VIDEO: Dear Chairman Conyers, Impeach Bybee. Love, John Podesta

By GottaLaff


(Watch the video all the way to the very last second. John Podesta was the head of Obama's transition team.)

Dear everyone:

Can we agree that torture is wrong, kills people, is ineffective, and illegal? Good. Now can we agree that when people break the law, they should be investigated and/or prosecuted? And that by ignoring the rule of law, a horrendous precedent is set?

And can we also agree that if the tables were turned, the Rushpublics would be looking back, not forward, as they did with President Clinton? And finally, can we agree that we shouldn't even have to ask these questions?

I trust that things will unfold the way they should. I am focusing primarily on the punditiots more than anyone... for now.

Dear Chairman Conyers,

I am writing to ask you to consider holding impeachment hearings against 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Jay Bybee, should he decide not to voluntarily resign.

As you are well aware, Judge Bybee is the only architect of the Bush administration’s torture program to currently hold public office.

A legal memorandum signed by Judge Bybee when he was the head of the Office of Legal Counsel and recently released by the Obama administration approved the use of cruel, inhuman, and degrading techniques, including waterboarding, slamming a detainee into a wall, depriving a detainee of sleep for up to eleven days at a time, and trapping a prisoner in a "confinement box" with insects in order to induce terror. The techniques endorsed by Judge Bybee’s memoranda violated U.S. law and our commitments under the United Nations Convention Against Torture.

On March 13, 2003, Judge Bybee was confirmed by a 74-19 vote in the Senate. During his Senate hearings, Mr. Bybee stonewalled the Judiciary Committee when asked about his role in national security matters. He said at the time, “As an attorney at the Department of Justice, I am obliged to keep confidential the legal advice that I provide to others in the executive branch." A number of Senators have now acknowledged that, had they known then what they now know, Judge Bybee would not have been confirmed.

Jay Bybee currently sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals, one level removed from the U.S. Supreme Court. He has taken an oath to uphold the Constitution. Yet, having issued opinions that violate the Constitution and concealed relevant aspects of his legal views and professional conduct from the Senate, Bybee has neither the legal nor moral authority to sit in judgment of others.

My organization, the Center for American Progress Action Fund, has collected signatures from approximately 20,000 Americans (see attached) who have expressed their deep-felt and sincere desire to see that Judge Bybee is held to account for authorizing torture. It is unacceptable to allow him to continue to serve in his current role. Judge Bybee should resign, but if he fails to do so, I urge you to begin impeachment proceedings against him.

Sincerely,

John Podesta
President and CEO, Center for American Progress Action Fund

I agree.

Sincerely,

Laffy

NYT editorial calls for impeachment of Judge Jay Bybee

By GottaLaff

Rachel Maddow mentioned the possibility of Bybee's impeachment the other day. Now the New York Times echoes the sentiment:

In his capacity as former head of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), Jay Bybee’s “name appears as the author of the August 1, 2002 memo justifying and authorizing clear acts of torture by the CIA.” For his willingness to engage in torturous legal reasoning, Bybee was awarded a lifetime seat on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by President Bush.

And he was approved by the Senate by a wide margin. Maybe he and Mukasey can become Facebook friends. The New York Times:

These memos make it clear that Mr. Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution. Congress should impeach him.

The California Democratic Party, which is holding its convention next weekend, will consider “a resolution from grassroots activists calling for Jay Bybee’s impeachment.”

I'm sure the Rushpublics would most certainly include him in their "activist judge" category.

Kidding... I'm kidding.

Photo Phun: Anchorage edition

By GottaLaff

Look what Wolfe Tone found:

Over at Celtic Diva's, she noted there's a new sign of spring (seen on 3rd Avenue) in Anchorage today.

Now that's change we can believe in.

Report: U.S. reconstruction in Iraq '$100 billion failure' --Pentagon 'put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures'

By GottaLaff

A must-read. Here are a few excerpts. I'm way too angry to snark:

An unpublished 513-page federal history of the American-led reconstruction of Iraq depicts an effort crippled before the invasion by Pentagon planners who were hostile to the idea of rebuilding a foreign country, and then molded into a $100 billion failure by bureaucratic turf wars, spiraling violence and ignorance of the basic elements of Iraqi society and infrastructure.

The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag — particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army — the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures.

In one passage, for example, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is quoted as saying that in the months after the 2003 invasion, the Defense Department “kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces — the number would jump 20,000 a week! ‘We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.’ ”

Mr. Powell’s assertion that the Pentagon inflated the number of competent Iraqi security forces is backed up by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former commander of ground troops in Iraq, and L. Paul Bremer III, the top civilian administrator until an Iraqi government took over in June 2004.

Among the overarching conclusions of the history is that five years after embarking on its largest foreign reconstruction project since the Marshall Plan in Europe after World War II, the United States government has in place neither the policies and technical capacity nor the organizational structure that would be needed to undertake such a program on anything approaching this scale.

The bitterest message of all for the reconstruction program may be the way the history ends. The hard figures on basic services and industrial production compiled for the report reveal that for all the money spent and promises made, the rebuilding effort never did much more than restore what was destroyed during the invasion and the convulsive looting that followed. [...]

The history contains a catalog of revelations that show the chaotic and often poisonous atmosphere prevailing in the reconstruction effort. [...]

Five years after the invasion of Iraq, the history concludes, “the government as a whole has never developed a legislatively sanctioned doctrine or framework for planning, preparing and executing contingency operations in which diplomacy, development and military action all figure.” [...]

Mr. Bowen’s deputy, Ginger Cruz, declined to comment for publication on the substance of the history. But she said it would be presented on Feb. 2 at the first hearing of the Commission on Wartime Contracting, which was created this year as a result of legislation sponsored by Senators Jim Webb of Virginia and Claire McCaskill of Missouri, both Democrats.

H/t: CLG