As you
probably already know, they executed Dale Leo Bishop in Mississippi
last night. I had urged readers to write to Governor Haley Barbour and
respectfully request that he commute Bishop's death sentence to life
imprisonment, since he did not actually murder anyone, although he did
take part in a terrible crime. Barbour refused -- even though he had
just released a man who had murdered his wife in the street: blew her
head off with a shotgun. But that actual murderer had been a servant in
Barbour's mansion; wiping the dribble off Barbour's jowls is obviously
a qualification for clemency. So the wife-murderer is free, while the
non-murderer Bishop is dead.
The execution took place at the dinner hour, 6 p.m. Perhaps Barbour was
just sitting down to a nice juicy steak as his minions were putting a
syringe full of poison into Bishop's bloodstream. We can only hope the
dead flesh Barbour devoured during the course of the execution will
clot the bowels of the bloodthirsty, graft-bloated son of a bitch. (And
we mean that in the most respectful sense, of course.)
Well, the deed is done. The world moves on. It's just too bad for Dale
Leo Bishop that he was only involved in a single murder; if he had
slaughtered a million people, like Barbour's good buddy, George W.
Bush, no doubt he'd be a free man today.
Dale Leo Bishop is scheduled to be killed tomorrow by the state of Mississippi -- despite the fact that he did not kill anyone, although he assisted an attack that turned into a murder. The actual murderer, oddly enough, was sentenced to life in prison; but Bishop, who is mentally ill, was sentenced to die. [For more, see previous post on this subject.]
All of his judicial appeals have been exhausted now. Outside a highly unlikely intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court, the only hope Bishop has is a commutation of his death sentence to life in prison by Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour.
As the Jackson Clarion-Ledger points out in an excellent editorial on the case, just last week Barbour pardoned a man convicted of a heinous murder. Michael Graham walked up to his ex-wife's car at a streetlight in Pascagoula and shot her in the face with a 12-gauge shotgun, blowing her head off in front of her own father, who was standing across the street at the time. Graham had served 19 years of a life sentence for the killing when Barbour pardoned him. The reason? Graham had been a trusty, a prisoner working as a servant, in the governor's mansion.
From the Clarion-Ledger:
Trial testimony - undisputed trial testimony - indicates that Bishop was not the man swinging the hammer that delivered the fatal blows to victim's head....
If Bishop, who suffers from mental illness, receives a lethal injection on Wednesday, he would be only the eighth person put to death - and the first since 1996 - who did not directly kill the victim (not including contract killings) in the more than 1,100 executions since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976.
There is ample evidence that Bishop's mental illness led to his waiving rights that might have spared his life at trial. There are also allegations that his post-conviction counsel representation suppressed evidence of Bishop's mental illness....
If there is mercy in Barbour's heart for a killer like Graham who was definitely guilty of a cold-blooded, gruesome murder, then the governor shouldn't blink an eye in granting clemency to Bishop - who took part in a killing but didn't deliver the fatal blows.
Bishop didn't get a chance to serve as a domestic servant at the Governor's Mansion. Graham did. That's the apparent difference.
Bishop should at most share a jail cell for life with Jessie Johnson, the man who is serving life without parole for Gentry's murder. But he should not pay the ultimate price if he did not commit the ultimate crime.
As we noted here earlier, Barbour is a rank political hack, a lobbyist, bagman and fixer from way back. His good buddy George W. Bush has steered millions of dollars in federal money earmarked for Hurricane Katrina relief to Barbour and his corporate cronies. His pardon of Graham is all of a piece with the plutocrat's code: "Everything for me and mine, diddly-squat for everybody else."
It is not very likely than an appeal to a conscience that Barbour has shown little sign of possessing will move him to spare Dale Leo Bishop from the poison needle. However, our high and mighty officials do like to appear to be figures of great moral depth, and so occasionally they can be moved to some gesture of clemency, some show of humanity, as long as there is no significant downside to their bottom line.
Therefore, we urge you once again to send a very respectful message to Haley Barbour, asking him politely to give his profound and prayerful consideration to Dale Bishop's plea for commutation. The address is below:
I think it is time for all those who have opposed the American invasion of Iraq to stand up for Barack Obama and acquit him of the ludicrous charge hurled at him by so many on the so-called "left": namely, that he has somehow "sold out" the anti-war movement with his recent statements about "refining" his long-held plans for a carefully calibrated end to the war.
Of course, the candidate himself has spoken most eloquently on this issue, pointing out that the idea of refining the details of the pullout according to the facts of the ground in Iraq has always been a key element of his plan all along. Sen. Obama is entirely correct: his views regarding American involvement in Iraq have been clear and consistent throughout his campaign for the presidency.
Although in a perfect world, Obama would need no defense on this matter, its truth being so self-evident, the distortions of the corporate media -- always looking for a trivial "gotcha" issue to goose the day's horse-race coverage -- compels the "reality-based community" to step forward and set the record straight.
And Sami Ramadani -- an Iraqi writer and academic who was persecuted by Saddam Hussein and driven from his native land -- has done just that in a column in Monday's Guardian. He brings a perspective almost entirely absent from the Washington's navel-gazing debate over Iraq: the Iraqi perspective. He makes a brilliant case for Obama's rock-solid consistency on the Iraq war, and explores some of the far-reaching implications of the candidate's plan.
