Jane Mayer: The Bush Six

[babylonsister]

The Bush Six
by Jane Mayer April 13, 2009


About a year ago, a book came out in England that made a fascinating prediction: at some point in the future, the author wrote, six top officials in the Bush Administration would get a tap on the shoulder announcing that they were being arrested on international charges of torture.

If the prediction seemed improbable, the background of the book’s author was even more so. Philippe Sands is neither a journalist nor an American but a law professor and a certified Queen’s Counsel (the kind of barrister who on occasion wears a powdered horsehair wig) who works at the same law practice as Cherie Blair. Sands’s book, “Torture Team,” offers a scathing critique of officials in the Bush Administration, accusing them of complicity in acts of torture. When the book appeared, some scoffed. Douglas Feith, a former Pentagon official, dismissed Sands as “a British lawyer” who “wrote an extremely dishonest book.”

Last week, Sands’s accusations suddenly did not seem so outlandish. A Spanish court took the first steps toward starting a criminal investigation of the same six former Bush Administration officials he had named, weighing charges that they had enabled and abetted torture by justifying the abuse of terrorism suspects. Among those whom the court singled out was Feith, the former Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy, along with former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; John Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer; and David Addington, the chief of staff and the principal legal adviser to Vice-President Dick Cheney.

In Washington the other night, over a cup of camomile tea, Sands described the behind-the-scenes role he played in spurring the Spanish court to action. He paced his hotel room, seeming by turns proud and stunned at what he had done. “This is the end of these people’s professional reputations!” he said. “This is no joke. We’re talking about the serious potential deprivation of liberty.”

Sands said that he had “no personal vendetta” against the Bush Administration, but he does see a link between his family history and his chosen profession. His mother and her parents were Viennese Jews who barely survived the Holocaust; his mother spent the first seven years of her life in hiding, away from her family. “It inculcated a burning sense of being aggrieved at wrongdoing, and at the failure of people to take responsibility for their actions,” Sands said.

more...

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2009/04/13/090413ta_talk_mayer?ref=fp5

[azul]

1. What I can't quite fathom is how many people in the US supported torture.

Was it news misrepresentations that it worked, or was not torture if it was labeled such by lawyers in some authority positions, or from watching fiction like 24 baloney?

Enough people without question followed these orders or supported these actions to keep this criminality rolling, and still enough exist that do not press for the rule of law.

[Me.]

2. Who Is The 6th?

I see 5 mentioned, have I missed one?

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

3. Rummy?

:shrug:

[Me.]

4. Google Was My Friend

Jay Bybee. Looks like Rummy isn't being frosted...yet

[seafan]

5. The six are pictured in the OP of this thread:

Dick "Dark Side" Cheney is seriously afraid of prosecution.

[Elidor]

6. Interesting

It is hard to predict what will happen next, but, if arrest warrants are issued, the Obama Administration may be forced either to extradite the former officials or to start its own investigation. Sands, who admires Obama, said, “I regret that I have added to his in-box when he has so much else to sort out. But I hope he does the right thing. There’s not much dispute anymore: torture happened, and the law is clear—torture must be punished.”