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Old 05-04-2009, 04:56 PM   #41
MikeWaters
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The CIA demanded legal cover for their interrogations.

This was no doubt passed along by the White House to the Justice Dept. The Justice Dept. then provided the legal cover, to which Bybee's signature is attached.

CIA now gets to say "we did our due dilligence, it was legal", the WH gets to say "We asked the Justice Dept. and they said it was legal." And now Bybee gets to say "Torture is legal, I make no apologies."

It's clear that Bybee's best defense is to claim that the memos speak to his informed legal opinion. And that is why he broke his silence. He is protecting himself by claiming that even if the claim was idiotic and seemingly farcical, it is what he believed and continues to believe. Otherwise, he is setting himself up for conspiracy charges.

He is an evil liar.
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Old 05-04-2009, 05:05 PM   #42
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Originally Posted by MikeWaters View Post
The CIA demanded legal cover for their interrogations.

This was no doubt passed along by the White House to the Justice Dept. The Justice Dept. then provided the legal cover, to which Bybee's signature is attached.

CIA now gets to say "we did our due dilligence, it was legal", the WH gets to say "We asked the Justice Dept. and they said it was legal." And now Bybee gets to say "Torture is legal, I make no apologies."

It's clear that Bybee's best defense is to claim that the memos speak to his informed legal opinion. And that is why he broke his silence. He is protecting himself by claiming that even if the claim was idiotic and seemingly farcical, it is what he believed and continues to believe. Otherwise, he is setting himself up for conspiracy charges.

He is an evil liar.
Maybe when this is all over he can be put in charge of the "curing homosexuality" projects at the BYU.
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Old 05-04-2009, 05:09 PM   #43
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It isn't hard to come up with a law he broke. Torture is illegal. He would have committed conspiracy to commit torture.
Nonsense. Setting aside the fact that there is no uniform agreement on what constitutes torture, the whole point of the memos was for Bybee to give his opinion on what he thought was legal. For a prosecutor to show malfeasance here, he'd have to prove Bybee was actually advocating breaking the law.

I've read some conservative commentators who think Bybee made a poor argument. That's fair game. But to say he committed conspiracy to break the law is really silly.
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Old 05-04-2009, 05:13 PM   #44
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Nonsense. Setting aside the fact that there is no uniform agreement on what constitutes torture, the whole point of the memos was for Bybee to give his opinion on what he thought was legal. For a prosecutor to show malfeasance here, he'd have to prove Bybee was actually advocating breaking the law.

I've read some conservative commentators who think Bybee made a poor argument. That's fair game. But to say he committed conspiracy to break the law is really silly.
Yeah, it's really silly to think that Bybee was ordered to produce a document that provided legal justification for torture.

Let me put on my tinfoil hat for even thinking of such an outrageously improbable thing.
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Old 05-04-2009, 05:17 PM   #45
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Yeah, it's really silly to think that Bybee was ordered to produce a document that provided legal justification for torture.

Let me put on my tinfoil hat for even thinking of such an outrageously improbable thing.
I submit that no sane prosecutor would attempt to bring charges on such a flimsy premise without more evidence than we now have.

You're talking about using the law to punish political differences. That's dangerous ground.
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Old 05-04-2009, 05:22 PM   #46
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I submit that no sane prosecutor would attempt to bring charges on such a flimsy premise without more evidence than we now have.

You're talking about using the law to punish political differences. That's dangerous ground.
that's why we need an independent prosecutor. to investigate this.
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Old 05-04-2009, 05:43 PM   #47
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Nonsense. Setting aside the fact that there is no uniform agreement on what constitutes torture, the whole point of the memos was for Bybee to give his opinion on what he thought was legal. For a prosecutor to show malfeasance here, he'd have to prove Bybee was actually advocating breaking the law.

I've read some conservative commentators who think Bybee made a poor argument. That's fair game. But to say he committed conspiracy to break the law is really silly.
You saying it is silly doesn't make it silly.