From the Guardian: As November's American presidential elections approach, Barack Obama's message on Iraq is being widely interpreted as "flip-flopping" and a "retreat" from a previously unequivocal stance of fully withdrawing the US occupation forces. This is to misunderstand Obama, who is not someone who shoots from the hip. There is much more to his words than cursory reading could unravel...
Obama himself has reacted angrily to claims of a policy U-turn: "For me to say I'm going to refine my policies is I don't think in any way inconsistent with prior statements and doesn't change my strategic view that this war has to end and that I'm going to end it as president." Earlier this month he resorted to an op-ed article in the New York Times to emphatically state: "On my first day in office, I would give the military a new mission: ending this war."
As always in examining the words of politicians, let alone Obama (who now has 300 foreign policy advisers), the devil is in the details. Here, Obama's "ending the war" declarations begin to look far from reassuring, even before he "refines" his line after meeting the US commander, General Petraeus, in Iraq.
Obama sees Iraq as part of a wider theatre of war and potential wars engulfing the entire Middle East, where US strategic goals and interests are at stake. So his obvious shift on the "surge" operations in Iraq (underlined by deleting criticisms of it from his website last week) is strengthening his call for "redeployment" from Iraq to Afghanistan. His current strategy could be summed up as: de-escalate the war in Iraq, escalate it in Afghanistan, and talk to Iran. On Iran, his offer of talks was coupled with an alarming, Bush-style threat. "I'll do everything in my power to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Everything," Obama told a gathering of the pro-Israel lobby group, Aipac, in April. He is echoing the sentiments of his famous anti-Iraq war speech in 2002, in which he repeatedly stressed that he was not opposed to all US wars.
It is worth noting that the term withdrawal, let alone a full unconditional withdrawal that will satisfy most of the Iraqi people, has never been part of Obama's vocabulary. His first carefully considered statement on Iraq was made in January last year, when he introduced the Iraq war de-escalation act to Congress. It was then that he envisaged stationing troops in Iraq on a longer-term basis: "A residual US presence may remain in Iraq for force protection, training of Iraqi security forces and pursuit of international terrorists." Using similar phrases, this is what he outlined in the New York Times last week.
....But it doesn't require rocket science to know that keeping "residual" forces requires heavily fortified areas, installations and a state of readiness to go to war. Unless Obama has discovered something new, such areas are known as military bases.....
Obama has even pre-empted a possible line of attack from hawks by chillingly suggesting he would possibly invade Iraq again if necessary. His website states: "He would reserve the right to intervene militarily, with our international partners, to suppress potential genocidal violence within Iraq." The word potential is worth pausing over; it is salutary to remember Bush and Blair occupied Iraq and caused the death of perhaps hundreds of thousands of innocent people for "humanitarian" reasons.
Neither is Obama opposed to signing a military treaty with Iraq. He has two conditions to make Bush's current attempts to impose a pact acceptable: the pact should get Congressional approval, and renounce "permanent" military bases. However, leaked drafts of this colonialist-style pact do not mention the word "permanent" at all. And his "benchmarks" for continued support for the corrupt Iraqi politicians protected by US forces in Baghdad's Green Zone are strikingly similar to those of the Bush administration.
Tactical differences and issues of style aside, Obama's message on occupied Iraq is deeply troubling - not because it has U-turned but because it has been consistent. His 300 foreign policy advisers are making sure that he will not stray from protecting US imperialist interests, even if it does mean launching new wars and bolstering puppet regimes and corrupt dictatorships throughout the "greater Middle East".
A bit under the weather, so apologies for the light posting. Hope to be back in gear soon, so keep checking in.
Meanwhile, here is some abiding wisdom on the inevitable ramifications of macro-economic cycles in an unrestricted "free" market system (also known as "One law for the rich, another law for the poor"). This learned disquisition originally appeared in 1854, and was updated in 1993 by one of our most eminent men of letters (doctorates from Princeton and St Andrews University). Perpend:
Next week, the State of Mississippi is going to strap Dale Leo Bishop to a prison guerney and shoot him full of deadly chemicals. He's going to die for murder although he killed no one. He's going to die even though his case was grossly mishandled by a lawyer who refused to present mitigating evidence of the horrible abuse Bishop suffered as a child and his life-long struggle with mental illness. He's going to die even though the man whom prosecutors admit is the one who committed the murder has been spared, while Bishop has been condemned to execution by lethal injection.
The United States Supreme Court has refused to hear his appeal last month. The Mississippi Supreme Court then scheduled his killing for July 23.
It's a complicated case. It's an ugly case. Bishop took part in the brutal murder of Marcus Gentry ten years ago. Gentry was set upon by Bishop and Jessie Johnson, who believed that Gentry had ratted out Johnson's younger brother, Cory, to the police on grand larceny and burglary charges. In the course of a beating in which Bishop landed a couple of blows with his hands and held Bishop at one point, Jessie Johnson repeatedly struck Gentry with a claw hammer belonging to Bishop and finally killed him. Bishop was 24 at the time of the attack; Gentry was 19 years old.
At the trial in 2000, Bishop admitted taking part in the beating but said he didn't know Johnson was going to kill Gentry. After his conviction, Bishop, crushed, refused to make any mitigating statement, but instead declared that he was bound for Hell and asked the court to do what Gentry's family wanted to do: kill him. The judge said, "Mr. Bishop, I'm going to grant your wish."
