This week the US Senate considered several amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), including one on accelerating the end of the war in Afghanistan, one on detention of US citizens and one preventing the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

Senate Amendment 3096 is a non-binding vote that expresses the Senate’s endorsement of the planned withdrawal from Afghanistan and calls for that timeline to be accelerated. It passed the Senate with strong bipartisan support (62-33), though neither of Missouri’s Senators voted for it. Republican Roy Blunt voted no and recently re-elected Democrat Claire McCaskill was one of 5 Senators that didn’t cast a vote.

The war in Afghanistan has now dragged on for over 11 years, the longest war in the history of the United States. Over 2,100 American troops have been killed and thousands more wounded. A poll in March of 2012 found that 69% of Americans thought we should not be at war in Afghanistan, up from 53% four months earlier. With the public increasingly ready for this long war to end, it’s time for officials from both parties to act. This week’s amendment is a start and it’s a shame that our Senators failed to get on board.

Another amendment (3018) to the NDAA made clear that the government is not authorized to detain citizens or lawful residents without charge or trial, even when we are at war. Though the right of habeas corpus is already guaranteed by the Constitution, it is good to see the Senate making this point after years of war and terror have eroded this fundamental right. Both of our Senators, McCaskill and Blunt, voted in favor of the amendment, which passed 67-29.

Though President Obama has made efforts to close down our nation’s offshore prison at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, Congress continues to prevent him from doing so. Amendment 3245 to the NDAA prohibits the use of funds to transfer or release the 160+ prisoners still held there with murky legal status. It passed (54-41) with McCaskill voting against it and Blunt voting for it. Though the legislation hasn’t been passed yet, and though the White House has made noises about vetoing the whole NDAA, the Republicans seem on track toward getting their wish to keep the prison at Guantanamo open.

Final scores: Blunt gets 1 out of 3 right, and McCaskill gets 2 out of 3 right with a disappointing abstention on the Afghanistan amendment. But hey, at least we don’t have to worry about out how Todd Akin would have voted on these.

One of the latest blasts from what former conservative pollitical operative David Brock termed the Republican noise machine concerns the ACLU’s John Adams Project which provides lawyers to detainees in Guantanamo. Yesterday Missouri Rep. Todd Akin (R-2nd), who seemingly has never encountered a rightwing smear that he doesn’t want to spread, rushed in to grab a megaphone in the service of the cause.

This time the sound and fury signifying nothing concerns the discovery of photographs of CIA torturer/interrogators in the cells of Guantanamo detainees.  The initial, legitimate concern was whether or not the identities of CIA operatives were illegally disclosed by lawyers from the John Adams Project.

In the aftermath of a Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation, which seems to have concluded that no laws were broken, the emphasis shifted to rightwing accusations that some of the DOJ investigators’ past associations may have biased their findings. As a consequence, a famously disinterested outside investigator, Patrick Fitzgerald, has been brought in to review the findings. The upshot is that the situation is under control and proceeding according to the appropriate laws and regulations.

If I, a simple citizen with no congressional research staff or interns to help me investigate, can glean this fact from simply looking at newspaper reportage, why does our boy Todd feel the need to send a bombastic letter – signed by 47 Republican Representatives, including  Missouri’s Blaine Luetkemeyer and Sam Graves – to the DOJ:

It has come to our attention that the Justice Department is investigating a group of lawyers associated with the American Civil Liberties Union and self-identifying as the “John Adams Project”. We understand that these lawyers may  have intentionally revealed the identify of covert CIA operatives – in clear violation of federal law – to members of Al Queda currently held at Guantanamo Bay. If true, these individuals were assisting our sworn enemies – terrorists who have attached our nation and our allies repeatedly.

… In particular we urgently request that you provide a full accounting to Congress of any indiviudals formerly or currently working for the federal government who are connected to the John Adams Project.

Where to start with this self-important drivel?  Why kick up a ruckus at this relatively late date when most of the facts are right out there in the open? Perhaps Akin and pals are trying to gin up a witch hunt to keep the fringewing rabble amused?

Of course, as Emptywheel notes, there is more going on here than meets the eye. Scandal-mongering this issue is a way to hobble detainees’ lawyers’ efforts to mount a defense by making it impossible to call witnesses. It also serves the CIA’s desire to deflect attention from the question of its interrogation (i.e., torture) methods; and, finally, it has the potential to erode the  “DOJ’s prosecutorial independence such that it cannot try any torture cases … .”

The role of Todd Akin in this nasty little smear campaign should make Missourians very ashamed. It should also leave Mr. Akin, if he has any integrity at all, feeling at least a little troubled since he takes every opportunity he can find to sententiously proclaim his devotion to the constitution.  As a New York Times editorial writer put it:

It is not the first time that the right has tried to distract Americans from the real issues surrounding detention policy by attacking lawyers. …

If lawyers who take on controversial causes are demonized with impunity, it will be difficult for unpopular people to get legal representation – and constitutional rights that protect all Americans will be weakened. That is a high price to pay for scoring cheap political points.

Obama on 60 Minutes via Think Progress:

That sounds like a change from A Small Clique Of Legal Extremists…

And that may put to rest some of the idle speculation from the inside the Beltway cocktail weenie enabler circuit.

