Torture -- The 'Blueprint That Led To Abu Ghraib'

April 7, 2008

by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, Ali Frick, and Benjamin Armbruster

TORTURE

The 'Blueprint That Led To Abu Ghraib'

Last Tuesday, the Defense and Justice Departments released a previously-classified 2003 memo, which claimed that "federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators who questioned al-Qaeda captives because the president's ultimate authority as commander in chief overrode such statutes." Written by John Yoo, who was then the deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), the memo is "similar [to], although much broader" than, the infamous 2002 torture memo, which was co-written by Yoo and redefined torture to be only "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." In the 2003 memo, Yoo also asserted that "many American and international laws would not apply to interrogations overseas" because they "would be unconstitutional as applied in this context." Like its 2002 predecessor, Yoo's 2003 memo was rescinded by Jack Goldsmith when he took over the OLC in December 2003 because of "the unusual lack of care and sobriety in their legal analysis." Even though many legal experts, such as former Army judge advocate general Thomas Romig, find Yoo's argument that "there are no rules in a time of war" to be "downright offensive," Yoo defends his memos as "near boilerplate." Far from seeing it as "boilerplate," former OLC lawyer Martin Lederman argues that Yoo's 2003 memo "is the source of the Nile for the abuse that occurred in Iraq in 2003."

CREATING THE 'CULTURE OF ABUSE': According to "some legal experts and advocates" who spoke to The New York Times, Yoo's 2003 memo "adds to evidence that the abuse of prisoners in military custody may have involved signals from higher officials and not just irresponsible actions by low-level personnel." Noting that OLC opinions are "binding on the Defense Department," Scott Silliman, the head of the Center on Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke University and a former Air Force lawyer," says Yoo's memo "effectively sidelined military lawyers who strongly opposed harsh interrogation methods." "The memo helped to build a culture that, in the absence of leadership from the highest ranks of the Pentagon, allowed the abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere," Silliman told the Times. Yoo rejects the idea that his legal opinions have any relation to detainee abuses that occurred in Iraq. "The 'culture of abuse' theory has no reliable evidence to support it," Yoo told The New York Times. But Lederman believes that Yoo's 2003 memo is "the blueprint that led to Abu Ghraib and the other abuses within the armed forces in 2003 and early 2004." His thesis is supported by the timeline of events surrounding the administration's deliberations on interrogation policy and the abuses at Abu Ghraib. According to Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba's report on Abu Ghraib, the "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" at the prison took place between October 2003 and December 2003, which was after Yoo issued his memo but before it was rescinded by Goldsmith.

DRUGGING DETAINEES?: In October 2006, lawyers for Jose Padilla, who was found guilty in 2007 of supporting terrorism overseas, claimed in court papers that U.S. authorities gave him "drugs against his will, believed to be some form of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or phencyclidine (PCP), to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations." Rather than directly denying Padilla's claim, the Defense Department simply claimed that it does not torture and "it has always been our policy to treat all detainees humanely." Now, the release of Yoo's 2003 memo lends support to allegations that the United States may have drugged detainees. In the memo, "Yoo advised top Bush administration officials that interrogators could employ mind-altering drugs if they did not produce 'an extreme effect' calculated to 'cause a profound disruption of the senses or personality.'" Jeffrey Kaye, a clinical psychologist who works with torture victims at Survivors International in San Francisco, told CQ's Jeff Stein that he believes such drugs "have been used." "I came across some evidence that they were using mind-altering drugs, to regress the prisoners, to ascertain if they were using deception techniques, to break them down," said Kaye.

FOURTH AMENDMENT FOOTNOTE: The release of Yoo's 2003 memo on interrogation also led to the revelation of another wide-ranging Bush administration legal opinion which claimed the war on terror trumped constitutional protections. A footnote in the 2003 memo states that the OLC "concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations." The footnote is referring to an October 2001 memo written by Yoo that "focused on the rules governing any deployment of U.S. forces inside the country 'in the event of further large-scale terrorist activities' by al-Qaeda." In effect, the memo meant that "for at least 16 months after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in 2001, the Bush administration believed that the Constitution's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures on U.S. soil didn't apply to its efforts to protect against terrorism." The memo was written "just days before Bush administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, briefed four House and Senate leaders on the NSA's secret wiretapping program for the first time." White House Spokesman Tony Fratto, however, says the wiretapping program, known as the Terrorist Surveillance Program, "relied on a separate set of legal memoranda." The same 2001 memo, according to a footnote in the 2002 torture memo, "also concluded that Posse Comitatus -- an 1878 statute barring the military from participating in "law and order" missions domestically, under most circumstances -- does not apply to the war on terror."

ENVIRONMENT -- NASA SCIENTIST WARNS MORE DRASTIC CUTS ARE NEEDED TO PROTECT CLIMATE: James Hansen, head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, warned the European Union today that its target of 550 parts per million of CO2 emissions -- "the most stringent in the world -- should be slashed to 350ppm" if "humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed." In a draft paper on the subject, Hansen relies on the earth's history, using samples taken from the bottom of the ocean that "allow CO2 levels to be tracked millions of years ago. They show that when the world began to glaciate at the start of the Ice age about 35 [million] years ago, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere stood at about 450ppm." Hansen warned that allowing the earth to rest at 450ppm "will probably melt all the ice" and create "a disaster -- a guaranteed disaster." Hansen has called for an immediate moratorium on the creation of new coal plants, without which, he states, "we don't have any chance of stopping global climate change." Last fall, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) issued "Global Warming Principles" that call for a 450ppm target.