After the trial, Bishop changed his mind and appealed the verdict. His case was handled by the state's Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel, set up in 2000 to help indigent death row prisoners. Here the case took a curious turn. As the Jackson Free Press reports:
Bishop’s lawyers accuse Robert Ryan, former director of the Mississippi Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel...with “extreme dereliction of duty” in Ryan’s failure to present mitigating evidence in Bishop’s appeal. The brief includes affidavits supporting the defense’s allegations that Ryan deliberately suppressed his own staff’s investigation, which revealed Bishop’s life-long mental illness, and summarily dismissed the volunteers working on the case.
“The director simply discarded this proof and substituted his own unsubstantiated and frivolous allegations (with the appeal). All the while, Bishop himself had no idea his lead lawyer was sabotaging his main chance to escape execution,“ the lawyers wrote.
“I don’t really know if Ryan was overworked or in over his head,” [James] Craig said... "but whatever the reason is for his lack of performance, it’s just another situation where the quality of justice you get is dependent on whether you have any money. That’s been such a theme for Dale Bishop, because his mother tried to have him taken for (psychiatric evaluation and treatment). They quoted her a price and she couldn’t possibly afford it. This was a situation that probably could have been avoided if somebody would have intervened in (Bishop’s) life.”
The attorneys contend that Bishop's illness prevented him from making a rational decision during the original sentencing. Back to the Free Press:
The brief goes on to say that Ryan failed to have Bishop evaluated although he knew Bishop was taking Lithium after doctors at Parchman diagnosed his illness. Lithium is prescribed almost exclusively to people suffering from bipolar disorder, the brief states. Instead, Ryan made the claim in his appeal that Bishop was mentally retarded, while attaching evidence indicating clearly that he was not.
“I think it’s close to criminal fraud to take the state’s money and handle a case like this,” Craig said.
Ryan's successor in the post, Glenn Swartzfager, is working with Bishop's lawyers in their appeal. In court papers, Swartzfeger called Ryan's work on the case "a sham," the Jackson Clarion-Ledger reports. Ryan also buried evidence of abuse suffered by Bishop as a child and youth, as the human rights organization Reprieve notes:
Reprieve volunteers assisting on the case gathered documents and witness statements which proved that Bishop suffered from a chronic mental illness (bipolar depressive disorder, formerly known as “manic depression”) and had undergone horrific trauma when he was young, which clearly affected his capacity to make rational decisions at trial. Bishop’s family noticed problems with his behavior and thinking when he was four years old. His elementary school records from Texas have many references to these problems and to evaluations that showed that Dale Bishop needed serious help. When he was in middle school, his school counselor recommended a psychiatric consultation. The psychiatric hospital Dale’s mother took him to advised immediate inpatient hospitalization, but Mrs. Bishop could not afford the high price of this care. He was only diagnosed and treated for his mental illness when he got to death row.
Also, Dale Bishop’s father was an abusive alcoholic who beat his wife and children – including Dale Bishop – on a weekly basis. The family was incredibly poor. When Dale was an infant, the family had no running water, no indoor bathroom, and no money.
This is evidence that almost surely would have required a new trial, where Dale Bishop could present his case for a life sentence, giving a jury the background about his youth and illness, and letting them weigh up these facts alongside the fact that Dale Bishop was not the killer of Marcus Gentry.
The last-minute appeal also stresses the lack of evidence that the killing was premeditated, which is "one of the components required to impose the death penalty in Mississippi when a defendant is not the actual killer. Bishop’s co-defendant, Johnson, stated in an affidavit that the murder took place after a two-week drug binge and that they had been smoking marijuana, and injecting crystal meth and cocaine prior to the crime," as the Free Press reports. Johnson, who admitted killing Gentry, was given a life sentence at his trial, which was held after Bishop's conviction.
And so this is how "justice" is going to work in Mississippi next week. Dale Leo Bishop, a man riddled with genuine, even suicidal remorse over his part in a drug-addled murder, will be killed by the state next week. Meanwhile, the man who actually committed the murder will live out the rest of his natural life as a ward of that same state.
Reprieve notes:
Dale Bishop never had a real chance in life. If the death penalty is going to be anything more than just a lottery, it’s not fair for some prisoners to lose appeals just because their State-paid lawyer discarded valuable, relevant evidence. We are shocked and sickened by what has happened in this case, and we hope others who look at the facts will feel the same. Dale Bishop’s lawyers are preparing a Petition for Executive Clemency, to present to Governor Haley Barbour if the courts deny the new appeal. We ask all those who are concerned about the justice system to write to the Governor...to ask that he seriously consider, in this case, commuting Dale Bishop’s sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Or, at least, we ask the Governor to grant a temporary reprieve and ask the Parole Board to study the case and make a recommendation for or against a commutation to life imprisonment without parole.
The chance that Barbour, a long-time right-wing political hack and backroom fixer, will actually commute Bishop's sentence or even delay his killing are slim. For one thing, Bishop is white -- or "white trash" as he'd be called amongst Barbour's neo-plantation set -- and his death could help redress the statistical imbalance between the executions of black and white prisoners: an imbalance that always threatens to bring in some busybody judge to interfere with the politically popular operation of the death chamber. But a slim chance is better than none.
“The death penalty feeds a mentality of revenge and vindication and further reduces the dignity and worth of human life,” said Fr. Jeremy Tobin of St. Moses the Black Priory in Raymond. “Executions teach us that killing people is OK, and in fact, should be celebrated,” he added. “Killing is immoral, it is not justified, it is anti-Christian. … Only non-violence can end the self-destruction of a blood-soaked world.”
