A Senate Mystery Keeps Torture Alive — and Its Practitioners Free

By Jeff Stein, CQ National Security Editor

With all the lawsuits over kidnapping and torture marching toward the Bush administration, you might think the top officials running the global war on terror would be worried just a little about the prospect that some day they might end up in court — if not having nightmares about getting measured for orange jumpsuits at Danbury Federal Prison.

Alas, no. Thanks to the legerdemain of Bush administration lawyers, a provision quietly tucked into the Military Commissions Act (PL 109-366) just before it was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush on Oct. 17, would ease any worries they might’ve had. It not only redefines torture upward, removing the harshest, most controversial techniques from the definition of war crimes, it also exempts the perpetrators — interrogators and their bosses — from punishment all the way back to Nov. 1997.

The deft wording is the Bush administration’s attempt at bringing the United States’ criteria for defining a war crime into line with the Geneva Convention’s interpretation of torture.

The Supreme Court in June had declared the administration’s hastily assembled military commissions unconstitutional, saying all prisoners in U.S. custody had to be held in accordance with the Geneva Convention’s Article 3, which prohibits “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.”

Renegotiating the Geneva Convention was out of the question. So the administration’s lawyers took what the president’s counselor, Dan Bartlett, later called “the scenic route.”

By way of the new Military Commissions Act, they effectively rewrote the U.S. enforcement mechanism for Geneva, the War Crimes Act, passed by Congress in Nov. 1997.

Never heard of this provision? That’s because coverage of the act focused more on its suspension of habeas corpus,barring anyone defined as an enemy combatant from filing suit challenging the legality of their detention or raising claims of torture and other mistreatment.

Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in particular, must be pleased by this legal three-card monte.

So, too, must be President Bush.

Full story: http://public.cq.com/public/20061122_homeland.html

HALLIBURTON CEO, CHENEY EVADED U.S. LAW TO DO BUSINESS WITH IRAN

In an interview published yesterday with Fortune magazine's Nina Easton, Vice President Dick Cheney conceded that as Halliburton CEO, he had opposed unilateral sanctions on Iran, even though he now strongly supports them.

Cheney explained that as a private sector official, he didn't have any responsibility to "worry about" the impact of his company's dealings with the country.

What Cheney conveniently neglects to mention is that Halliburton evaded U.S. law in order to deal with Iran. The International Emergency Economic Powers Act authorizes the president to block transactions and freeze assets to deal with rogue nations. In 1995, President Clinton signed an executive order barring U.S. investment in Iran's energy sector.

To evade U.S. law, Halliburton set up an offshore subsidiary that engaged in dealings with Iran. In 1996, Cheney blasted the Clinton administration for being "sanction-happy as a government."

"The problem is that the good Lord didn't see fit to always put oil and gas resources where there are democratic governments," Cheney explained of his desire to do business with Iran.

As the Bush administration now presses for tougher sanctions against Iran, Cheney should concede that Halliburton violated the spirit of the law and encourage other U.S. companies not to follow his lead.

Lyndon LaRouche's Pre-9/11 Warning

Given the hysteria and fear-mongering that the Bush Administration, and its supporters are engaged in around the 9/11 anniversary, largely as a desperate pre-election ploy, it's worth noting the warning that Lyndon LaRouche issued 8 months before 9/11 about the nature of the then-incoming regime.

LaRouche focused on the nomination of John Ashcroft to be attorney general, not so much because of the particularities of the Confederate flag-loving Ashcroft, but because of what his nomination indicated about how the Bush regime would respond to a crisis, and the underlying crisis was, and still is, the disintegration of the global financial system, similar, though different in magnitude, to what was happening in the 1930's.

Here is what LaRouche said, on Jan. 3, 2001:
"First of all, when Bush put Ashcroft in, as a nomination for the Justice Department, he made it clear, the Ku Klux Klan was riding again. That's clear. Now, maybe Bush didn't know what he was doing. But somebody in the Bush team did. And a lot of them had the voice to say something about it. Ashcroft was an insult to the Congress. If the Democrats in the Congress, capitulate to the Ashcroft nomination, the Congress is finished..."

Read the rest of the story here: Which way to the future?