Contempt of Congress...Ashcroft memo - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

tecoyah · 06-09-2004, 05:50 AM

Things are gettin' awful hot for this guy. Refusal to cooperate with congress to cover your ass, Run Rummy....Run.

http://www.news24.com/News24/World/I...539584,00.html

I can see the reasoning for wanting to keep this under wraps, but it is time this administration admits to the mistakes, so we can all move onto fixing them.

MSD · 06-09-2004, 09:22 AM

Quote:

Washington - The US attorney general on Tuesday refused to give lawmakers copies of a Justice Department memo that allegedly advised the White House that torture during 'war on terror' interrogations could be justified.

The Washington Post said an August 2002 memo sent by the justice department in response to a Central Intelligence Agency request for legal guidance said international laws against torture "may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations" conducted in the war on terrorism.

But Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to provide the memo to lawmakers on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

"We believe that to provide this kind of information would impair the ability of advice-giving in the executive branch to be candid, forthright, thorough and accurate at all times," Ashcroft said.

Ashcroft told lawmakers that while "this administration rejects torture," he said he could not provide specific details of communications between his office and the White House.

"There are certain things that in the interest of the executive branch operating effectively that I think it's inappropriate for the Attorney General to say."

Democrats expressed outrage at Ashcroft's refusal to provide the document.

Contempt of Congress

"You may be in contempt of Congress," warned Demcratic Senator Joseph Biden.

The memo, addressed to White House Counsel Alberto Gonzalez, reportedly said torturing a suspect in captivity "may be justified" if the US government employee involved "would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al-Qaeda terrorist network."

Arguments of "necessity and self-defence could provide justifications that would eliminate any criminal liability" later, said the 50-page document signed by Assistant Attorney General Jay Baybee that was obtained by The Washington Post.

Not getting enough

The memo served as basis for a report for Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, after commanders at the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, complained that they were not getting enough information from prisoners.

The August 2002 memo, The Washington Post wrote, argued that inflicting moderate or fleeting pain did not necessarily constitute torture, which "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death".

The daily said US Army manuals on interrogations were more restrictive, banning such practices as pain induced by chemicals or bondage; forcing an individual to stand, sit or kneel in abnormal positions for prolonged periods of time; and food deprivation.

A Human Rights Watch official expressed dismay at the 2002 memo.

"It is by leaps and bounds the worst thing I've seen since this whole Abu Ghraib scandal broke," said Tom Malinowski.

"It appears that what they were contemplating was the commission of war crimes and looking for ways to avoid legal accountability. The effect is to throw out years of military doctrine and standards on interrogations," he added.

filtherton · 06-09-2004, 09:50 AM

As long as saddam isn't torturing anybody, right.

pan6467 · 06-09-2004, 09:57 AM

Hmmm when you won't face the fact that you screwed up blame the past on someone else so that the present can be justified.

Is anyone else tired of the blame game and just wanting the mistakes we made uncovered and taken care of so that we don't make them again? We can blame and blame and blame but blaming is not going to fix anything in the past. Blaming for past mistakes only allows us not to look to closely at what is happening now.

Our weakness in tyhe eyes of terrorists and our enemies lies not in the "system" or whether we are ready or not. Our weakness lies in the fact we are divided and we blame others and we refuse to give on any issue for fear we may look weak. Our biggest weakness is our stubbornness and arrogance.
==============================
Ashcroft blames Clinton
14/04/2004 08:03 - (SA)

Washington - US Attorney General John Ashcroft on Tuesday laid the blame for the September 11 attacks on the Clinton administration as the official inquiry into the al-Qaeda strikes highlighted flaws in FBI action.

Ashcroft hit back after he was also accused of rejecting an Federal Bureau of Investigation request for extra funds the day before Osama bin Laden's followers flew hijacked airliners into New York and Washington in 2001.

The head of the Department of Justice faced intense questioning from the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

President George W Bush's administration has come under intense scrutiny over its counter-terrorism strategy in the months before the attacks which left nearly three thousand dead.

But the attorney general said the fault lay with the administration of President Bill Clinton that left office in January 2001.

Blind to enemies

"The simple fact of September 11 is this, we did not know an attack was coming because for nearly a decade, our government had blinded itself to its enemies," Ashcroft told the commission.

"The old national intelligence system in place on September 11 was destined to fail," he said.

Ashcroft claimed that when he carried out a review in February 2001, he found there was no order for US agents to kill bin Laden, despite previous attacks carried out by al Qaeda on American targets.

"My thorough review revealed no covert action programme to kill bin Laden," he said.

He said that even the order to capture bin Laden "was crippled by a snarled web of requirements, restrictions and regulations that prevented decisive action by our men and women in the field."

"Even if they could have penetrated bin Laden's training camps they would have needed a battery of attorneys to approve the capture."

Clinton ordered a Cruise missile strike against suspected bin Laden training camps in Afghanistan in 1998.

