Rep. Schakowsky: Tough Guys Hayden & Mukasey Defend Torture, Decry Memos Release - Why They're Wrong

[Hissyspit]

http://www.alternet.org/rights/137726/tough_guys_hayden_and_mukasey_defend_torture%2C_decry_release_of_the_olc_memos%3A_why_they%27re_wrong

Tough Guys Hayden and Mukasey Defend Torture, Decry Release of the OLC Memos: Why They're Wrong
By Rep. Jan Schakowsky, AlterNet. Posted April 22, 2009.

Former Bush officials are trying to avoid accountability for their inhumane crimes. There is much you can do to make sure they don't get away with it.

Editor's Note: Since the release last week of Bush-era government memos authorizing torture against suspected terrorists, momentum has been building to hold the architects of these inhumane, illegal policies accountable. In a piece published on AlterNet, (published here on Democratic Underground) David Swanson notes that there are many things you can do to help spur legal action against officials and lawyers who greenlit torture and to make sure the Obama administration doesn't sweep the issue under the rug. Writes Swanson:

There are a great many ways you can advance the cause of accountability, and they can all be found at http://prosecutebushcheney.org.

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No timid wimp is former CIA Director Michael Hayden. And he's not reluctant to tell you so...

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In fact, it was the torture described in these memos, the existence of secret prisons, Guantanamo Bay, and Abu Ghraib that endangered the security of the United States. What better tools could there be to inflame and recruit new terrorists and instill hatred for our country throughout the Muslim world and beyond? Still Mukasey and Hayden clearly believe that these techniques should have been used and should be used in the future. They are in favor of torture.

Hayden and Mukasey accuse the no-torture policy of inviting "the kind of institutional timidity and fear of recrimination that weakened intelligence gathering in the past, and that we came sorely to regret on September 11, 2001." That's a version of history I actually hadn't heard espoused by anyone ever before -- that had the intelligence community not been weakened by timidity and fear, 9/11 might not have happened. All this time I thought it had more to do with the fact that the White House did nothing to follow up on the August 6, 2001 daily briefing entitled "Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S." that included the warning that "FBI information... indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings..."

The Michaels Hayden and Mukasey assert that "public disclosure of the OLC opinions, and thus the techniques themselves, assures that terrorists are now aware of the absolute limit of what the U.S. government could do to extract information from them." Certainly the men who served as CIA Director and Attorney General must be aware that the secret of these techniques has been known by anyone who could read a newspaper beginning as long ago as December 26, 2002. That's when Dana Priest and Barton Gellman of the Washington Post reported on "stress and duress" interrogation tactics. Yes, everyone already knew about this dirty secret, and many have long been genuinely repulsed and offended by the attitude of one official who was quoted years ago as saying, "If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job."