War Of Words

With the GOP vowing to permanently block Obama appointees over the release of the "Bush torture memos," today is the court-appointed deadline for the memos to be released by the Obama administration. The Double G however sees nothing but another snow job.

Today is the most significant test yet determining the sincerity of Barack Obama's commitment to restore the Constitution, transparency and the rule of law. After seeking and obtaining multiple extensions of the deadline, today is the final deadline for the Obama DOJ to respond to the ACLU's FOIA demand for the release of four key Bush DOJ memos which authorized specific torture techniques that have long been punished (including by the U.S.) as war crimes. Today, Obama will either (a) disclose these documents to the public or (b) continue to suppress them -- either by claiming the right to keep them concealed entirely or, more likely, redacting the most significant parts before releasing them.

It is genuinely unclear what the Obama administration will do today. Several weeks ago, Newsweek reported that Eric Holder had decided to release the memos -- which an Obama official described as "ugly"-- essentially in full. But then, several other sources reported there was a "war" being waged inside the Obama administration, led by former Bush-era CIA official (and top Obama terrorism adviser) John Brennan, to prevent disclosure. Yesterday, The Wall St. Journal reported that Obama is leaning towards the CIA position that only minimal disclosures are warranted, and today the WSJ reports that the memos will be released with substantial redactions to conceal the details of the Bush administration's use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" -- i.e., will suppress information of America's use of torture.

I want to underscore one vital point about this controversy that is continuously overlooked and will be undoubtedly distorted today in the event of non-disclosure: these documents are not intelligence documents. They are legal documents and, more specifically, they constitute what can only be described as secret law under which the U.S. was governed during the Bush era. Thus, the question posed by the release of these OLC memos is not whether Obama will release to the public classified intelligence programs. The question is whether he will release to the public the legal doctrines under which the U.S. Government conducted itself regarding interrogation techniques he claims are no longer being used.

If Greenwald is right, then not only is Obama covering for Bush, but he's covering for himself as well, the logic being that Obama and AG Holder are either still using these techniques, or reserving their ability to be used. We'll see what happens when these memos are released. If they are heavily redacted to the point of being worthless, then we know that Obama implicitly approves of the techniques, or that he feels that keeping the CIA on his side is far more important than keeping the American public or world opinion on his side.

On the other hand, if Obama does release the memos and they show significant criminal activity on the part of Bush officials, then we could see some serious action on the part of seeing real justice served.

Sadly, like Double G, I'm expecting memos so redacted that they will be useless.

[UPDATE] Obama's official statement on the memos this afternoon suggests that not only will they be released, but he may be doing the right thing after all...to an extent.

Obama has just released a statement confirming that he will release the Bush torture memos. The whole thing is worth a read.

The statement is heavy on efforts to preempt attacks on his administration from the right. It contains the obligatory promise that we’re looking forward, not backwards. “This is a time for reflection, not retribution,” he writes, an effort to preempt, in advance, charges that he’s politicizing the process by dumping on his predecessor.

Indeed, he also confirms that “those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.”

A nation of laws...for some.

[UPDATE 2] The ACLU has the memos up in PDF form. There are some redactions, but they basically describe a series of "techniques" used to convince suspected terrorists to cooperate. The coercion techniques are described in rather excruciating detail. The Double G weighs in on the memos here in a must read.

The bottom line is that Steven Bradbury, the author of the memos, 1) acknowledges that the techniques authorized could be considered torture by other countries, 2) acknowledges that the US State Department would absolutely protest these same techniques being used on US citizens by other countries, and 3) authorizes them anyway because international opinions on what constitute torture simply are not relevant.

These memos describe the authorization and commission of international war crimes. Period. They are now public knowledge. The US government has in fact committed war crimes here, people. This is deadly serious.

Obama must now act on prosecuting those who are culpable. There is no other conceivable action.