Stephan Richter — The liberal international order: Just who shredded it?

Smackdown.

To see where we are — the United States needs to take a look at it's recent past.…

The truth is that it wasn’t Putin — or even Trump now — as much as George W. Bush and his reckless foreign policy cowboys — remember Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, all names that should live in infamy — who did most of the shredding of that liberal international order.

They committed acts of war that were clearly criminal in nature. Their only saving grace was — and is — that they have a U.S. passport.

Otherwise, they would all find themselves in the dock at the ICC in The Hague, where indeed they belong.…

Still, Obama did not break with his predecessor’s Bush league approach. Deliberately obscure mandates in Iraq simply changed topic, gone were the torture memos, in where drone strike memos.

Put yourself into the shoes of a Russian or Chinese policymaker for a moment – and ask any one of these four questions:

Salon
The liberal international order: Just who shredded it?
Stephan Richter | the publisher and editor-in-chief of The Globalist

Kate Martin — Neil Gorsuch was instrumental in defending George W. Bush’s torture program

When Gorsuch took a job at the Justice Department in 2005, the department — then headed by President Bush’s former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales — was in the midst of defending radical claims of unreviewable presidential authority to act in the name of national security. Gorsuch, as Principal Deputy to the Associate Attorney General, became deeply involved in that work. 

President Bush claimed that he could act not only without Congress, and in secret, but that he could violate the law if he decided that national security required it, and the courts had no power to review his actions. These were not academic claims, they were made in defense of outrageous abuses of individual rights carried out in the name of the “war against terror.”…

While the documents about Mr. Gorsuch’s tenure at DOJ working on this case are still incomplete, they contain no indication that he disagreed with or questioned any of these radical legal positions taken by the administration....

Think Progress
Neil Gorsuch was instrumental in defending George W. Bush’s torture program

Kate Martin | Senior Fellow at American Progress

Also

Gorsuch appeared slightly flustered when Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California – the top Democrat on the Republican-majority committee and an influential member of the Senate Intelligence Committee – pressed him on his role advising President Bush in drafting U.S. policy on torture.

She brought up several memos and emails detailing his role helping the White House conclude that "enhanced interrogations" were legal, a memo he drafted helping top Bush aides sell that notion to the public and agreed that a controversial program allowing government surveillance on American citizens without a warrant as part of the war on terror.

Gorsuch said he didn't remember the memos and was reluctant to talk about his "loose recollection of something that happened 11 or 12 years ago." But he reminded Feinstein that he was essentially a lawyer working for a client and not a judge, and he didn't always agree with the administration's more assertive conclusions – although he wouldn't say which ones..

"There was a tug of war in the White House" on the issue, Feinstein answered, and "I want to know which side you were on."

He refused to say.

Thumbs down on confirmation.

US News
Gorsuch Questioned Early on Torture Memo

Joseph P. Williams, Staff Writer

Harper on the 28 pages

Timing is everything, and the timing of George Bush's decision to classify the 28 page chapter is a perfect case in point. In December 2002, when the President banned the publication of the chapter, the Administration was in the final phases of planning the invasion of Iraq. The two "reasons" given for the plan to overthrow Saddam Hussein were: He was amassing weapons of mass destruction, and he had been behind 9/11.

Had the chapter been published, it would have been near impossible for Bush and Tony Blair to get away with the Iraq invasion. It would have been like FDR announcing he was declaring war against China, not Japan after Pearl Harbor.

The issues behind the evidence of Saudi involvement in 9/11--whether at the very top of the regime and the Monarchy, as former Joint Inquiry co-chairman Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) insists, or at some mid-level where Al Qaeda sympathizers had resources to pour into the 9/11 plot--are still with us, and will not be laid to rest by the release of the 28 pages.

Sic Semper Tyrannis
Harper on the 28 pages
Col. W. Patrick Lang, US Army (ret.), former military intelligence officer at the US Defense Intelligence Agency

Sic Semper Tyrannis — JCS J-2/DIA told Rumsfeld and Myers there was no WMD in September, 2002

The basic story here is that Rumsfeld asked the J-2 in September 2002 what we (the US) did not know about Iraqi WMD programs. DIA labored and produced the enclosed report that said clearly that although they (J-2/DIA) had many assumptions about Iraqi WMD, the authors knew precious little about the actual programs.

This was not a desired response and Rummy sent the paper to General Richard Myers, USAF (then chairman of the JCS) covered by a rather panicky sounding note.

