Rachel Maddow Asks Carl Levin If There Will Be Prosecutions For Torture
By Heather Thursday Dec 18, 2008 2:00pm
Maddow: One of the things I think has been so I guess challenging to the American debate about this is that President Bush and Vice President Cheney have essentially argued that they have legalized waterboarding. That they have legalized torture. They think that the actions of their Justice Department made things like waterboarding not war crimes any more. Are they right?
Levin: You can't just suddenly change something that's illegal into something that is legal by having a lawyer write an opinion saying that it's legal. Things can't work that way or else someone could get a lawyer to say a crime is not a crime and then that would be a defense. That is not a defense and I just, I was astounded frankly when I heard the Vice President of the United States sort of just blandly, blithely saying that oh he thought that was an appropriate thing and yes he was involved in the discussions about it.
Senator Levin, why are you shocked about this when no one who has been paying any attention to what this administration has done is shocked? And can we get a straight answer that there should be prosecutions and not hedging?
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Hell, they've gotten away with everything so far.
That's the problem when one party full of scalawags controls both the executive and the legislature. The executive won't prosecute itself and the legislative branch won't impeach. The question is will Obama have the balls to do the right thing; if Obama fails to act then it's going to take that much longer for people at home and abroad to once again have some level of confidence and respect in the US government.
Which, presently, is NONE at all. (signed, a feriner.)
More like a rotting carcass stinking up the planet.
Dang. I was going to get a law degree, write myself a legal opinion that it was okay for me to steal a billion bucks and then do it. Now it's back to buying lottery tickets—hey wait, maybe I can start a hedge fund!
I Like it, I Like it allot... :-P
Forget the law degree, just become a failing major bank, or an Iraq/Afghanistan reconstruction contractor. Then you can go ahead and steal billions.
John Yoo was not born on US soil. He's a naturalized immigrant. He should be stripped of his US citizenship and deported to Korea.
...indict the lawyers who issued these smokescreen opinions.
I would gladly see the actual torturers go free if the people who issued the orders AND the legal opinions justifying them indicted and jailed.
In a coverup they go after the small fry and put all the blame on them (can you say Abu Grahib—ok, I can't pronounce it either).
...where Sen. Levin has been since 9/12/01...
Levin is useless. He should have retired.
Appropriate place to prosecute war crimes is in the International Criminal Court. When they are out, the U.S. can recognize that court. I have great hopes for prosecution when justice is reinstated in the U.S. Jan 20.
The documentary "Torturing Democracy" is very good info;
http://cabdrollery.blogspot.com/2008/12/steal...
"Don't let your Vice President get out of control".
Duncan Hunter is flapping his gums about this on MSNBC. What an ass.
I say that now that waterboarding is legal, use it to get these guys to tell everything they know about the secret energy meetings and what happened to all those missing white house emails and who outed Valerie Plame and who is really behind 9/11.
Of course, since it is legal, isn't torture and they have nothing to hide they would have no reason not to submit either.
Sometimes I wonder if the folks on the hill in DC really are paying attention. I think they too may have to worry about getting caught up in a bubble. Maybe they get so caught up in their daily routine that they don't really sit down and read or watch. I think our voices (emails, letters, phone calls) become just noise to them most of the time.
...but I just found out that Paul Weyrich died today...he now knows that hate never wins...
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1208/167...
i could see a picture of the look on Paul Weyrich's face when he "wakes up" in hell with his nutsack roasting for all eternity...
Anyone condoning or practicing torture should be arrested and tried and then made to do a whistlestop tour of the U.S.A. on the back of a caboose in hand hold and leg hold stocks. The train could sell 3 rotten tomatoes or three rotten eggs for 3 buck$. Then the people who want to throw them could get the chance. Hell, it might even cut down the national debt a bit.
Shoes would be an extra 2 buck$.
... who we prosecuted and convicted of torture for waterboarding prisoners during WWII was given 15 years at hard labor.
How would you like to see W, Cheney, Yoo, Rumsfeld, Rice, etc. sentenced to any kind of labor?
Not quite as good as a rope, but still entertaining.
Hard labor, yes. And videotapes of them in the big house for sale. Let them get old and decrepid and senile in stir.
Can we have a C-Span-like channel? I'll watch.
Kind a like puppy cam? Crook cam.
Puppy cam, C-Span-like channel. Good ideas!
The thing is to make them laughing stocks. To ridicule them until they die, old, senile, with shit-stained jammies.
Why... why... it could be a new FOX TV show. Get that sheriff-guy to offer them a ladle of ice-cold drinking water, as they toil in the Arizona desert, only to dump it in the sand, and LAUGH: "Back to work you grunts!"
(ratings spike here-- cut to ad)
as are almost all senators.
I say, we amend the constitution. Either abolish congress, or abolish corporate-funding of congressional campaigns.
they tried that in the '70s, iirc.
There's a SCROTUS decision, Buckley, iirc...
money = speech
The question for many is whether to buy rice and beans or ammunition.
Then you can get all the beans and rice ya need.
Plus they can be detained without charges. It's been done right? And Buchco has even said that waterboarding wasn't torture. So we are just posing questions, like at a congressional hearing; but a little bit more so.
I have always cared very deeply about this: it's a very slippery slope. First it's foreign nationals, then in the interest of keeping people safe, it's American citizens.
"Where they take to burning books, human flesh is not far behind."
He won't say what should be obvious to anyone with half the cognitive capacity of a sea-cucumber: NO.
No member of the out-going regime will suffer a moment's inconvenience, much less stand before the bar of justice, for anything they have done to "protect" Murka...