Below are contact details for Haley Barbour:
Haley Barbour Governor of Mississippi P.O. Box 139 Jackson, MS 39205 Fax: + 1 601-359-3741 E-mail: governor@governor.state.ms.us
Reprieve also provides text for the letter that you can send or adapt here.
Last Chance to Stop Execution of Dale Leo Bishop Chris - very good post, and a travesty of justice.
[i]What is, is that there is no "state of Mississippi" that will strap this man down and shoot poison into his veins. There are the the men who do it, the men who order it, and then men who support...
Death for Dinner: Haley Barbour Kills Dale Leo Bishop Everybody (Dennis Prager, the Supreme Court and the people who appropriate funds for public defender budgets aside) is opposed to the death penalty for provably innocent people. Being against capital punishment for them takes no courage. Being oppose...
Solid Rock: Acquitting Obama of the 'Flip-Flop' Charge [quote]No candidate for President would get any media attention if they did not kiss the various rings of the oligarchs. Obama has been consistent because he is the proverbial slick lawyer who understands the angles and the lay of the land. Having sa...
Solid Rock: Acquitting Obama of the 'Flip-Flop' Charge obama is just a smoother rapist,
one who will convince more people
to enjoy it
kahoneez above has it right -
a more elegant occupation of iraq
is a lead-in to the next war
we're 'merkins and we need more
victories - we can never have enough
Last Chance to Stop Execution of Dale Leo Bishop clemency for one who becomes known to the prince
cold steel for the other who is not
many think we live under a state of fascism
we don't
royalism
News That Stays News Despite being a Dylan fan from 1964 on, personally, I rather prefer this....
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pol116/grand.htm
"Why, then, art Thou come to hinder us? "...mediocre translation, but still....
hope you're feeling better, please kee...
Solid Rock: Acquitting Obama of the 'Flip-Flop' Charge 1 . Obama On 60 mins. " we must keep troops in Iraq , to protect out interest " , aka permanent military bases , to project U.S. power .
2 . Wants to " bring combat troops home " , we'll I figured it out right away and that's COMBAT troops are about...
Last Chance to Stop Execution of Dale Leo Bishop THe US lost it's national conscience, IMHO, at Hiroshima & Nagasaki, not that there was much of a conscience to lose. Barbour, on the other hand, never had one, but an appeal to his vanity and political self-interest might reach something in that sh...
Brilliant Disguise: Bush Torture, Obama and The Boss
Saturday, 19 April 2008
I. We offer now a telling juxtaposition of stories. First is the Guardian's new excerpt of Phillipe Sands' new book, Torture Team: Deception, Cruelty, and the Compromise of Law. (Another extract was published earlier in Vanity Fair, which we examined here.) Sands' book lays out in great detail the process by which the highest officials of the American government – including the President, Vice President and the Secretary of Defense – with great deliberation and malice aforethought constructed a regimen of systematic torture which they knew, to a certainty, violated existing American and international law.
The earlier Vanity Fair extract depicted how the "Principals" of the National Security State developed the specific tortures to be used on uncharged captives held indefinitely in concentration camps, secret prisons, and foreign torture chambers. The new Guardian extract show how the White House torture system was then put into practice and refined in the field.
These decisions and actions were flagrant and obvious violations of United States law. Sands quotes the ruling of the Republican-dominated Supreme Court ruled in 2006:
In June 2006, the Supreme Court overturned President Bush's decision on Geneva, ruling it to be unlawful. The court confirmed that Common Article 3 applied to all Guantánamo detainees. It was as simple as that. Whether they were Taliban or al-Qaida, every one of the detainees had rights under Common Article 3 - and that included Mohammed al-Qahtani.
The majority opinion, reaffirming the "minimal protection" offered by Common Article 3, was written by Justice John Paul Stevens. One of the Justices went even further: Common Article 3 was part of the law of war and of a treaty that the US had ratified. "By Act of Congress," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote pointedly, "violations of Common Article 3 are considered 'war crimes', punishable as federal offences, when committed by or against United States nationals and military personnel."
First read the Guardian extract, and see how what happened in Abu Ghraib (and elsewhere) flowed directly – directly, and in detail – from Donald Rumsfeld's pen, with the approval and at the direction of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Then go to this video clip offered by the Philadelphia Daily News, and watch Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama field a direct question about how he will deal with these flagrant crimes (and others committed by the Bush White House) if he becomes president. Would he, Obama was asked, order his Justice Department "to aggressively investigate if crimes were committed?"
It goes without saying that Obama does not give a straightforward answer to the question. He does not simply say: "Yes. I will aggressively investigate all criminal activity by the Bush Administration and bring the perpetrators to justice." Instead, he twice offers a rather odd locution: he will, he says, order his attorney general to "review the information already there" and find out if there are inquiries that "need to be pursued." Obama's emphasis on basing his actions on "what we know right now" seems puzzling, until you tie it to a later passage in his reply, when he speaks of his attitude toward impeachment.
Obama says that any decision to pursue "investigation" of "possibilities" of "genuine crimes" would be "an area where I would exercise judgment." He stressed the need to draw a distinction between "really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity." He said he would not want "my first term to be consumed by what would be perceived by Republicans as a partisan witch hunt."
He then tied his thinking on torture, illegal wiretapping, aggressive war and all the other depredations of the Bush Regime to his stance on impeachment:
"I often get questions about impeachment at town hall meetings. And I've often said, I do not think that would be something that would be fruitful to pursue. I think impeachment should be reserved for exceptional circumstances."
