect that now that a Democrat has been elected president you will find it fashionable to exercise Congressional oversight of the executive branch. Of course I am not opposed to real oversight of a Democratic president but you first need to prove your sincerity to true oversight by fully investigating these highly credible allegations of lawbreaking by the previous administration.

Very troubling recent reports of the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed say that he was tortured not for intelligence information but for political purposes. As you know, he was waterboarded 183 times in one month in 2002. The purpose of this torture, apparently, was to have him "confess" that Iraq was behind the September 11 attacks, thus giving the Bush administration reason to attack Iraq. As we all know know, Iraq had nothing to do with September 11, had no WMDs, and poised no threat to the United States, yet we attacked anyway. If anything, this should be evidence to demonstrate that even if torture were not illegal and morally wrong, it is also ineffective at finding the truth.

Finally, do you want to know whether the purpose of the Bush Administration's torturing these prisoners was to construct false evidence that Iraq was behind the September 11 attacks? I do.