The Washington Independent

Torture

More McCarthyism From Liz Cheney’s Crew

By | 03.15.10 | 11:00 am

After being repudiated by pillars of the GOP legal establishment over a video that calls Justice Department lawyers who represented Guantanamo detainees “the al-Qaeda Seven,” you might think Liz Cheney’s group Keep America Safe would back away from its gutter McCarthyism. But then you don’t know Liz.

Today’s installment More…

Rove ‘Proud’ of Waterboarding

By | 03.12.10 | 10:06 am

Compassionate conservatism at work. One wonders if George W. Bush’s presidential library will feature an interactive waterboarding exhibit.

Jack Bauer Does Not Exist, People

By | 03.11.10 | 9:45 am

One more thing about former MI5 chief Eliza Manningham-Buller and her charges about being kept in the dark by the U.S. on torture. According to the Independent, Dame Eliza said that the Bush administration grew enamored of torture with the aid of a certain television show…

How CIA Officials Actually Waterboarded People

By | 03.09.10 | 1:15 pm

A few years ago, a pal of mine named Malcolm Nance testified to a congressional panel about how he was waterboarded. Nance used to instruct Naval Special Forces in how to resist torture, and part of their instruction was, inevitably, to undergo it themselves. Since the CIA’s contract psychologists essentially More…

Key Figure in Bush’s Military Commissions Set for Obama Job

By | 02.09.10 | 6:00 am

A key behind-the-scenes architect of the Bush administration’s first version of the military commissions for terrorism suspects — which the Supreme Court found to unconstitutionally restrict the legal rights of detainees — will take a central Pentagon position dealing with detainee policy for the Obama administration.

William Lietzau, a Marine More…

Civil Libertarians Reject Obama’s Guantanamo Closure Plan

By | 02.05.10 | 6:00 am

If there was any doubt that Republicans in Congress will oppose this year’s push from President Obama to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) speech Wednesday to the Heritage Foundation ought to have laid it to rest. In the course of a half hour’s worth More…

Intel Chief Presents Obama With Another Headache

By | 01.21.10 | 6:00 am

If President Obama didn’t have enough headaches after the loss of the Democrats’ filibuster-proof Senate majority on Tuesday night, another one emerged for him at a Senate hearing on Wednesday morning: Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence.

During the first in a battery of congressional hearings about the failed More…

Surprise! John Yoo Believes in Broad Executive Powers

By | 01.04.10 | 7:42 pm

Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo has been spewing his grandiose views on presidential power ever since leaving the Bush administration. So although his latest book, “Crisis And Command,” is an unusually ambitious 446-page historical survey of executive power from George Washington to George W. Bush, his More…

Yoo Never Met Bush but Would Recommend He Torture People All Over Again

By | 12.29.09 | 3:57 pm

In a forthcoming Q & A to be published in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo tells Deborah Solomon that he never met President George W. Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney, but that he would advise them all over again that More…

Conservatives Attack Administration for Upholding Constitution

By | 12.29.09 | 1:23 pm

The Wall Street Journal, Pat Buchanan and others are already condemning the Obama administration for treating Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as a civilian criminal rather than an illegal warrior to whom we can presumably do whatever we please. We are in “a war,” The Journal More…