In other words, very strong, credible, evidence-based charges of launching a criminal war of aggression based on deception is not an "exceptional circumstance" worthy of the investigative and prosecutorial process of impeachment. It might just be a "very dumb policy." Very strong, credible, evidence-based charges of knowingly, deliberately creating a regimen of systematic torture is not an "exceptional circumstance" worthy of impeachment; it might not even be worth further investigation by the Justice Department. It too could just be a "dumb policy" that we should forget about – especially if Republicans are going to make a fuss about it.
In any case, it is obvious that to Obama, "what we already know" does not constitute "exceptional circumstances" – otherwise he would already be pressing for criminal investigation, via the impeachment process or by calling for a special prosecutor. (Which would be essential for investigating a Justice Department which is itself deeply implicated in the torture system and other criminal conspiracies.) He has pointedly not done so, because he doesn't think it would be "fruitful to pursue" credible (in fact overwhelming) evidence of aggressive war and crimes against humanity committed by American leaders.
Obama closes on the usual high rhetorical note, declaring that if he in fact found out that "high officials knowingly, consciously broke existing laws and covered up crimes with knowledge aforethought...then no one is above the law."
Yet the plain fact is that the recent revelations by Sands and others that "high officials knowingly, consciously broke existing laws and covered up crimes with knowledge aforethought" are simply strong confirmations of what has been lying in plain sight for a long, long time.
For example, I began writing, in print, about the Administration's use of "extrajudicial killing," torture and other Terror War crimes in November 2001. (More on this below.) Where did I dig up this secret information? From the Washington Post and New York Times and other mainstream outlets, where Administration officials – flush with their newfound power and popularity – were at that time boasting openly of "taking the gloves off" and inflicting physical torture on captives, either directly or through proxies in foreign "rendition" centers. Only when the pictures from Abu Ghraib appeared in 2004 – showing in vivid detail exactly what Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld had ordered American personnel to do to their captives – did the "senior government officials" stop supplying spin to the compliant media about their macho forays "into the dark side."
And suddenly, a strange amnesia set in across the political and media establishments. Suddenly no one remembered "senior officials" boasting about torture. Suddenly no one remembered Cheney himself going on national television to announce that U.S. security forces were going to "the dark side, if you will." As a result, it has taken years for the deliberate, systematic, planned and approved use of torture to come to light again, piece by piece – with government officials and media mandarins expressing their great shock at each new revelation.
But here is a vital point that should be stressed again and again: The planned, approved, systematic use of torture against uncharged captives held illegally under the Geneva Conventions – which have the full force of U.S. law – has never been a secret. Never. Never. Any ordinary American citizen, like me, could find out about it, without any special effort, simply by reading beyond the first few paragraphs of routine, mainstream news stories.
It has always been out there – always – for anyone who wanted to know. It is an utter impossibility that the thousands of political operatives and players in Washington – elected officials and their vast cadres of staff, journalists and editors, lobbyists, think tank analysts, appointees to government agencies, and all the others whose professional lifeblood depends on the information relayed by house organs of the Establishment like the Times and Post – did not know what an ordinary man from rural Tennessee knew as early as November 2001. It is simply impossible.
And it is certainly impossible that an intelligent, informed, and ambitious political operative like Barack Obama did not know. And if for some inconceivable reason he did not know what us yokels knew in 2001, then he certainly knows it now. But he pretends that he does not know. He pretends that it is still an open question – "an exercise of judgment" – whether these crimes should even be investigated further, much less prosecuted. He pretends – or even worse, actually believes – that we are not in the grip of "exceptional circumstances," but are apparently just rolling along with business as usual, aside from a few "dumb policies" which he will tinker with and set right.
All indications continue to suggest that those who look to Obama to undo "the terrible damage done over the past eight years," as Bruce Springsteen put it in his public endorsement of Obama last Friday, will be disappointed – especially as they watch Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the other perpetrators of war crimes enjoy their comfortable, lucrative retirements in the years to come.
II. And let's not forget: We don't even know the full extent of the gulag. In addition to the multitude of individual ordeals that we still have no inkling of, there are almost certainly more secret prisons that we don't know about – and perhaps secret codicils to the known documents, authorizing even more barbaric tortures. To quote torture lord Rumsfeld himself, there are still many "unknown unknowns" about the Terror War gulag that we are yet to discover.
Thus the crimes reconfirmed and fleshed out by Sands and others are only glimpses of the full, horrific reality. For example, in Sands' extract, he tells of the three categories of torture devised and approved by the White House. "Category III" was the full whack, including waterboarding, the partial-drowning technique long prosecuted by the American military as a particularly heinous form of torture. Sands says that Category III techniques "were to be used for only a very small percentage of detainees" – the most "uncooperative and exceptionally resistant individuals," the so-called "worst of the worst" in the terminology of the torture lords.
But recall that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and other top officials routinely referred to all of the captives in the Guantanamo concentration camp as "the worst of the worst," the most dangerous men on the planet, etc. – prime candidates for the harshest tortures. Yet we now know – and have long known – that hundreds of these captives posed no threat at all to anyone. Many of them had been sold into captivity by bounty hunters or personal enemies, or rounded up in random sweeps, or kidnapped off city streets or from their homes. We also know from the mountains of evidence gathered by some of the Pentagon's own investigations (of "small fry" and "bad apples," offered up as scapegoats for the sins of their leaders), that the worst approved tortures soon spread throughout the Terror War gulag, all the way down to the former torture chamber of Saddam Hussein that George Bush made his very own: Abu Ghraib. There, the highest category of torture was applied to some of the lowliest prisoners, men rounded up in the massive, blind sweeps by American forces, caging thousands upon thousands of innocent people. (At one time, the International Red Cross estimated that between 70-90 percent of the American captives in Iraq were innocent of any wrongdoing whatsoever, much less of being "Category III" terrorists.)
