Cheney Denied Torture Docs By Bush

Stephen Hayes of the Weakly Low Standard broke the story this afternoon that Dick Cheney's request to declassify two reports that he says validates torture was denied. Here is how Hayes characterized the denial.

Although Obama decided yesterday to block the public release of photos depicting prisoner abuse, he has promised to run the most transparent administration in history. The day after he took office, Obama issued a memorandum for executive branch departments and agencies.

He proclaimed: “The Freedom of Information Act should be administered with a clear presumption: In the face of doubt, openness prevails. The Government should not keep information confidential merely because public officials might be embarrassed by disclosure, because errors and failures might be revealed, or because of speculative or abstract fears…All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open Government. The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.”

A senior Bush administration official points to the irony of Obama administration’s position -- using a FOIA technicality to block the public disclosure of information.

“So, because Amnesty International has filed a broad FOIA request for detainee related materials, the American people are unable to see memos that document the effectiveness of our detainee program. Wouldn’t the legal memos previously released also, presumably, have been subject to this FOIA? Why wasn’t their release blocked under the same provision?”

Now mind you Stephen Hayes starts off his post referring to the rejection letter. However he doesn't allow his readers to see the actual letter. Well a REAL journalist, Greg Sargent, actually posted the contents of the letter. Here is the pertinent passage.

As you are aware, a request for Mandatory Declassification Review is governed by Executive Order 12958, as amended, which was signed and executed by the President on March 25, 2003. Under section 3.5.(a)(3) of that Executive Order, a document is excluded from Mandatory Declassification Review if that document contains information that is the subject of pending litigation. This provision ensures that the Mandatory Declassification Review process is not used to disrupt simultaneous litigation proceedings that are already pending. In researching the information in question, we have discovered that it is currently the subject of pending FOIA litigation (Bloche v. Department of Defense, Amnesty International v. Central Intelligence Agency). Therefore, the requested document, which contains this information, is excluded from Mandatory Declassification Review.

What that means, obviously, is that President Bush actually the one who signed the Executive Order in 2003 that does not allow the CIA to declassify the reports that Dick Cheney is requesting. Basically, its all Bush's fault. Again. Seriously. But Hayes and his merry band of wingnuts would have you believe it was all President Obama's doing. Now I am not going to go too far into the thought that Dick Cheney probably already knew the rules and knew he wouldn't have a chance in hell of getting the reports which is why he started grandstanding in the first place, but thats a discussion for another day. I won't also point out that the OLC memos that are referred to in Hayes' post that President Obama were released IN RESPONSE TO a FOIA request. For now I say just marvel at how shitty of a journalist Stephen Hayes really is.

Stem Cell Funding

Breaking news from the Washington Post

President Obama is planning to sign an executive order on Monday rolling back restrictions on federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research, according to sources close to the issue.

Although the exact wording of the order has not been revealed, the
White House plans an 11 a.m. ceremony to sign the order repealing one of the most controversial steps taken by his predecessor, fulfilling one of Obama's eagerly anticipated campaign promises.

The move, long sought by scientists and patient advocates and opposed by religious groups, would enable the National Institutes of Health to consider requests from scientists to study hundreds of lines of cells that have been developed since the limitations were put in place -- lines that scientists and patient advocate say hold great hope for leading to cures for a host of major ailments.

Not much to say other than great job Mr President!

“Torture Is The Tool Of The Lazy, The Stupid, And The Pseudo-Tough"

Jane Mayer has an excellent piece up in the NewYorker entitled "Behind the Executive Orders" which recounts the "evolution of candidate Barack Obama on the issue of torture" as K Tizzle put it. It goes hearkens back to a day over a year ago in Iowa when then Senator Obama met with some retired military leaders to hear them out on the issue of torture and what should be done about it and then goes on to recount many of the steps in between that led to now President Obama signing an executive order last week to effectively ban torture. Many sides are represented in the article including some individuals in the CIA (anonymous of course) who still want to be able to use harsh interrogation techniques torture. But my focus went to the quote that is the subject of this post:

“torture is the tool of the lazy, the stupid, and the pseudo-tough."

Now was this quote attributed to some DFH librul blogger or some wacky far left civil libertarian? No, this quote was attributed to retired Major General Paul Eaton. And who is retired Major General Paul Eaton? From his wikipedia page:

Assignments

As a lieutenant and captain, Eaton served in the 4th Infantry Division, Fort Carson, Colorado, and was later transferred to Germany as part of 4th Brigade, 4th Infantry Division ("Brigade 76"), where he served as an assistant brigade S3 (operations) officer and later was an infantry company commander. As major and lieutenant colonel Eaton was assigned to key battalion and brigade staff positions in the old 9th Infantry Division, then on the I Corps staff. He also commanded an infantry battalion of the 10th Mountain Division at Fort Drum, New York, and later served as the G3 (operations) officer of the division.

