Did Obama Not Order an End To Torture When He Ordered an End To Torture?

Frank, reciting the conservative talking points that President Obama's anti-torture Executive Order is not, in fact, anti-torture:

They could also allow Mr. Obama to reinstate the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation operations in the future, by presidential order, as some have argued would be appropriate if Osama bin Laden or another top-level leader of Al Qaeda were captured. Which seems to be to be exactly the same as George W.'s policy.

You know, Frank, I have moments when I wonder if maybe some of my commentors aren't fictional creations of people trying to drive me nuts. I think to myself:

Real people wouldn't be so consistently and obviously wrong; this has to be parody.

Were it not for the fact that I actually know a couple of you, and that I've heard the entirely fictional and easily disprovable arguments face-to-face, delivered in all seriousness, I think I'd just assume you guys were a running joke. Instead, I try to actually reason with people who believe things that plainly aren't true. I need to learn not to do that.

Still, I try.

Frank, I didn't have a lot to do this afternoon, so I've spent the last few hours reading the applicable Executive Orders and underlying laws and the legal briefs and memos, and while I'm not a lawyer what's clear is that President Obama's Executive Order Ensuring Lawful Interrogations is not, as you assert, "exactly the same" as President Bush's policy. It is, in fact, a clear and unambiguous repudiation of Bush Administration policy. The differences aren't subtle.

President Obama's Executive Order revokes President Bush's Executive Order 13440, which President Bush signed and which affirmed "the authority of the President to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions."

What that meant, following down through the various laws and memos, is that President Bush reserved for himself the sole power to interpret what the law says, even when his interpretation contradicted long established law. This seems, to me, to be the justification for the whole cobbled-together, torture-is-legal framework. Follow the memos and legal interpretations and you'll find an interesting thing; they all fold back onto each other. Bush Administration policy is dependent on the President having absolute authority that exists only in Executive Order 13440 -- and in the fevered minds of Unitary Executive enthusiasts. Revoke that Executive Order, and the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.

There is not, as a matter of fact, a lot of disagreement or ambiguity about what constitutes torture. Torture, under U.S. Law, is clearly defined:

torture means an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control

Clearly, what the Bush Administration authorized meets this standard. The Bush Administration's "enhanced interrogations techniques" consisted entirely of the infliction of severe physical and mental pain and suffering in order to elicit information. There is no legal requirement for organ failure or any of the other thresholds the Bushies made up to justify the legally unjustifiable, and the authorization of those extra-legal standards by the authority vested in the President by Executive Order 13440 seems to lack any of the checks and balances upon which American governance is based.

The Bush Administration, for the first five years after 9/11, also asserted that "illegal combatants" were not covered by treaty or law. They eventually abandoned that ridiculous position after the Supreme Court weighed in and Democrats took control of Congress and its investigative mechanisms, but for half a decade they utterly ignored what was obvious in Geneva Common Article 3, which applies to:

Noncombatants, combatants who have laid down their arms, and combatants who are hors de combat(out of the fight) due to wounds, detention, or any other cause...

By nullifying Executive Order 13440, President Obama has clearly discarded the entire legal house of cards the Bush Administration constructed to justify what is clearly illegal activity. And just in case a few vestiges of the Bush Administration's legal fictions might persist deep in the bureaucracy, President Obama's executive order digs down deep:

Executive Order 13440 of July 20, 2007, is revoked.  All executive directives, orders, and regulations inconsistent with this order, including but not limited to those issued to or by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from September 11, 2001, to January 20, 2009, concerning detention or the interrogation of detained individuals, are revoked to the extent of their inconsistency with this order.  Heads of departments and agencies shall take all necessary steps to ensure that all directives, orders, and regulations of their respective departments or agencies are consistent with this order.

In other words, every bit of the cancerous legalism that the Bush Administration constructed to justify war crimes is excised from American law, and we're back to the way things were before vicious morons like Cheney, Gonzales and Yoo started pissing on 225 years of American law and military tradition.

The New York Times article you use as sole justification for your fascinating assertion of President Obama's duplicity -- misleading easily duped liberal fat heads like, for example, me -- says this:

They could also allow Mr. Obama to reinstate the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation operations in the future, by presidential order, as some have argued would be appropriate if Osama bin Laden or another top leader of Al Qaeda were captured.