Let's take an extreme hypothetical: let's say Bybee wrote a memo that said it is ok for the president to commit murder. It clearly is not ok, but Bybee wrote a document purporting to give him legal justification to commit murder. That would certainly be conspiracy to commit murder (he wrote the document knowing it would be relied upon and knowing what he wrote wasn't an accurate statement of the law).

Now back to this scenario: Bybee knew torture is illegal (he mentions that fact in his memo). His employer (the DOJ) had prosecuted many people in the past (successfully) for violating that law by waterboarding American citizens. Waterboarding has been declared torture by the US government multiple times in the past and has prosecuted people who waterboarded others. Now Bybee wants to claim he didn't know it really was torture or that the position his employer took routinely in the past was that it was torture? He knew it would be relied upon (that is the point of a legal memo), and knew (or should have known) that it was illegal. Conspiracy to commit torture. It isn't a stretch at all.

Waters is exactly right when he says that is why Bybee is publicly claiming he really believed what he wrote. That is his only possible defense (if ignorance can be a defense to this form of conspiracy). What he is saying publicly doesn't square with what he is saying privately, by the way.
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Old 05-04-2009, 05:51 PM   #48
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You saying it is silly doesn't make it silly.
Of course not. Which is why I explained my reasoning.

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Let's take an extreme hypothetical: let's say Bybee wrote a memo that said it is ok for the president to commit murder. It clearly is not ok, but Bybee wrote a document purporting to give him legal justification to commit murder. That would certainly be conspiracy to commit murder (he wrote the document knowing it would be relied upon and knowing what he wrote wasn't an accurate statement of the law).
Totally absurd. Again, setting aside the fact that murder is far more clearly defined than torture, I still don't see the "conspiracy" here. Were Bybee to have written a memo that stupid, he should be fired, not prosecuted. Give me a break.

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Now back to this scenario: Bybee knew torture is illegal (he mentions that fact in his memo). His employer (the DOJ) had prosecuted many people in the past (successfully) for violating that law by waterboarding American citizens. Waterboarding has been declared torture by the US government multiple times in the past and has prosecuted people who waterboarded others. Now Bybee wants to claim he didn't know it really was torture or that the position his employer took routinely in the past was that it was torture? He knew it would be relied upon (that is the point of a legal memo), and knew (or should have known) that it was illegal. Conspiracy to commit torture. It isn't a stretch at all.

Waters is exactly right when he says that is why Bybee is publicly claiming he really believed what he wrote. That is his only possible defense (if ignorance can be a defense to this form of conspiracy). What he is saying publicly doesn't square with what he is saying privately, by the way.
Again, I'm no lawyer, but the commentary I've read suggests that a prosecutor would have to prove he knowingly advocated illegal behavior. It is impossible to come to that conclusion (based on the info we have) without a tinfoil hat. In fact, the whole point of the memo was to legally justify it.

No prosecutor is going to touch this. Moreover, the American people are not interested in seeing it happen either. This is a lose-lose for Obama, politically and legally.
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Old 05-04-2009, 05:55 PM   #49
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Is there not a little bit of hypocrisy in sending low-level Nazi concentration camp collaborators to death sentences and life-in-prison while at the same time stating "no one who committed torture under orders will be held responsible"?

Bybee is feeling the heat, because if anyone will be the designated scapegoat, it is him. But he must be comforted by the knowledge that both the GOP and leaders in the Democratic party were complicit. That is, the people that hold the power to take him down, are also aligned with his interest in covering this up.

I wonder what it would feel like, to be in a stake meeting, and hear Bybee's name called during a sustaining. What it would feel like to stand up, raise your right arm, and loudly say, "I am opposed." Ah, just dreams.....
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Old 05-04-2009, 05:58 PM   #50
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I submit that no sane prosecutor would attempt to bring charges on such a flimsy premise without more evidence than we now have.

You're talking about using the law to punish political differences. That's dangerous ground.
"Political differences?" That is how you view the subject of torture now? Just another political difference?
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