Former Bush administration Office of Legal counsel lawyer John Yoo yesterday told a packed auditorium at the campus of Chapman University School of Law in Orange County, Calif. — where he is a visiting professor (Yoo is on leave from what he called “The People’s Republic of Berkeley”) — that More…
It was an odd but refreshing spectacle, to see U.S.-based human rights lawyers arguing to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that the United States has effectively insulated itself from accountability for torture and war crimes, and ought to be pushed by an international body to do better.
You’ve probably heard by now that the five alleged plotters of the 9/11 terrorist attacks have not only admitted to the deed once again, but cackled and boasted about it. As soon as the U.S. military commission approved for release their statement, titled “The Islamic Response to the Government’s More…
The CIA today acknowledged in a pending Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that it destroyed 92 tapes of harsh interrogations of detainees related to the “war on terror”.
The American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit seeking the information more than five years ago, and more than More…
If you happened to catch The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC last night, you saw TWI Legal Correspondent Daphne Eviatar breaking down the pros and cons of Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-Vt.) proposed “truth commission” to investigate the Bush administration’s alleged crimes. Daphne also talked about the problem More…
During President Obama’s first prime time press conference tonight, he was asked his opinion of Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-Vt.) proposal to start a comprehensive “truth and reconciliation commission” to investigate the conduct of the Bush administration over the last eight years. Obama skillfully waffled on his answer:
The consensus seems to be growing that, despite his oft-repeated desire to “look forward rather than backward” when it comes to the Bush administration’s authorization of the use of torture on detainees in American custody, President-elect Barack Obama is going to have to open some sort of official investigation More…
As part of its “Transitions” series, The New York Times devoted a full page Sunday to op-eds expressing varying viewpoints on what President-elect Barack Obama should do about “the legal legacy of the war on terrorism.”
It’s an odd way of framing the issue — and an inherent concession to More…
As I wrote on Wednesday, there are already several lawsuits from torture victims pending against the United States, and some legal scholars predict many more to come. So what if an Obama-sponsored investigative commission set up a means for compensating torture victims? That could save the government a whole More…
Earlier this year, the Senate Armed Services Committee held blockbuster hearings with key figures in the creation of the Bush administration’s torture policies. The hearings represented a watershed, tracing the metaphorical chain of custody for torture techniques — starting in 2001 and early 2002 — from the SERE school More…
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