And Clinton's national security advisor Samuel Berger told the panel last month: "I assure you, they were not delivering an arrest warrant. The intent was to kill bin Laden."

Kill or capture

Clinton's attorney general, Janet Reno, also told the commission on Tuesday that the administration's intention was to "kill or capture" bin Laden.

Ashcroft also shrugged off accusations made in a preliminary report by the commission that he had not made a priority of fighting terrorism.

"These are things about which I care deeply," Ashcroft told the commission, saying he was focused on the threat right up September 11.

He said he told a Senate committee in the summer of 2001 "that my number one priority was the attack against terror - that we would protect Americans against terror."

Spurned warnings

However former acting FBI director Thomas Pickard told the panel Ashcroft spurned his warnings about a possible al-Qaeda attack in the months before the attacks.

The preliminary report quoted Pickard as saying that after two briefings highlighting the al-Qaeda danger, "the attorney general told him he did not want to hear this information anymore."

Ashcroft also came under fire for an decision to reject an increase in the FBI's counter-terrorism budget, which was made one day before the al-Qaeda plot was carried out.

The commission was highly critical of the FBI, saying it was ill-prepared to pre-empt the al-Qaeda attacks.

"The FBI doesn't work very well. It hasn't worked well for a long, long time," panel chairman, Thomas Kean, told the hearing.

"We can't afford that in this country," said Kean. "We can't afford to have an FBI that doesn't work." Limited intelligence

The commission report said the FBI had "limited intelligence collection and strategic analysis capabilities, a limited capacity to share information both internally and externally, insufficient training, an overly complex legal regime and inadequate resources."

Current FBI director Robert Mueller is to testify on Wednesday on improvements made by the bureau to fix the systemic problems. Central Intelligence Agency director George Tenet will also be among the witnesses.

On Tuesday, Louis Freeh, who led the FBI from 1993 to 2001, cautioned the panel against making a harsh judgement too quickly.

"We had a very effective programme given the resources that we had," he said.

Freeh reaffirmed the evidence of other officials who said the United States was not on "a war footing" against bin Laden.

War footing

"A war footing means we seal borders. A war footing means we detain people that we're suspicious of," Freeh said.

"We were using grand jury subpoenas and arrest warrants to fight an enemy that was using missiles and suicide boats to attack our warships."

The Bush administration has spent weeks fending off accusations by former White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke that the president did not pay enough attention to the al-Qaeda threat after he took office.

Bush told a press conference late on Tuesday that US intelligence agencies have changes to make to counter a repeat of the September 11 attacks.

"Our government has changed since the 9/11 attacks. We're better equipped to respond, Bush told a White House press conference. "We're better at sharing intelligence. But we've still got a lot of work to do.

link: http://www.news24.com/News24/World/N...512033,00.html

hammer4all · 06-09-2004, 11:12 AM

Wow. Democracy Now! just interviewed the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights whom described what was in these memos and gave a truly scathing indictment of the Bush Administration.

Quote:

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about these memos?

MICHAEL RATNER: These memos are extraordinary for the Center for Constitutional Rights got the April memo, 2003, we were just -- popped our eyes out, because what it says is really something I have never expected to see. It says that the President and his Commander in Chief powers, is exempt from laws in the United States that prohibit torture, is exempt from the torture convention which the United States ratified and as Commander in Chief, he can basically take whatever action he wants to defend the United States. I call it the pinochet defense. I call it the Troy argument. You can sack a city, kill all of the men and sell everybody into slavery. You can do that. It turns on its head a thousand years of law and makes you think what was the annex attached to that document? The document had an annex of what the interrogation techniques were supposed to be. That's one of the issues that came up in the hearing with Ashcroft yesterday and that's what we want to see.

http://www.democracynow.org/article..../06/09/1444252

They also played a video of Ashcroft's testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee where he is utterly lambasted for contempt of Congress.

06-09-2004, 05:50 AM	#1 (permalink)
tecoyah Illusionary	Contempt of Congress...Ashcroft memo Things are gettin' awful hot for this guy. Refusal to cooperate with congress to cover your ass, Run Rummy....Run. http://www.news24.com/News24/World/I...539584,00.html I can see the reasoning for wanting to keep this under wraps, but it is time this administration admits to the mistakes, so we can all move onto fixing them. __________________ Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned. - Buddha

