Bush Officials Cleared of Torture By Loony Obama Justice Department Officials
Posted by Jim Hoft on Saturday, February 20, 2010, 2:46 PM
Barack Obama and Eric Holder filled their Justice Department with radical attorneys including 9 appointees who worked to defend Islamic terrorists during the Bush years. All of the 9 lawyers, according to Holder, are eligible to work on general detainee matters, even if there are specific parts of some cases they cannot be involved in.
Yesterday it was reported that this radical pool of attorneys cleared the two Bush attorneys who wrote memos that paved the way for waterboarding of terrorism suspects. Waterboarding was banned by the Obama administration despite the fact that it was a great success and saved thousands of American lives after 9-11.
Jennifer Rubin has more on this decision by the Obama Justice Department:
The Justice Department has finally closed a sorry chapter in its history — the attempt to criminalize the work of Department lawyers who rendered legal judgment on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques in the wake of the worst terrorist attack in American history. The Office of Professional Responsibility, as the Washington Post report notes, had doggedly pursued John Yoo and Jay Bybee, who as Justice Department lawyers authored memos providing advice and direction on enhanced interrrogation methods including waterboarding. In a Friday information dump (which tells you it does not aid the cause of the administration and those seeking Yoo’s and Bybee’s punishment), we got a glimpse at two drafts of OPR’s report, its final report, and then the recommendation of David Margolis, a career lawyer and Associate Deputy Attorney General.
Margolis’s report is 69 pages long. Margolis essentially shreds the work of OPR, finding no basis for a referral of professional misconduct for either lawyer. It is noteworthy that all throughout, Margolis adopts many of the criticisms of OPR’s work that outgoing Attorney General Michael Mukasey and his deputy Mark Filip rendered before leaving office at the end of the Bush administration.
At times the work of OPR itself seems to have violated the professional standards it was charged with enforcing. Sloppiness abounds…
The bottom line: Margolis finds the work of Yoo and Bybee “contained some significant flaws,” but that “the number and significance of them can now be debated.” (p. 68) What is clear is that there is no basis — and never was — for stripping these lawyers of their professional licenses, let alone criminally prosecuting them as many on the Left demanded.
Of course, we have to remember with this radical administration that– Waterboarding terrorist killers is bad… while infanticide is good.
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Published May 23, 2012 at 11:51 pm - 69 Comments
NC Cop commented:
The book “Courting Disaster” covers everything you need to know about the “torture” debate. It details the great lengths and care the Bush administration placed in these interrogations. They had strict guidelines and were not free to do whatever they wanted.
It also talks about the differences in the waterboarding of days of old and what the CIA did to KSM. It gives specific accounts of what plots were interrupted and how lives were saved.
This was a mere propaganda campaign by the Obama administration from day one.
I imagine everyone will be “cleared” after everything is said and done.
TaSS commented:
NC hit upon an important point.
The enhanced interrogation was only used in high valued cases and it DID interrupt plots and save lives.
It always amazes me how some people can feel so self-righteous regarding enhanced interrogation and yet walk away from the devastation that those now uninterrupted plots will cause on an innocent population.
How many lives it saved is an abstract but perhaps we will now begin to see how many lives reading Miranda rights to terrorists will cost.
Valerie commented:
They’re afraid of giving Yoo the public platform a trial of fact would provide. This way, they get to criticize him in writing, without having their assertions subject to any kind of review. They also have a free hand in writing their version of the official history. Too bad for them that the transcripts of the Abu Ghraib hearings are already of record.
NeoKong commented:
Seems like someone might be a little bit worried about some payback somewhere down the line and are hedging their bets. 3 years ain’t so long and some people may have a good memory.
Dell commented:
And yesterday, Congressman John Conyers said:
“For years, those who approved torture and abuse of detainees have hidden behind legal memos issued by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel,” Conyers stated. “The materials released today make plain that those memos were legally flawed and fundamentally unsound, and may have been improperly influenced by a desire to tell the Bush White House and the CIA what it wanted to hear.”
“The Office of Legal Counsel has a proud tradition of providing independent, high quality legal advice to the executive branch,” Conyers’ statement continues. “The materials released today make clear that the lawyers who wrote the torture memos did not live up to that tradition. … Given the serious nature of the issues raised in this report, the Committee intends to hold hearings on these matters in the very near future.” – via The Raw Story.
So, as you can plainly see, Conyers and Senator Patrick Leahy have no intention of closing the case. In fact, it’s their goal in life to rewrite the history and somehow smear George W. Bush and his administration. And they’ll do it if they have to throw Eric Holder under the bus.
brooklyn commented:
Noting the sophistry tries to claim the Bush Administration Lawyers used “poor judgment” ???
These Democrats are laughable.
Who determined this opinion, the ones who debased safe interrogation techniques by the USA which saved thousands of lives?
And the same Obama – Democrats who now are merely killing the Terrorists or sending them into the hands of foreign countries to be interrogated?
Change is a disaster…
Democrats are so arrogant and mindless.
It is a dangerous combination.
They probably tried everything to criminalize this issue, but in the end there was nothing there.
Just like the attempt to criminalize the legal right of President Bush to appoint Federal Attorneys. They laughably tried to made an issue of this, even after Clinton fired all of them during his tenure.
bg commented:
++
Bush Officials Cleared
CONGRATULATIONS!!
no surprise there..
we heard more than was available to know about water-
boarding, mostly fake but accurate MSM & Dem reports..
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Valerie commented:
John Conyers is up for re-election, and he’d been taking some heat because he’d promised to impeach George Bush.
And, here’s the spot that will beat him, if there’s a candidate to run against him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACbwND52rrw
Meanwhile, John Yoo has written a book, “The Powers of War and Peace.
We’ll eventually see who made the larger contribution to rational Constitutional discussion.
BarbaraS commented:
This was the dumbest thing Obama has pulled. He is destroying the whole system. When a president is elected, then his policies are in place. If the public doesn’t like it they can demonstrate against it. It is a very bad thing to criminalize politics. All I can hope is that when a reublican is president again, he will go after Obama and Holder the same way they have gone against Bush. This is unheard of and shows the naivity and pure classesness of Obama.
Jo commented:
Eric Holder in 1999 Freed many terrorists from US prisons at Hillary Clinton’s request to win favor for NY Puerto Rican votes.
bg commented:
++
TALK TO THE TALIBAN!!
PAY THEM TAXPAYER DOLLARS TO BEAT US!!
SEND THEM ALL TO YALE!!
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Lynn commented:
IMO, history will not be kind to the corruptocrat Obama and his minions.