I know of no law or Executive order that is irreversible, with the possible exception of Supreme Court rulings, so it seems to me the significance of the above paragraph is minor. But seriously: do you really believe for one minutes that President Obama is laying in wait for his opportunity to re-instate the Bush Administration's torture policy? And if you do, can you somehow gee that up with the conservative's basic campaign premise that Obama is a dangerous radical determined to weaken the nation?

Clearly, there is nothing in reality that supports your assertion that President Obama is President Bush redux. I can only speculate why you chose to believe something so obviously untrue. I'm guessing it's a way of making President Bush seem less odious -- or, perhaps, of painting people like me as dupes.

But still, Frank: You're killing me with all this made-up stuff. Are you sure you're not some kind of practical joke?

Comments

[Steve]

Wow. Just Wow.

[Wally]

Thank you. I sometimes get my information wrong. Commenters are usually quick to point out my errors. I learn something and move on. I am going to assume that Frank took the NYT at face value and now sees that was an error. And I'll do more research before I agree with him again.

[pursuit]

"I know of no law or Executive order that is irreversible..."

Ya, well pretty much what I say goes, Bub. So there.

As for torture I'm constantly amazed at the spinelessness of you hand wringers. My goodness, if some motherf*cker is going to be plotting to fly planes into more skyscrapers, then tell O'Bama that I'll torture the crap outta the dude until I get the info I want.

And I won't feel bad about it for one second.

And, I'll get a parade down any street in any city in this country for my efforts. Hell, I'll probably get my own TV show too.

You got a problem with that Jack?

[Wally]

I would torture someone and insist on doing the jail time I had coming for such a despicable act in order to save innocent lives. It would sicken me to be treated like a hero for doing something we condemn in others (like Pol Pot, Mengele, et al). The problem, Mr. Pursuit of Fascism, is how do you know who knows the information you want? To live as an American means to be willing to die for our shared beliefs in this country. If we had been invaded like Iraq, I'm pretty sure you and I would both be underground, fighting the invaders any way we could, even at the risk of putting our families in danger. To me, being an American means that I would rather die for the belief I have in the ideals this country holds than see an innocent man, woman or child tortured in an attempt to save my life or my wife's life. This is the meaning of values. You don't give them up when it is incovenient to stick to them. That would be a "hobby" as Kos put it. I have not been in the position I describe but in my life I have had a loaded, cocked pistol at my temple and a knife held to my throat. I didn't beg for my life under the knife and I told the man with the pistol that I was prepared to die rather than agree with him so I think I would hold true to my beliefs in the crucible. What do you believe in Pursuit. Life at any cost? Or life as an American with all the rewards, responsibility and debt owed to those who have died protecting the Constitution and the freedom of others.

[pursuit]

"If we had been invaded like Iraq, I'm pretty sure you and I would both be underground, fighting the invaders any way we could, even at the risk of putting our families in danger. "

If this were the case, then most likely you would have been part of the power elite that oppressed a nation and fed innocents who did things you didn't like to tigers. Somehow, despite our differences, I don't think that is you my friend.

We all have had our values tested in one way or another, and not all of us choose to describe in detail that moment of clarity. Make no mistake, nobody that I know has a corner on piety over another man, despite what their individual experience might be.

What do I believe? Its simple - perhaps too much so for those that think nuance exists between good and evil. I believe that when we take up arms against those who have attacked innocents without provocation we play to win. How we play is dictated by the behavior of those who have challenged us. If these foes choose to murder the sons, daughters and mothers and fathers who have done nothing more than go to work one fine morning, then I have no mercy for them or their fellow swine.

In this case I will do whatever is necessary to keep my fellow countrymen safe and I will show no mercy to those whose acts defiled the rules of civilized confrontation. I am appalled by your inability to see the difference between those who torture for sport, and the honorable deeds of those who work in defense of our nation against foes who threw the rule book out with their first act of war.

Life as an American means that we act in defense of our country. If that defense means that we play a little rough with our foes so be it. I can sleep at night. My pillow, is my peace of mind.