So, pilgrims, the BS about the "go to war decision" having been based on bad intelligence is just that, BS.

I don't think Bush 43 lied to the American people. I think he was bull-dozed by the neocons like most Americans.…

Seems like there ought to be a criminal conspiracy charge available for what Rumsfeld and Myers did and also did not do about this.…

Sic Semper Tyrannis
JCS J-2/DIA told Rumsfeld and Myers there was no WMD in September, 2002

Matthew Yglesias — Trump finally went too far for Republicans

Donald Trump finally made some bold and provocative claims that were largely true, and the Republican Party finally closed ranks to attack him.

Saying Mexican immigrants are rapists didn't do it. Calling for a return of torture didn't do it. Calling for a ban on Muslim immigration didn't do it. Raising questions about Barack Obama's status as an American citizen didn't do it. Pretending that thousands of Muslims in New Jersey cheered 9/11 didn't do it.

So what did it? Trump said that invading Iraq was a disaster, that the country was mislead into invading Iraq by the Bush administration, and that the claim that Bush kept the country safe from terrorism is ridiculous because 9/11 happened on his watch.

It was a bizarre and telling moment, in which the battered forces of the Republican establishment finally picked themselves up off the floor specifically in order to defend some of its least-defensible conduct of the 21st Century.…

Trump lays it on the line and the GOP freaks out:

"They lied," Trump said, "they said there were weapons of mass destruction and there were none. And they knew there were none. There were no weapons of mass destruction."

Trump is one rude dude.

"While Donald Trump was building a reality TV show," Jeb Bush retorted, "my brother was building a security apparatus to keep us safe. And I'm proud of what he did."

Then Trump cut in with his uppercut: "The World Trade Center came down during your brother's reign. Remember that?"

Enter Marco Rubio:

According to Rubio, the president to blame for 9/11 was not the president who was in office on 9/11, it was the guy who left office nine months earlier. "The World Trade Center came down because Bill Clinton didn’t kill Osama bin Laden when he had the chance to kill him."

The audience loved this, and were mightily displeased when Trump observed: "George Bush had the chance, also, and he didn't listen to the advice of his C.I.A."

Get out the popcorn. This is going to be an entertaining election cycle.

VOX
Trump finally went too far for Republicans
Matthew Yglesias

Lauren McCauley — Pentagon Asks Psychologists to Reconsider Torture Ban, Argues 'You Never Know...'

They're baaaack!

Common Dreams
Pentagon Asks Psychologists to Reconsider Torture Ban, Argues 'You Never Know...'

Lauren McCauley

'I Could Have Stopped Them': Ex-CIA Lawyer Defends Waterboarding Decision — Holger Stark interviews John Rizzo

One of the architects of the torture program explains it.

Spiegel Online
'I Could Have Stopped Them': Ex-CIA Lawyer Defends Waterboarding Decision
Holger Stark interviews John Rizzo

Jon Perr — The Law President Obama Did Not Faithfully Execute

Torture.

In February 2010, Scott Horton pointed out that the while legal action against members of the Bush Torture Team would be an extremely difficult task, in this case the prosecutors would have one major piece of evidence in their favor: 

Section 2340A of the federal criminal code makes it an offense to torture or to conspire to torture. Violators are subject to jail terms or to death in appropriate cases, as where death results from the application of torture techniques. Prosecutors have argued that a criminal investigation into torture undertaken with the direction of the Bush White House would raise complex legal issues, and proof would be difficult. But what about cases in which an instigator openly and notoriously brags about his role in torture? 

To be sure, Bush and Cheney proudly owned up to their roles in creating the regime of detainee torture they described as "enhanced interrogation techniques."

It's called thumbing your nose at the world. They all belong in a dock at The Hague. America will not be redeemed until these people are brought to justice, or if they die first be labeled for the criminals they admitted to being, in defiance of the law of the land they took an oath to uphold. Until then the US has no moral standing in the world. None. Zip. Zero.

PERRspectives

The Law President Obama Did Not Faithfully Execute
Jon Perr

See also, Jon Perr,  Cheney's Torture Defense is for the "Little Guys"

The Raw Story, Liz Cheney: ‘Despicable’ Obama slanders ‘patriots’ when he admits to post-9/11 torture

Elias Isquith, Senate Republicans prepare to unveil pro-torture report — 
Republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committee are still defending Dick Cheney's legacy at Salon