Flashback: The Bush Administration Knew It was Torture

Just compiling notes for the book and came across this account from Alberto Mora, who was General Counsel for the United States Navy in the Bush Administration, of a conversation with John Yoo of the White House Office of Legal Counsel:

On February 6th [2003], Mora invited Yoo to his office, in the Pentagon, to discuss the opinion. Mora asked him, “Are you saying the President has the authority to order torture?”

“Yes,” Yoo replied.

“I don’t think so,” Mora said.

“I’m not talking policy,” Yoo said. “I’m just talking about the law.”

“Well, where are we going to have the policy discussion, then?” Mora asked.

...Yoo replied that he didn’t know; maybe, he suggested, it would take place inside the Pentagon, where the defense-policy experts were.

The draft [Pentagon] working-group report noted that the Uniform Code of Military Justice barred “maltreatment” but said, “Legal doctrine could render specific conduct, otherwise criminal, not unlawful.” In an echo of the Torture Memo, it also declared that interrogators could be found guilty of torture only if their “specific intent” was to inflict “severe physical pain or suffering” as evidenced by “prolonged mental harm.” Even then, it said, echoing Yoo, the Commander-in-Chief could order torture if it was a military necessity: “Congress may no more regulate the President’s ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield.”

Comments

[Craig Smith]

Yoo says the President can legally torture any "enemy combatant" without "regulation" from Congress.

President Bush declared he and he alone had authority to declare who is and who is not an "enemy combatant" (a term unheard-of prior to the last administration).

Bush declared Jose Pedilla, an American citizen, an "enemy combatant", and he was imprisoned without charge or access to counsel or contact with family, and presumably with the authority to have him tortured.

Therefore, if Yoo is correct, the U.S. President has the authority to arrest, imprison, and torture ANY U.S. citizen, without legal charges, without access to counsel, or right of habeas corpus (from Magna Carta).

And of course, if the President considered it a "military necessity", he could apparently apply this process to anyone who publicly argues that he has no authority to do this, including Congressmen and Senators.

And so, Yoo effectively argues that the President's authority supersedes Congress, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and Magna Carta.

What the hell? Didn't we fight a revolution over this?

And where was the outrage from the people, the media and the pundits, when this was going on?

Arbitrary arrest, imprisonment, and torture were fine, but let the Fed take-over parts of a failing banking system (as has been done before, and as the U.S. has urged other countries to do [Japan in 1990]) and people throw tea into rivers.

[craig smith]

Oops: that's "Padilla", not "Pedilla".