For now we can only hope.

For those sickened by what our country has become in eight short years, yesterday was a really bad day.  Those who give a damn about the rule of law and the ideals that define America took a beating yesterday as every time we turned around more devastating information came to light about just how far these bastards have gone toward destroying everything this country is supposed to stand for.

“If the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong“

In late 2002, a top CIA lawyer gave a torture workshop to Pentagon officials intended to advise them on how far they could take their “harsh interrogation techniques” when interrogating detainees.  According to the minutes of the 02 October 2002 meeting, CIA counterterrorism lawyer Jonathan Fredman told a group of military and intelligence officials gathered at Guantanamo that torture is basically “subject to perception.”  It was in that meeting that he so blithely set the parameters at life and death.  “If the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong.”

In that document released yesterday by a Senate panel that is investigating how torture became a sanctioned practice suggests that CIA spooks were far more involved than has been previously known.  By the time the meeting took place, the CIA had already used waterboarding, in which a prisoner is subjected to controlled drowning, with the blessing of buA$h administration lawyers.

The new evidence, along with hours of questioning of former Pentagon officials at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee yesterday, shed light on efforts by top aides to then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to research and reverse-engineer techniques used by military survival schools to prepare U.S. service members for possible capture by hostile forces. The techniques — sensory deprivation, forced nudity, stress positions and exploitation of phobias, such as fear of dogs — would eventually be approved for use at Guantanamo Bay and would spread to U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq, including the Abu Ghraib prison. Nearly all were later rescinded.

The newly released documents show that in the summer of 2002, Pentagon officials compiled lists of aggressive techniques, soliciting opinions from the CIA and others, and ultimately implementing the practices over opposition from military lawyers who argued that the proposed tactics were probably illegal and could harm U.S. troops.

The memos and other evidence evoked intense bipartisan condemnation from members of the Armed Services Committee who spent nearly eight hours grilling some of the former and current officials involved with the decisions.

“The guidance that was provided during this period of time, I think, will go down in history as some of the most irresponsible and shortsighted legal analysis ever provided to our nation’s military and intelligence communities,” said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.).

Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), the committee chairman, asked: “How on Earth did we get to the point where a United States government lawyer would say that . . . torture is subject to perception?”

 In what is probably the most incendiary memo of all those released, Fredman and ten DoD officials and attorneys discussed torture with a banality befitting a standing lunch order.  In that meeting, Fredman, whose agency had already received permission from the administration to torture suspected terrorists laid out the key considerations to establishing a similar program  pogrom at the Cuban gulag.  He discussed the advantages and disadvantages of recording the torture on video, enthusiastically touted waterboarding, and calmly discussed methods to keep those meddling do-gooders from the International Committee of the Red Cross from interfering with the good time that stood to be had by all.   “If someone dies while aggressive techniques are being used, regardless of the cause of death, the backlash of attention would be severely detrimental,” he was quoted as saying.

A CIA spokesman refused to comment on the remarks by Fredman and instead attempted to sidestep the issue of responsibility and shift that to Yoo, Addison, Gonzales et al, while still maintaining – without one iota of evidence – that torture had saved lives.  “The far more important point is the fact that CIA’s terrorist interrogation program has operated on the basis of measured, detailed legal guidance from the Department of Justice,” he said. “The agency program, which has been carefully reviewed within our government, has disrupted terrorist plots and saved innocent lives.”

In spite of all evidence to the contrary, Tony Fratto spit in the face of logic, reason and truth and insisted that “abuse of detainees has never been, is not, and will never be the policy of this government.”  

In spite of all evidence to the contrary – that torture not only doesn’t work, but is actually detrimental to gathering usable, reliable intel, Fredman’s advocacy struck a courd with a lot of Pentagon officers who need to be cashiered out as e1s.  In the following weeks, these disgraces to their uniforms goosestepped toward fascism and fell in line behind some of the worst humanity has offered throughout history, including the Nazis, Hirohitos army and the perpetrator of the Spanish Inquisition.

Among those questioned yesterday about decisions was William J. “Jim” Haynes II, a former Defense Department general counsel who acknowledged pressing for more aggressive techniques but said the decisions were driven by the administration’s fear of more terrorist strikes.

“What I remember about the summer of 2002 was a government-wide concern about the possibility of another terrorist attack as the anniversary of September 11” approached, Haynes said. He also cited “widespread frustration” among Pentagon officials that summer about the slow progress on obtaining information from Guantanamo Bay detainees.

At the time, Pentagon officials acknowledged that the proposed methods faced opposition from experts specializing in international and military law.  One of those objecting was Mark Fallon, deputy commander of the Defense Department’s Criminal Investigation Task Force.  In mid-October 2002, Fallon sent a prescient email to his Penatagon colleagues in which he warned that the techniques that were being pursued would cause a backlash when what was going on would inevitably come out, and  America and the world would recoil in horror at what was transpiring.  “This looks like the kind of stuff Congressional hearings are made of,” Fallon wrote.  “Someone needs to be considering how history will look back at this.”

Would that they had heeded his warning.  But no one did, and now look where we are.  Standing nose to nose and attempting to retrieve our nation from the banality of evil that has been allowed to run roughshod over everything we were raised to believe America stood for.