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Torture's cancerous spread

Well, one cannot say it was not inevitable.  As time goes on, those who served the Preznit in the Office of Legal Counsel go on to bigger and better things.

Jay Bybee to the Ninth Circuit.

John Yoo, back to Boalt Hall, the Op-Ed pages and some think tank.

And so on.  

[One wishes one-tenth of the people who get exercised about a lady getting gigged for hanging a peace symbol, would get bent out of shape over this.  These professorial appointments are thousands of times more dangerous than some knucklehead boss of a HOA.]

And, now, Robert Delahunty, to teaching impressionable young law students at the University of Minnesota.  

Who is Robert Delahunty?

Robert Delahunty looked like the perfect fill-in to teach a constitutional law class next term at the University of Minnesota. He had broad federal legal experience, and an impressive resume and was available in a pinch.

Yeah, but, like anything coming from a Repug admin, the catch is bigger than the benefit.  And, one is complelled to wonder why he was "available in a pinch".

Delahunty co-wrote a 2002 U.S. Justice Department memo concluding that captured al-Qaida and Taliban prisoners were not entitled to the protection of international treaties or federal laws. Critics charged the 2002 memo paved the way for the Bush administration to mistreat prisoners and ignore the Geneva Conventions. Amnesty International has called for Delahunty and other attorneys to be investigated for failing to meet professional standards in advising the president.

The University gives the negligent-in-due-diligence excuse.  For ordinary folks, of course, this leads to condemnation as morally unfit or worse, but for the exalted residents of Repug-land and college hiring offices, it's just a forgiveable oopsie.  

Morrison said U law school administrators knew Delahunty had experience with the Justice Department and knew of the prisoner controversies but "we quite frankly had not put the two pieces of that together." The offer was to teach one class for one term. He was picked because he was part of the St. Thomas faculty and recognized as a constitutional law scholar, he added.

Now, one would be compelled to ask what exactly he was working on while at OLC.  Of course, actually looking at his resume (linked below) shows us it's no oopsie....

His "representative scholarship" can tell us exactly where he lies on the spectrum of thought - repeatedly co-authoring with Torture-boy John Yoo:

The President versus International Law, with John C. Yoo, -- Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy - (forthcoming).

Presidential Power and International Law in a Time of Terror, 4 Regent Journal of International Law 175 (2006) (symposium).

The CINC Authority and the Laws of War, 99 American Journal of International Law Proc. 190 (2005).

Against Foreign Law , with John C. Yoo, 29 Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 291 (2005).

Moral Communities or a Market State?, with Antonio F. Perez, Houston Law Review (2005).

Emoluments Clause, The Heritage Guide to the Constitution (David F. Forte ed. 2005).

Against Foreign Law, with John C. Yoo, 29 Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy 291 (2005).

Statehood and the Third Geneva Convention, with John C. Yoo, 46 Virginia Journal of International Law 131 (2005).

Thinking About Presidents, with John C. Yoo, 90 Cornell Law Review 1153 (2005).

Structuralism and the War Powers: The Army, Navy and Militia Clause s, 19 Georgia State Law Review 1021 (2003).

The President's Constitutional Authority to Conduct Military Operations Against Terrorist Organizations and The Nations That Harbor or Support Them, with John C. Yoo, 25 Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy 488 (2002).

In other words, he's another torture-facilitating wingnut, masquerading in professorial tweeds.  Like Yoo, and like Wilhelm Stuckart*.  

Well, when caught out, stick to your guns, folks.  Just like Bushie:

Law school leaders plan to meet today with students but made clear on Tuesday that Delahunty is their choice.

Again, one is compelled to wonder why people can't be bothered getting bothered about slugs like Delahunty....

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* Co-authored the Nuremberg laws and represented the German Interior Ministry at the Wannsee Conference.  Another lawyer who put his lawyerly skills to work serving Power's seeking to undermine the rule of law.

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  • Display: Sort:
    But... but... (5.00 / 1) (#1)
    by Edger on Wed Nov 29, 2006 at 01:49:35 PM EST
    Of course torture works! It get results! Why all the whining?

    Torture is good. Torture makes the torturees say exactly what the torturers tell the torturees they want them to say. So torture produces confessions. Which are admissible in kangaroo courts where the 'interrogation' methods are not admissible, so the courts never have to deny the evidence.

    It's called streamlining. It's 'process improvement' pure and simple.

    How in the hell else are we going to produce enough self-confessed 'terrists' to justify the War On Thinking, anyway.