06-09-2004, 09:57 AM	#4 (permalink)
pan6467 Lennonite Priest Location: Mansfield, Ohio USA	Hmmm when you won't face the fact that you screwed up blame the past on someone else so that the present can be justified. Is anyone else tired of the blame game and just wanting the mistakes we made uncovered and taken care of so that we don't make them again? We can blame and blame and blame but blaming is not going to fix anything in the past. Blaming for past mistakes only allows us not to look to closely at what is happening now. Our weakness in tyhe eyes of terrorists and our enemies lies not in the "system" or whether we are ready or not. Our weakness lies in the fact we are divided and we blame others and we refuse to give on any issue for fear we may look weak. Our biggest weakness is our stubbornness and arrogance. ============================== Ashcroft blames Clinton 14/04/2004 08:03 - (SA) Washington - US Attorney General John Ashcroft on Tuesday laid the blame for the September 11 attacks on the Clinton administration as the official inquiry into the al-Qaeda strikes highlighted flaws in FBI action. Ashcroft hit back after he was also accused of rejecting an Federal Bureau of Investigation request for extra funds the day before Osama bin Laden's followers flew hijacked airliners into New York and Washington in 2001. The head of the Department of Justice faced intense questioning from the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States. President George W Bush's administration has come under intense scrutiny over its counter-terrorism strategy in the months before the attacks which left nearly three thousand dead. But the attorney general said the fault lay with the administration of President Bill Clinton that left office in January 2001. Blind to enemies "The simple fact of September 11 is this, we did not know an attack was coming because for nearly a decade, our government had blinded itself to its enemies," Ashcroft told the commission. "The old national intelligence system in place on September 11 was destined to fail," he said. Ashcroft claimed that when he carried out a review in February 2001, he found there was no order for US agents to kill bin Laden, despite previous attacks carried out by al Qaeda on American targets. "My thorough review revealed no covert action programme to kill bin Laden," he said. He said that even the order to capture bin Laden "was crippled by a snarled web of requirements, restrictions and regulations that prevented decisive action by our men and women in the field." "Even if they could have penetrated bin Laden's training camps they would have needed a battery of attorneys to approve the capture." Clinton ordered a Cruise missile strike against suspected bin Laden training camps in Afghanistan in 1998. And Clinton's national security advisor Samuel Berger told the panel last month: "I assure you, they were not delivering an arrest warrant. The intent was to kill bin Laden." Kill or capture Clinton's attorney general, Janet Reno, also told the commission on Tuesday that the administration's intention was to "kill or capture" bin Laden. Ashcroft also shrugged off accusations made in a preliminary report by the commission that he had not made a priority of fighting terrorism. "These are things about which I care deeply," Ashcroft told the commission, saying he was focused on the threat right up September 11. He said he told a Senate committee in the summer of 2001 "that my number one priority was the attack against terror - that we would protect Americans against terror." Spurned warnings However former acting FBI director Thomas Pickard told the panel Ashcroft spurned his warnings about a possible al-Qaeda attack in the months before the attacks. The preliminary report quoted Pickard as saying that after two briefings highlighting the al-Qaeda danger, "the attorney general told him he did not want to hear this information anymore." Ashcroft also came under fire for an decision to reject an increase in the FBI's counter-terrorism budget, which was made one day before the al-Qaeda plot was carried out. The commission was highly critical of the FBI, saying it was ill-prepared to pre-empt the al-Qaeda attacks. "The FBI doesn't work very well. It hasn't worked well for a long, long time," panel chairman, Thomas Kean, told the hearing. "We can't afford that in this country," said Kean. "We can't afford to have an FBI that doesn't work." Limited intelligence The commission report said the FBI had "limited intelligence collection and strategic analysis capabilities, a limited capacity to share information both internally and externally, insufficient training, an overly complex legal regime and inadequate resources." Current FBI director Robert Mueller is to testify on Wednesday on improvements made by the bureau to fix the systemic problems. Central Intelligence Agency director George Tenet will also be among the witnesses. On Tuesday, Louis Freeh, who led the FBI from 1993 to 2001, cautioned the panel against making a harsh judgement too quickly. "We had a very effective programme given the resources that we had," he said. Freeh reaffirmed the evidence of other officials who said the United States was not on "a war footing" against bin Laden. War footing "A war footing means we seal borders. A war footing means we detain people that we're suspicious of," Freeh said. "We were using grand jury subpoenas and arrest warrants to fight an enemy that was using missiles and suicide boats to attack our warships." The Bush administration has spent weeks fending off accusations by former White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke that the president did not pay enough attention to the al-Qaeda threat after he took office. Bush told a press conference late on Tuesday that US intelligence agencies have changes to make to counter a repeat of the September 11 attacks. "Our government has changed since the 9/11 attacks. We're better equipped to respond, Bush told a White House press conference. "We're better at sharing intelligence. But we've still got a lot of work to do. link: http://www.news24.com/News24/World/N...512033,00.html __________________ I just love people who use the excuse "I use/do this because I LOVE the feeling/joy/happiness it brings me" and expect you to be ok with that as you watch them destroy their life blindly following. My response is, "I like to put forks in an eletrical socket, just LOVE that feeling, can't ever get enough of it, so will you let me put this copper fork in that electric socket?"

06-09-2004, 09:50 AM	#3 (permalink)
filtherton Junkie Location: In the land of ice and snow.	As long as saddam isn't torturing anybody, right.