As a colonel in the mid 1990s he commanded an Army brigade in Germany and following promotion to brigadier general was the assistant division commander of the 1st Armored Division. In 2000, he returned to the US to serve as deputy commanding general of the Army Infantry Center and School at Fort Benning, Georgia, and later he lead the creation of the Army’s new Stryker brigades at Fort Lewis, Washington. As a major general he returned to Fort Benning to be commanding general of the Army Infantry Center and School. He was then assigned to Iraq as Commanding General of the Coalition Military Assistance Training Team (CMATT), where he was in charge of training the Iraqi military from 2003 to 2004.[4]

Upon return to the US he was Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Training, United States Army Training and Doctrine Command, Fort Monroe, Virginia.


Awards

Eaton's awards and decorations include the Distinguished Service Medal, Defense Superior Service Medal, Legion of Merit (with 3 Oak Leaf Clusters), Meritorious Service Medal (with 2 Oak Leaf Clusters), Army Commendation Medal (with 2 Oak Leaf Clusters), Army Achievement Medal, Expert Infantryman Badge, Parachutist Badge, Ranger Tab, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Identification Badge.

So who should you follow, the words of a decorated retired Major General in the U.S. Army who helped to create the Stryker Brigades at Ft Lewis and helped to train the Iraq military, or the words of the Rush Limbaughs, Bill O'Reillys and Joe Scarboroughs?

You decide.

What About The WHY?

The New York Times has a front page story today about former Guantanamo Bay detainee Said Ali al-Shihri and how he has now risen to the number two Al Queda figure in Yemen. The first line of the article goes like this.

The emergence of a former Guantánamo Bay detainee as the deputy leader of Al Qaeda’s Yemeni branch has underscored the potential complications in carrying out the executive order President Obama signed Thursday that the detention center be shut down within a year.

Now I for one was puzzled by such a pronouncement. For one President Obama's executive order says absolutely nothing about releasing detainees. He and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs both stated that a plan is still being formulated to deal with the disposition of the detainees. But bigger than that al-Shihri was released by the Bush Administration. If he went back to terrorism shouldn't that instead be an indictment of THEIR policy with respect to detainees?

Now I realize that there are some detainees at GITMO that have become causes for the ACLU and other civil libertarion groups. However most of those cases involved people being detained without much if any credible evidence to support the arrest. And to my knowledge there was not a single solitary civil libertarian group working to free al-Shiri. So I was very interested to see what his story was. Was he an obviously innoncent person who was radicalized by his detention? Not from the story the NYTimes tells.

Mr. Shihri, 35, trained in urban warfare tactics at a camp north of Kabul, Afghanistan, according to documents released by the Pentagon as part of his Guantánamo dossier. Two weeks after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he traveled to Afghanistan via Bahrain and Pakistan, and he later told American investigators that his intention was to do relief work, the documents say. He was wounded in an airstrike and spent a month and a half recovering in a hospital in Pakistan.

The documents state that Mr. Shihri met with a group of “extremists” in Iran and helped them get into Afghanistan. They also say he was accused of trying to arrange the assassination of a writer, in accordance with a fatwa, or religious order, issued by an extremist cleric.

So to recap, this guy was suspected of attending terrorist training camps, meeting with extremists in Iran and helping them get into Afghanistan and attempting to have a journalist killed. That is pretty heavy stuff. Now I don't know how credible their evidence was or wasn't but something compelled them to detain the guy in the first place. Now the biggest question that came to my mind was why did they release him if he supposedly did all of these terrorist activities? Well as far as I can tell from the article, it was because he used "I didn't do it" defense.

However, under a heading describing reasons for Mr. Shihri’s possible release from Guantánamo, the documents say he claimed that he traveled to Iran “to purchase carpets for his store” in Saudi Arabia. They also say that he denied knowledge of any terrorists or terrorist activities, and that he “related that if released, he would like to return to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, wherein he would reunite with his family.”

“The detainee stated he would attempt to work at his family’s furniture store if it is still in business,” the documents say.

Well the ironic thing is, of course, that damn near every criminal uses that same defense. And what makes it worse is that there are "enemy combatants" STILL detained at GITMO who have a helluva lot more evidence that they didn't commit the crimes they are being held for. So what gives? And my question to the NYTimes why didn't they more vigorously try to get to the bottom of it?

What would have compelled the Bush Administration to release this man? Was he tortured? Did he give up information? And why didn't the NYTimes purse that question? Its unthinkable to me for them to write the article without it occuring to them that maybe the bigger story is how the guy got out in the first place. I realize that the wingnuts wouldn't be interested in the focus not being on how some how this case reflects badly on President Obama but you would think the "grey lady" would have a different motivation.

As John Cole points out this story is more of an indictment of the Bush Administration than it is any statement about President Obama's executive orders. Hopefully someone out there reading this will start asking some of the same questions that I have.