You cannot compartmentalize the evil of torture. You cannot tame it, domesticate it, separate it into neat categories. It is a sinister acid that eats through all walls, and spreads throughout any system or organization that practices it. You begin with "light slapping" and loud music, and you end up with waterboarding, beating, and murder. There is no exception in human history to this process.
And there is no avoiding the knowledge that America's leaders "knowingly, consciously broke existing laws" against torture. This is precisely why they went to such enormous lengths to pervert the clear and unambiguous letter and spirit of the laws, devising a ludicrous, self-absolving system of executive tyranny, whereby the president's Justice Department appointees simply declare that whatever the president orders is "legal," even if it conflicts with existing law. Torture, murder ("extrajudicial killing"), aggressive war – all is permitted for the "commander-in-chief," whose imperial immunity extends to every minion carrying out his orders. As we have noted often before, this is a version of the Nazi führerprinzip translated into the political idiom of modern America.
Again, perhaps Barack Obama believes it is not an "exceptional circumstance" that a U.S. presidential administration openly claims to rule the Republic on the basis of Adolf Hitler's philosophy of governance. Certainly, Obama's deliberate inaction on these issues – no bills to stop funding for the war in Iraq, no bills to launch investigations of the torture system, not even a measure to overturn the Military Commissions Act, which stripped the ancient right of habeas corpus and officially enshrined the führerprinzip in U.S. law – constitutes an implicit accommodation with great and glaring evil. It is hard to see in all of this how he represents what Springsteen called in his endorsement "the America I've envisioned in my music for the past 35 years...a country that's interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit."
A leader truly interested in the collective destiny of his nation would not be "nuancing" questions of torture and war crimes. The pursuit of justice for these atrocities would not be an area for "exercising judgment," or worrying about bad PR from the opposition party. It would instead be a burning passion, driven by the understanding that it is only this pursuit of justice that holds out the slim hope of even beginning to "undo the terrible damage done" by the Bush Regime – and by its bipartisan predecessors in imperial arrogance.
Afterword How easy was it to see what was happening – and what was coming down the pike? Here's an excerpt from a piece I wrote for the Moscow Times in November 2001:
It won't come with jackboots and book burnings, with mass rallies and fevered harangues. It won't come with "black helicopters" or tanks on the street. It won't come like a storm – but like a break in the weather, that sudden change of season you might feel when the wind shifts on an October evening: everything is the same, but everything has changed. Something has gone, departed from the world, and a new reality has taken its place.
As in Rome, all the old forms will still be there; legislatures, elections, campaigns – plenty of bread and circuses for the folks. But the "consent of the governed" will no longer apply; actual control of the state will have passed to a small group of nobles who rule largely for the benefit of their wealthy peers and corporate patrons.
To be sure, there will be factional conflicts among this elite, and a degree of free debate will be permitted, within limits; but no one outside the privileged circle will be allowed to govern or influence state policy. Dissidents will be marginalized – usually by "the people" themselves. Deprived of historical knowledge by an impoverished educational system designed to produce complacent consumers, not thoughtful citizens, and left ignorant of current events by a media devoted solely to profit, many will internalize the force-fed values of the ruling elite, and act accordingly. There will be little need for overt methods of control.
The rulers will often act in secret; for reasons of "national security," the people will not be permitted to know what goes on in their name. Actions once unthinkable will be accepted as routine: government by executive fiat, the murder of "enemies" selected by the leader, undeclared war, torture, mass detentions without charge, the looting of the national treasury, the creation of huge new "security structures" targeted at the populace. In time, all this will come to seem "normal," as the chill of autumn feels normal when summer is gone.
It will all seem normal..Indeed, the Bush administration is now openly considering the use of torture to compel testimony from suspected terrorists – or anyone designated as a suspected terrorist, Slate.com reports. True, a few girlie-men are still fretting about "constitutional rights," but the clever dicks in the Oval Office have that one sussed: recalitrant prisoners can always be exported to friendly regimes, like Egypt or Kenya, where they don't bother with such prissy concerns. Information "extracted" there can then be used in U.S. trials.
Wouldn't evidence acquired by such heinous and unconstitutional methods be thrown out by the courts? Ordinarily, yes – under the old Republic. But in America's new weather, the judiciary will no doubt "give heightened deference to the judgements of the political branches with respect to matters of national security," [as former special prosecutor Kenneth Starr predicts]. And if all else fails, a handy executive order can always "reinterpret" the Constitution to accommodate the needs of "national security."
Normal.... Armed with the sweeping new powers of the "USA Patriot Act" passed late last month, the Bush administration is acting to "shift the primary mission of the FBI from solving crimes to gathering domestic intelligence," the Washington Post reports. In other words, the feds will move from protecting the people to spying on them. The CIA has also been given authority to take part in domestic surveillance and investigations for the first time....
It won't come like a storm. It will all seem normal. Like a break in the weather, a shift in the wind.
