Iraq-Torture Scandal

Mike Stark has posted videos here.

David Swanson, Mark Lane, Ray McGovern, Debra Sweet, Mike Ferner, Susan Harman, Ann Wright, Shahid Buttar, and Cindy Sheehan speak at protest of war and of John Yoo at the University of Virginia on March 19, 2010. Four videos:

http://lawsnotmen.org/node/23

The Robert Jackson Steering Committee, a group of lawyers and journalists founded to uphold the principles of the Nuremberg Trials, is urging the Department of Justice to proceed with trying Khalil Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) and other suspected 9/11 terrorists in federal criminal court, and not in military commissions.

In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, the Committee enumerates several substantial problems with military commissions:

By David Swanson

As John Yoo's visit to Mr. Jefferson's university here in Charlottesville approaches, one is tempted to ask the same question people around here ask about everything: WWJD? What would Jefferson do?

Of course, it's almost taboo among the most serious peace and justice advocates to cite positive precedents from Jefferson, because he was a slave owner. But Jefferson's views on the structure of a government don't actually become less admirable (or more) when we remember the horrors he inflicted on the people at Monticello.

By David Swanson

Everything you're reading about torture lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee getting off the hook is wrong. They are not torture lawyers, they are not off the hook, there never was any hook, they may not be lawyers for long, impeachment and indictment are on the agenda, and you have a role to play.

An Appeal on "Closing Gitmo"

Given that human rights organizations and activist groups want rights restored, not abuses moved from one location to another,

Given that said organizations are independent of and not legally bound in subservience to the Democratic Party,

Given that the funding to close Gitmo and move that particular illegal death camp to Illinois will be included in the "emergency war supplemental",

Given that this will likely lead all the Republicans in the House to vote No on $33 billion for wars, wars that involve murder and torture and lawless imprisonment, all on a larger scale than what happens at Gitmo,

Given that we then need only 40 Democrats to vote No to block the war funding,

Given that with the resources of human rights groups for once turned against the supreme international crime of aggressive war we could win over 40 Democrats,

By Dave Lindorff

So much for economic “green shoots.”

The Obama administration and the Federal Reserve, along with the servile corporate media, have been quick to grasp at and trumpet every little suggestion that things might be improving, as they did when the Labor Dept. announced last week that new unemployment claims had dropped to “just” 434,000, from a high of 684,000 in the week ended March 28 or last year.

Or when the Commerce Dept. reported last month that November housing starts had risen by 8.9% compared to the prior month.

An organization of attorneys, journalists, and advocates today filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act requesting the long-suppressed report from the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) regarding the conduct of President Bush's top lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel who authored memos purporting to authorize torture and aggressive war.

The request, reproduced below along with a transmittal letter, asks for the OPR report that has long been promised by Attorney General Eric Holder, as well as an earlier OPR report completed during the last months of the Bush administration. The request also seeks the 10 page rebuttal of the 2008 report by then- Attorney General Michael Mukasey.

John Yoo at UVA
By David Swanson

Noted war criminal and torture lawyer John Yoo is scheduled to speak at UVA law school on March 19, 2010.

The day we go into year eight in the illegal occupation of Iraq that Yoo and Jay Bybee provided "legal" justification for, this "legalizer" of torture and other war crimes will be speaking at a law school, our law school, in our town.

John Yoo is a Professor of Law at Boalt Hall School of Law in Berkeley, California. I've joined in protests at his home at 1241 Grizzly Peak Blvd., Berkeley.

He is a lawyer with the Pennsylvania bar from which he should be disbarred and would be if enough people demanded it. Support: DisbarTortureLawyers.org.

Yoo counseled the White House on how to get away with war crimes, wrote this memo promoting presidential power to launch aggressive war, and claimed the power to decree that the federal statutes against torture, assault, maiming, and stalking do not apply to the military in the conduct of war, and to announce a new definition of torture limiting it to acts causing intense pain or suffering equivalent to pain associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure or permanent damage resulting in loss of significant body functions will likely result.

Yoo claimed in 2005 that a president has the right to enhance an interrogation by crushing the testicles of someone's child.

Yoo has been confronted in his classroom: video, and again confronted in the classroom.

He should not imagine he can seek shelter from protests of his open criminality by coming to lecture at the University of Virginia.

Yoo this week told the New York Times that he had worked, not for the law, but for his "client" the president, and that he had no regrets about pretending to legalize torture.

Let's change that.

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PS: The next day, March 20, I'll be speaking on a panel at the Va Festival of the Book.