NEVARGAHAPUN
All the pseudo scandals the Tom Delay congress went after the Democrats yet with all the major scandals of BushCo all the Dems will do is flap their gums.
your headline is wrong she does not ask if there is going to be any prosecutions
Taxi to the Dark Side ~ Oscar award winning Documentary
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=49431...
Its fun thinking of all the ways we would like see these thugs spend the rest of their lives, but it ain't happening. Even if congress grows some balls, all they will do is, hold a couple hearings, spend months writing a report and telling bush and the thugs, that they were "BAD BOYS".
won't prosecute or investigate anyone. Let's be realistic. A troop buildup and escalation of "pretend war" in Afghanistan will create their own little embarrassments of crap gone wrong. We all know it will. It's inevitable with all those troops wanting to get it done and get home.
We can still dream. It's adds a bright note to the dismal reality.
I suspect our ideas of their legacies are vastly different from what will actually happen, but, in the meantime...
Makes the bitterness easier to swallow.
Marisa Taylor of McClatchy Newspapers wrote on November 2, 2007 in an article titled: "Democrats support Mukasey despite waterboarding comments," that:
Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald
Thursday, September 28, 2006
The legalization of torture and permanent detention
I am so glad to have made the choice of joining the Green Party. I am finally liberated from the political straitjacker of the two political sham parties who lie, lie, lie and deceive, deceive, deceive, and obfuscate, obfuscate, obfuscate...
Is that the same Salazar that Obama has chosen, or might choose for Interior? (or whatever department, I forget)
n/t
n/t
I still remember how Hillary (my state senator) gave a very stirring speech about how torture actually emboldens the terrorists and justifies their actions in their minds, how all it does is harden their resolve. Yet the next day she voted for that sack of crap and said her anti-torture comments were taken out of context and she really wasn't that anti-torture.
The only reason I'm registered as a Dem is to oust these types of losers (ie Schumer and Clinton). I voted green for all the positions in November's election.
Have you read about the Clinton Library donors? Oh my what an angelic bunch of donors. Blackwater and the Saudis. How quaint.
is one of the downfalls of a citizen-based democracy. The gutless, failed elites -- including Levin -- have a lineage that goes back -- at least recently -- to the refusal to impeach Reagan for his professed lack of knowledge of Iran-Contra. Fobbing off criminal and anti-constitutional subversive acts to those like North doesn't pass the smell test and Congress should have moved to impeach the GE pimp, nag-riding false populist. You can follow that with Clinton's impeachment, the fuckhead Starr and, of course, those pearls in the tiara of contempt for the citizens, the elections of 2000 and 2004. You reap what you sow.
I am shocked to hear this. I tell you shocked!
No one in Congress will do anything about this until the people demand it. However, they've gotten a lot of us distracted by Christmas, Blago-gate, and some idiot pastor giving the benediction at the inauguration. It was no chance that Bush and Cheney said what they did at this time.
I only hope that in 2010 the people will be able to kick out some of these blowhards because they need to go ASAP.
They'll find a couple of grunts to try and imprison.
Then they'll say, "What a good patrician am I!" and go get some more bribes.
It's going to take a lot more than an election to change much of anything.
Look many Republicans and Democrats have gotten kick backs from the White House in the 8 year crime spree. Levin will play dumb until it shows he was part of the pay to play program. Now I don't expect the remaining Law Makers to do anything but Levin will learn all about torture when the United Nations files War Crimes charges against the Bush Administration. Trying to help the Bush legacy is only feeding more information and facts that will be used in the future indictment. Remember LOOSE LIPS SINKS SHIPS!!
will do nothing other than issuing a stern statement.
Nation-States determine nothing anymore.
The wealthy corporatists run everything now while wearing a veneer of Nation-State Respectability.
Though I would rather that you were right.
could do something, except there are a select few nations that have the power to veto everything which basically kills it. Unfortunately, one of those nations is the US. That's why they still use clusterbombs, and refuse to sign onto treaties that might impact their dirty deeds. But I guess there is always a slight chance, that their greedy money laundering supporters might toss them to the wolves!!
I'm not going to knock your optimism. I pray you are right.
Btw, at the end of that interview Levin did mention the I word, indictments and Rachel made note of it. Not sure if this thread included that. That gives me hope for justice for Dick Cheney.
We got em now! Cheney admitted it! This is the smoking gun! They're all goin down now! Blah, Blah, Blah..................Don't hold your breath
they were acting to 'protect the national security of the United States of America,' and not only will they walk, they'll get a fucking parade...out of any courtroom in the country...
It is up to other nations to bring charges of war crimes against them.
I hope they do, we MUST hold them accountable...otherwise, we have NO credibility at all.
THAT would be about the right amound of time for due deliberation on whether or not to prosecute for WAR CRIMES. Start with Cheney, then WOLFE-NIT-WIT, then KKKARL... It should be the responsibility of our own Justide Department... but if they wanted to do something simultaneous in conjunction with the Hague... I'm sure we could HANG THEM on a world-wide TV hook-up. Not a problem!
The Republicans will scream "partisan vengeance" and the ever-fearful Democrats will be incapable of laying out the facts and the law.
So relax, we all know it won't happen.
In my dream of dreams, after the bush leaves, the Plame affair, torture, Iraq, the financial mess, and all the rest will be brought up for prosecution to avoid bush's pardon....only if....
And since she is the only voice that matters to 90 percent of the representatives who follow the (one?) party machine directives, don't expect anything from the House.
Nothing is going to happen to any of them. Dick will move into his NEW home with guards, bush will move in to his $2.1 million home in Texas with guards and "SERVSNTS". rumpelskiltfeld will fade away with all the others.Nothing will be done because most of America is at walmart or watching that shit on TV.
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