Yes, all normal, business as usual. No "exceptional circumstances" here. ***
Yeah right, it's all the fault of "Atheists" who "mock god's word".
The current junta continuously proclaims its love of jeezus and your invisible sky daddy, starting with the ghoul in chief, who proclaimed a "righteous war against evildoers", who stated gawd told him to "smite the Iraqis". These people are christians, not "godless atheists". They've packed the bureaurocracy with their bahbull thumping ilk, have poisoned the military with their "dominionist" pals, filled the judiciary with the same enemies of democracy, christian fundamentalists, to enable their crimes. We have a quasi-theocracy now, thanks to folks like you who demand "gawd's law" be substituted for our Constitution, that secular document of genius, that held these monsters at bay for over 2 centuries.
Now that your fellow travelers for christ have taken over, you blame Atheists for the result, but I see no Atheists among the criminals, just fanatics who want prayer in schools, "holy war" and Armageddon, and the sociopathic monsters who exploit their insane delusions for their goal of world mastery. I see none of these so-called "gawdly people" weeping for the tortured prisoners, or the murdered Iraqi victims of this monstrous warcrime. I don't hear them screaming over our use of depleted uranium weapons against an innocent people. I hear none of them denouncing any of the atrocities of this depraved gang of thugs, or demanding "in god's name" they be brought to justice. I just see Hagee, and Robertson, and Dobson, men of gawd all, bawling for more blood, more torture, more death, in gawd's name, hoping for a "nukular" solution to the problem of Iran.
And now, you state here, that your loving daddy in heaven is content to let the millions suffer, because "we want no god to rule over us..." Obviously, you too think that voice in you head is god, whispering his displeasure to YOU, just as he once whispered it to the swine in the WH. Which of you do we believe? Or is it just your own latent sadism that whispers to you, rejoicing in the unspeakable agony of "unbelievers" everywhere?
Obviously, whatever it is you worship, is a fiend, no better than the gawd-fearing junta you complain of, a demon who allows torture and murder on a global scale, impervious to the screams of the dying, merely because some people don't "believe". And that is your privilege. Believe whatever superstitions you want, but don't dare blame those who don't share your delusions, and had no say or part in the atrocities sponsored by your co-religionists. They and their myths are huge factors in the destruction of the nation. And that attitude of "death to unbelievers" has enabled the national acceptance of torture as OK, as long as WE do it, to "really bad guys", as Chris so lucidly discusses here.
Obama is just fooling the powers that be to thinking he is cut of the same cloth as our heroes Reagan, Kennedy and Bush thats my story and i am stickin with it
I wish I could believe that, dougie, I really do. But forgive this ancient grandma for being too old, and having seen too many horrors for too long, to put on the blinkers now. He's a corporate sheep, in populist sheep clothing, and wouldn't be where he is, if he were not. And,unfortunately for us, he's the only candidate we are going to be "allowed" to vote for against McInsane, the junta's hand-picked, senile, brainless sock puppet, a clone of his gibbering predecessor. Democracy, it's a beautiful thing.
At this point, I will settle for a cessation of the dark side, and a return to a United States that is professedly and, at least to some degree, in actuality, decent. If the price for that is that GWB is comfortably ensconced in Highland Park and whiles his days away at the Bush Library at SMU (I'm in the Dallas area), rather than enduring endless procedures in the Hague, then so be it.
BO is making a reasoned judgement, like the one Ford did, that bringing justice to the past would, at the same time, be all-consuming in the present--and a pretty good case for that proposition can be made. If he is elected, and, say, Common Article III isn't honored in all cases, and the Army manual isn't applied in all instances, that would be very wrong and I would come to profoundly regret my support.
We shall see. I will concede, in advance, that, with his background (Yale Law, law school prof etc.), I also thought that Bill Clinton would be solid on civil liberties, and I came to be very, very disappointed on that count
Democrats have to avoid any appearance of 'partisan bickering' and court the favor of conservative Republicans by giving them everything they and their lobbyists want, so they will then work cooperatively with Democrats for the good of the country. Above all, don't mention torture, civil liberties, human rights, or empire. We know how well that has worked before.
I spent a couple of years in candle-lit rooms, sitting in a small circle of friends, grooving LSD and playing the White Album backwards, trying to decipher the weird poetry of people we thought were geniuses on the fast track to enlightenment because they made such pretty music.
I'm unable to speak for my entire generation, but I had for long been done with that nonsense when Springsteen (who was still a kid and still chasing dope dreams) cut his first album. Parts of that record were pretty good as I recall. It looked as if Bruce might make something of himself, and eventually he did. Tramps like Bruce being born to run, he ran himself nearly to death before he reinvented himself as "The Boss" and started making records entirely filled with really good music.
Today Springsteen is a legend, widely hailed as a musical genius. I won't argue with that verdict -- but I will argue that musical genius doesn't necessarily drive anyone to a deep understanding of things like politics, economics, law, and diplomacy. Neil Young, for example, admits that he once voted for Ronald Reagan. Bruce Springsteen will get my respect if, ten years from now, he can show as honest as Neil Young and admit that he once thought Barack Obama was a good idea.
It may help Bruce through the ordeal if somebody would send him a copy of Peter Brown's book on the Beatles. . . .
It was a nice rant & made us all feel good, but Obama is a side-show.
We're going to elect Grandpa McCain. The presidential campaign proper hasn't even started yet & that's already clear. Popular sentiment reinforced by the usual vote-rigging. Immediately upon election, McCain, who clearly has no ability for the job & probably less interest, will be happily shoved aside by his vice president. Just as Cheney shoved aside Bush.