IRAQ -- EXPERTS SAY U.S. NO CLOSER TO LEAVING IRAQ THAN IT WAS A YEAR AGO: The United States Institute of Peace (USIP) released a new report today stating that because "political progress is so slow, halting and superficial, and social and political fragmentation so pronounced," the United States "is no closer to being able to leave Iraq than it was a year ago." The new assessment -- which was conducted by the same experts that advised the Iraq Study Group (ISG) -- "predicts that lasting political development could take five to 10 years of 'full, unconditional commitment' to Iraq, but also cautions that future progress may not be worth the 'massive' human and financial costs" to the United States. The report also says that the recent security gains in Iraq are "due to factors that are outside U.S. control and therefore subject to change." "Reductions in troop levels will likely result in some degree of chaos and violence no matter what," the report finds, but adds that a rapid withdrawal would cause "massive chaos and even genocide." The White House "blocked efforts to reassemble" the ISG for a follow-up report even though former co-chair Lee Hamilton "was interested in a sequel timed to the [Iraq] assessment this week by Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker."

ECONOMY -- ECONOMIC CRISIS HITS BIG BUSINESS, MEMBERS OF CONGRESS: Last month, the New York Times reported that the banking and housing crises had moved "from Wall Street to Main Street" and was beginning to affect "communities that seemed insulated." Now the country's economic crisis is taking a toll on the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). Last year, the MBA was "thrilled to sign a contract to buy a fancy new headquarters building in downtown Washington." Since then, however, the group "has fallen on tough times as many of the subprime mortgages dispensed by some of its members proved dicey." The MBA is now finding it "harder than it imagined to pay its own mortgage," forced to make cuts to "expenses across the board." Roll Call reports today that members of Congress have also become "vulnerable to the financial woes" of the banking sector. "All told, tumbling share prices for more than a dozen of the most troubled banks and investment houses, which last week continued to write off record numbers of bad loans, may have cost 51 Members as much as $13.2 million in stock value during the past 15 months."

CNN reports that "President Bush is planning to address the nation Thursday morning about the Iraq war," following two days of congressional testimony by Amb. Ryan Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus. Bush "is expected to discuss the administration's decision to reduce combat tours of duty from 15 months to 12 months, as well as the future in Iraq."

Tomorrow on Capitol Hill, Gen. David Petraeus "is expected to call for halting troop reductions that began in December for about six months to assess the security situation." Petraeus's recommendation "would keep about 140,000 troops in Iraq -- 10,000 more than before the surge of troops last year."

USA Today reports that "[t]he percentage of recruits requiring a waiver to join the Army because of a criminal record or other past misconduct has more than doubled since 2004." Since October, "13% of recruits have entered the Army with conduct waivers" compared to 11% for all of last year.

"The national average price for gasoline jumped 5 cents the past two weeks according to the bi-weekly Lundberg Survey of 7,000 stations. The average price of self-serve regular gasoline Friday was $3.32 a gallon, mid-grade was $3.44 and premium was $3.55, according to the Lundberg Survey."

Last year, Congress adopted strict ethics rules "requiring members to disclose when they steered federal money to pet projects." Lawmakers, however, are still relying on "soft earmarks," in which they direct "billions of dollars to favored organizations by making vague requests rather than issuing explicit instructions to government agencies in committee reports and spending bills."

Government auditors are investigating the $2.6 billion Veterans Affairs employees charged to agency credit cards last year, which included "hundreds of thousands of dollars in government credit-card bills at casino and luxury hotels, movie theaters, and high-end retailers such as Sharper Image and Franklin Covey."

"Security officials have extinguished the Olympic flame amid heavy protests" in Paris, the AP reports. The torch was extinguished due to "pro-Tibetan protests" that "broke out along its path."

And finally: While traveling, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice likes to work out on the elliptical machine. White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, however, prefers bowling. While in Romania for the NATO summit, Bolten "sneaked off the first night for an evening of bowling, along with communications director Kevin Sullivan and some others." In Zagreb, Croatia, he also "hit the local Harley-Davidson store, where he bought a T-shirt. Then, in Sochi, he hit another bowling alley.

The research team that brings you The Progress Report and ThinkProgress.org needs summer interns! Click here for more information.

"After months of warning from senior Pentagon officials that the 15-month combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan are grinding on U.S. troops," the Bush administration will announce next week that the tours of duty will be shortened to 12 months.

MISSOURI: "Missouri residents heading to the store or going to the polls on Tuesday may find themselves being asked to sign a petition aimed at changing the Missouri Constitution to prohibit state-related affirmative action programs."

ALABAMA: Former governor Don Siegelman wants Karl Rove to appear before Congress and testify about Siegelman's prosecution.

ECONOMY: Deterioration in "states' revenue is likely to continue through the end of this year, and probably longer."

THINK PROGRESS: NATO allies rebuff President Bush on expansion, "looking forward now to the next president."

WONK ROOM: Oil industry apologists declare, "We like oil," "be thankful," "don't blame oil."

CROOKS AND LIARS: The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan: Donald Rumsfeld, David Addington, and John Yoo should fear being indicted as war criminals if they leave the United States.

VET VOICE: Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC) violates operations security in Iraq by revealing "critical information" as defined in Army regulations.

"From June 2007 through February 2008, deaths from ethno-sectarian violence in Baghdad have fallen approximately 90%. American casualties have also fallen sharply, down by 70%."
-- Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), 4/7/08

VERSUS

"Iraqi deaths rose from a low of 568 in December and 541 in January to roughly 721 in February to more than 1,082 in March. ... US troop deaths have also crept up, from 23 in December -- the lowest number since 2004 -- to 40 in January, 29 in February, and 38 in March."
-- Boston Globe, 4/7/08

Think Progress

The 'Blueprint That Led To Abu Ghraib'

Blogroll