    Besides, it's fun:Retired Command Sergeant Major Eric Haney: a founding member of Delta Force, the military's elite covert counter-terrorist unit:

    The only reason anyone tortures is because they like to do it. It's about vengeance, it's about revenge, or it's about cover-up. You don't gain intelligence that way. Everyone in the world knows that. It's worse than small-minded, and look what it does. This administration has been masters of diverting attention away from real issues and debating the silly. Debating what constitutes torture: Mistreatment of helpless people in your power is torture, period. And (I'm saying this as) a man who has been involved in the most pointed of our activities. I know it, and all of my mates know it. You don't do it. It's an act of cowardice. I hear apologists for torture say, "Well, they do it to us." Which is a ludicrous argument. ... The Saddam Husseins of the world are not our teachers. Christ almighty, we wrote a Constitution saying what's legal and what we believed in. Now we're going to throw it away.


    there are americans (5.00 / 2) (#2)
    by Jen M on Fri Dec 01, 2006 at 03:53:26 AM EST
    Who have justified torture for at least 30 years. There was an 8th grade civics teacher who said it to my face while I was still waiting to know if I would ever see my father again.  "They are fighting communism"

    I remember most vividly a little old lady from a church in nebraska who, after hearing my dad describe his experiences in Brazilian  "interrogation", asked if this wasn't ok for communists.

    How many people have been released from prisons based on dna evidence after having been convicted of a crime because of a confession obtained under... duress? What of the recent stories comming out of Chicago about police interrogation?

    Lets not even get started on popular entertainment.

    We are at a point now in this country when we have to decide who we are, and who we want to be.

    Right now I am not very optimistic as to the what that choice will be.

    another crack in the wall (5.00 / 1) (#5)
    by scribe on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 10:49:27 AM EST
    The Military wrote Rummy a memo, after investigating, telling him that there were serious questions about the legality of the detention conditions of Padilla, al-Marri, and

    The WaPo reports, today, on the memo.

    A previously undisclosed Pentagon report concluded that the three terrorism suspects held at a brig in South Carolina were subjected to months of isolation, and it warned that their "unique" solitary confinement could be viewed as violating U.S. detention standards.

    According to a summary of the 2004 report obtained by The Washington Post, interrogators attempted to deprive one detainee, Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, a Qatari citizen and former student in Peoria, Ill., of sleep and religious comfort by taking away his Koran, warm food, mattresses and pillow as part of an interrogation plan approved by the high-level Joint Forces Command.

    So, since 2004, Rummy's folks knew there was a problem, and that the problem had been part of a deliberate plan.

    Interrogators also prevented the International Committee of the Red Cross from visiting at least one detainee, according to the report, which noted evidence of other unspecified, unauthorized interrogation techniques.

    Says the admin:  They're war criminals, but not really, so we won't let the ICRC visit them.  Another violation of Geneva.
    Of course, the Admin also refused to follow an ICRC recommendation, that Padilla be allowed a clock.

    The report by the Navy's inspector general was presented to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in May 2004 and was declassified in 2005. It was the first to raise the question of mistreatment of alleged enemy combatants inside the United States.

    Its details about conditions at the Navy brig in 2004 could prove critical to the fate of two of the "enemy combatant" detainees who spent years in the prison: Marri, the only one of the three who remains there and is facing the prospect of a special military trial, and Jose Padilla, a Brooklyn-born U.S. citizen now facing criminal charges in Miami.

    Attorneys for Padilla have argued in recent court filings that any abusive interrogation methods used on their client may mean that his statements to government agents were coerced and, therefore, inadmissible in his trial. He is accused of engaging in a conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens and provide material support to terrorists abroad.

    The attorneys told a federal judge in Florida yesterday that they have a right to learn about those interrogation methods, and they recently sought to subpoena Brig. Gen. Daryl D. Thiessen, the deputy inspector general who made the findings after inspecting the brig, and other senior military officers who worked at the prison. The attorneys said Padilla spent 1,307 days in a 9-by-7-foot cell in an isolated unit, was often chained to the ground for hours by his wrists and torso, and was kept awake at night by guards using bright lights and loud noises.

    Prosecutors asked the judge to quash the subpoenas, arguing that Padilla's attorneys are making "meritless" and "sensationalist" claims to turn the court's attention away from his alleged misconduct. In previous filings, the government decried the "absurdity of Padilla's assertion" that he was abused, noting that the government was "conscientious enough to tend to his toothache."

    So, let me get this straight.  While the allegations are, apparently, true - there was an interrogation plan approved at high levels and the plan included the treatment at issue - and the plan (and the way it was carried out) were the subject of both investigation and the conclusion that the plan and execution were arguably illegal, the same facts and arguments based on them are also "meritless" and "sensationalist".

    Riiiiiiiiiight.

    One has to wonder what the good professor Delahunty had to do with this, and John Yoo, the failed nominees and all the rest....

    More torture - one wonders what Delahunty had (none / 0) (#4)
    by scribe on Tue Dec 12, 2006 at 11:40:57 AM EST
    to do with this?

    I wonder (none / 0) (#6)
    by Jen M on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 11:12:07 AM EST
    what kind of internal struggle is going on in the military over this. Hushed, pervasive, fierce

    if there was one, it's already taken place (none / 0) (#7)
    by scribe on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 01:11:18 PM EST
    and the torturers seem to have won - Rummy kept promoting those who wanted to torture and would torture, and cashiering those who didn't.

    Personnel as policy....

    Parent

    its not over (none / 0) (#8)
    by Jen M on Thu Dec 14, 2006 at 02:04:24 PM EST
    if that memo just leaked

    Parent