So who will that VP be? Will it be someone from Cheney's office? Someone from Rummy's? Will it be a Congressional hack? Could it be The Hammer? Will Karl Rove pick the VP, or will Cheney?
What a slick system this is! Let vain, egotistical presidential wanna-bes exhaust themselves, spend a billion bucks apiece, only to get out-hustled at the last minute by the Republican VP & a corrupt electoral system. A VP who coasts effortlessly into office.
McCain may be an even better foil that GW Bush. McCain might actually pass away from natural causes during his term, elevating the VP to legitimate command.
Four years of campaigning and we still do not know the name of our next leader. But we can speculate. Knowing both the requirements for the job, and the pool of men available, who do you think Cheney's successor will be?
Obama is a lawn jockey, an oreo, an Uncle Tom. He is a charlatan. Glen Ford over at Black Agenda Report has Obama's number.
The only reason to choose Obama is wrongheaded partisanship in a fettered mindset that believes several things:
1) We can only choose those candidates that the mainstream infotainment media anoint as The Chosen
2) There is a meaningful difference between Democrat and Republican at the Federal level -- and especially in the Senate and Presidential races
3) The act of voting is not corrupted by the Electoral College
4) The act of voting is not corrupted by external chicanery (i.e. electronic vote machine hacking, polling place goon squads for intimidation, ballot manipulation)
5) The result of the popular vote will not be discarded by the US Supreme Court (see Bush v Gore)
6) The voting process has not been corrupted by money to the point where no candidate cares about individual citizens who struggle below the upper and upper middle economic classes
7) The fact that Barack Obama is funded by people who support the Bush-Cheney agenda is irrelevant
8) The fact that Barack Obama is advised by people who support the Bush-Cheney agenda is irrelevant
9) Barack Obama's pledge to "do whatever it takes" to protect Israel is irrelevant and/or is good diplomacy
Since all 9 points are wrong in their perspective and conclusion, there is no reason to vote for Barack Obama.
But of course, foolish NPR/PBS worshiping soi-dissant "liberals" and "progressives" think it's a huge accomplishment to have a (fake) Black man running for President. So they'll vote for him, ensuring that the current foreign and domestic policies continue uninterrupted -- albeit with a shiny, happy facade of fake-humanism.
The question to Obama needs to be re-phrased. "Senator Obama, you're on the record as saying that impeachment needs to be reserved for 'exceptional circumstances'. Given that this administration has started a war of aggression (the 'supreme international crime' according to the American prosecutor at Nuremburg) based on lies to the American people, the US Congress, and the United Nations, and given that this administration has implemented a widespread program of systematic torture of people who are only suspected of guilt (which the President has admitted was done with his full knowledge and blessing) and whose innocence has been corroborated by their subsequent release, could you please give us two or three examples of the 'exceptional circumstances' that in your opinion are deserving of impeachment?
Evan writes, "Since all 9 points are wrong in their perspective and conclusion, there is no reason to vote for Barack Obama."
This reasoning would apply to ANY Democrat or Republican. It has nothing to do with Obama's racial authenticity, which is obviously important to Evan. The issue of authenticity is indeed being debated in the Black Agenda Report, but nobody there is fouling the site with terms like "oreo" and "lawn jockey."
You are mistaken. The reasoning applies to Obama. It would not apply to "any" Democrat or Republican. If I had meant to apply it that broadly, I would have done so. Besides, Mr Floyd's essay was about Obama. Quit trying to change the subject, Joe.
As to your pretense at offense, you'd be a lot better off if you stopped trying to psychoanalyze people you don't know. My point about Obama's race is another indicator of his fraudulence. He trades on his Blackness while he turns his back on those Black folks who supposedly helped form his views. I suppose you would prefer that we ignore the rebuking of Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
So apparently I've offended your NPR/PBS "liberal" sensitivities. Gee, I am almost sorry about that. I am so near to sorry that I'll tell you another one. Barack Obama is like Al Jolson in blackface, singing "Mammy!" He's pretending at Blackness to make a buck.
I guess fraudulence means nothing to you.
I mentioned the problems with Obama because Mr Floyd's essay deals with Obama.
If you think that it matters whether people vote for Obama, Clinton or McCain, then I submit that you are the one who has a fouled perspective and misplaced priorities.
And if it offends you for me to mention RACE when Obama himself is trading on his RACE, then I submit you are trying to obscure things for Obama's benefit. If you want to support Obama, try Daily Kos or Wonkette or Smirking Chimp. You'll find plenty of fellow Obamaphiles over there.
Well said, Mr. Floyd. The sad comedy/tragedy of the national election shall parade accross the nation and the world,the usual suspects will congratulate the nation for affirming that "democracy" is strong and healthy. There may be some issues which are troubling, however, we may rest assured that really smart people are gonna fix it all up and make it better. Vox populi...
Since everything we do now has global, disastrous consequences, Debbie and everyone else on the planet has a right question our internal political processes, such as they are, which are utterly confusing to the rest of the world, believe me. But beyond that, her question is devastatingly valid: we have NO ONE to vote for, and are stuck with whatever profiteering shill is put up by the corporatocracy, in rigged elections. She wonders what the hell we, as citizens, can do about this apalling situation, and probably doesn't understand why there isn't rioting in the streets, nationwide. She gives us more credit than we deserve.
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