Reason 4 (second elaboration)

What has become of us? Led by a man who appears to model himself not after any historical figure as much as Harrison Ford acting the part of POTUS in Air Force One, striking tough-looking poses, a man of action not words, we are reduced to committing the worst sorts of abuses out of unbridled fear. His actions are our actions, and these have brought great shame on all of us.

Today we find out that even the relatively minor efforts of Congress and the Courts to reign in the worst kinds of abuse, those we consciously adopted from the practices of Egypt, Saudia Arabia, and the former Soviet Union, have been treated by the Administrations as obstacles to be gotten around. Here is the timeline:

• Early 2002 - The Administration begins holding prisoners in secret sites in Afghanistan, Thailand, and Eastern Europe, without Red Cross inspections, and it subjected these prisoners to what the Times calls "harrowing pressure tactics." Here are some of the elements of the torture administered in these secret facilities in our name: "slaps to the head; hours held naked in a frigid cell; days and nights without sleep while battered by thundering rock music; long periods manacled in stress positions; [and] the ultimate, waterboarding."


• August 2002 - In response to concerns by the CIA operatives administering torture at these secret sites about their legal liability, the Justice Department issues an opinion authored by John Yoo at the Office of Legal Counsel. In a nutshell, the opinion found to be legal any interrogation practices short of those causing physical pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death" or mental pain that would result in "significant psychological harm of significant duration, e.g., lasting for months or even years."
  
  However, even mental pain meeting those criteria would not be "torture" in John Yoo's world unless it resulted from "threats of imminent death," threats of the kinds of physical pain described above, or the use of drugs or techniques "designed to deeply disrupt the senses, or fundamentally alter an individual's personality." Only the most "extreme conduct" is prohibited but not conduct that represents only "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment."
  
  But even these minimal constraints, the Administration reasoned, may not apply. Restricting the President only to cruel and inhuman treatment of detaineesmight be an unconstitutional shackle on his authority as "Commander-in-Chief" to behave in ways beyond cruel and beyond inhuman. Even if not unconstitutional, perhaps the laws barring torture contain exceptions for necessity or self-defense. Thusly the Administration instructed our agents that they were free to behave on our behalf in cruel and inhuman ways - and perhaps to exceed even those bounds.


• Late 2003 - Fellow conservative and friend of John Yoo, Jack Goldsmith, assumes leadership of the Office of Legal Counsel, reviews the memo and finds it, according to the Times, "overreaching and poorly reasoned." He informs the administration that the memo may no longer be relied on. Goldsmith and the Deputy AG James Comey, who supported Goldsmith's conclusion, incur the wrath of Cheney's counsel, David Addington. "'On national security matters generally, there was a sense that Comey was a wimp and that Comey was disloyal,' said one Justice Department official who heard the White House talk, expressed with particular force by Mr. Addington." Comey would depart the DoJ in August 2005, clearing the way for loyalist Gonzales and other sycophants to control DoJ policy.
  


• April-May 2004 - America learns that in Abu Grhaib prison near Baghdad, in which Sadaam Hussein had carried out torture and executions of political prisoners, American military personnel and contractors had abused Iraqi detainees in shocking ways. General Antonio Taguba's report noted many examples, including sexual abuse, hitting and kicking, jumping on naked detainees forced into a pile, attaching wires to extremities and genitals to simulate electric torture, leading detainees around on dog chains, intimidating with dogs, and photographing all of this. The full account is horrible, but more can be read in this summary.
  
  Though low-ranking personnel are prosecuted and punished and their behavior cited as extremely aberrant, it is now absolutely plain that these tactics, even if aberrant in degree which is doubtful, were adapted from approved techniques used in Guantanamo (and perhaps at CIA black sites).


• June 2004 - The Yoo torture memo is leaked to the Washington Post. Goldsmith formally withdraws the Yoo memo and announces his resignation.


• December 2004 - The Justice Department issues a superseding opinion on torture, which apparently takes a more expansive view as to what techniques might be prohibited. For example, the new memo explicitly does not "reiterate" the claim in the Yoo memo that officials could only be criminally liable for conduct that would amount to torture if the infliction of severe pain or suffering was their "precise objective," even if they knew such pain was "reasonably likely" to result. This strengthening of the Administration's public stance on preventing torture comes a week before the confirmation hearing of Alberto Gonzales.


• 2005 - Gonzales approves a secret OLC memo over the objections of Comey that sanctions the combination of aggressive interrogation techniques. The memo represented an "expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used" by the CIA. According to the Times: "The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures." Dissenting, Mr. Comey told the responsible officials that they would be "ashamed" when word got out. Later as Congress was debating what would be passed as the Detainee Treatment Act, DoJ issued another opinion, declaring that no CIA methods then used violated the "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" standard that was ultimately adopted.


• June 29, 2006 - The Supreme Court issues an opinion in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld holding, among other things, that the Uniform Code of Military Justice and Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions apply to detainees. In response, Bush orders the transfer of CIA prisoners to Guantanamo, and the CIA stops its practice of waterboarding.


• July 2006 - According the Times, Bush signed a new, secret executive order authorizing "enhanced interrogation techniques." Though it is unclear from the article exactly when, the use of overseas "black sites" has now resumed.


• October 2006 - Instead of issuing a thorough rebuke of the President's pattern of unconstitutional conduct, Congress passes the Military Commissions Act. But more on that in a future post concerning detention.

The pattern of conduct here is unmistakable. Bush believes he has nearly unlimited power to wage "war" in any manner he sees fit. Any constraints imposed from other branches are political problems to worked around, not substantive constraints he is under a duty to abide. Bush the Incompetent acts as though he is King of the United States, and in so doing exhibits the worst excesses of some of history's worst monarchs. He is a good person, he assumes. His cause is just, he assumes. Therefore, he assumes, the things he does in pursuit of that cause are good. He and his conspirators, including David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld are likely criminally liable for the conduct they authorized. Writing opinions asserting the legality of executive conduct does not make it so.

But we're all responsible for not doing more to stop it. Congress must not continue to go along, and so it is at Congress that the People must direct their outrage.