The White House Has Been Covering Up the Presidency’s Role in Torture for Years | Hacker News Reader

The White House Has Been Covering Up the Presidency’s Role in Torture for Years

firstlook.org

236 pointsline-zero61 comments

It's like watching Lance Armstrong just before his fall. You know where it's going to go and just wish they'd come clean and quit breaking the Constitution instead of insisting on their innocence.

Too many scandals that went similarly ended up revealing cover-ups to expect the Executive Branch to come out clean. It looks like it's trying to make the most of a bad situation. Tylenol's 1982 recall remains the gold standard for disaster recovery -- http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/23/your-money/23iht-mjj_ed3_..... Doing something like that could salvage something and get people on the White House's side.

But it only works if you act with sincerity.

Remember when Obama said right after he became the president that "we need to move on" from what Bush did during his mandates?

That should've been the first serious flag for everyone. How do you start a war on false assumptions, create a torture base, keep the torture base, and then you just say "we need to move on" (from the accusations, presumably)?

What's US' credibility in the world when you just do that? It's almost like Germany not admitting the holocaust happen. US may have not killed millions, but it did kill over 100,000 Iraquees.

The reasons for Obama's "we need to move on" are, as nabla9 commented:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7395233

"If Bush & Cheney administration goes down, so goes Clinton & Gore. (...) The CIA was granted permission to use extraordinary rendition (torture flights) in a presidential directive signed by Bill Clinton in 1995. The practice was started by George H. W. Bush in 1993."

The story starts at least 20 years ago. And as Marcy Wheeler suggests, the directive for drones was probably signed by G. W. Bush and Obama still uses them.

In other words, much of this is the residual stain from having elected a former CIA head as President.

Smart people take a dim view of a former KGB head becoming Russia's president, and for good reason. We should be just as vigilant here. Indeed, it should be illegal for the head of an American intelligence service to become President. After all, it's a position from which he can classify and forgive his own crimes. And as we've seen, every subsequent President who keeps the cover-up going inevitably adds more bodies to the pile.

If it were so simple. Historians know about even older questionable decisions, even the U.S. generals claimed that in 1945 Japan would have surrendered very soon even without the nuclear bombardments:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debate_over_the_atomic_bombings...

Also see Dulles brothers story. Fascinating interview here: http://www.npr.org/2013/10/16/234752747/meet-the-brothers-wh...

I think this is why all of our recent presidents seem so similar once they are in office. They all have the same dirt on them. As with information revealed in the pentagon papers, I don't think we have much hope of decent governance until the cancer is excised.

Actually there is a good way out for them too, although quite unpopular among the politicians: honesty, integrity, taking the responsibility for their own wrong decisions.

Now that would be a world-shaking example!

Congress has all the power anyone could wish for. But, only now is Diane starting to catch on. Once she does, she and her committee can be as powerful as anyone could wish.

The CIA is sometimes referred to as "the President's private army." Presumably, this provides a counterweight to the Pentagon. But now we've reached a point where Americans need a counterweight to the both of them.

And like Lance Armstrong, they'll hold out until the bitter end. In a sense, the only thing that can be done to shorten that rope is to publish more information, either by leaks or otherwise. I'd love to see an ad campaign (billboards in DC, Virginia and Maryland, for instance) imploring government and intelligence workers to leak.

> "I'd love to see an ad campaign (billboards in DC, Virginia and Maryland, for instance) imploring government and intelligence workers to leak."

Would that possibly run afoul of "inciting imminent lawless action"? I would also love to see such an advertising campaign, but I suspect you would get some pretty fierce and heavy-hitting push-back on it.

> fierce and heavy-hitting push-back

You mean, the media would start running your ads for free?

Great point, the Streisand Effect would definitely be working for you.

Here is a somewhat related ad campaign, encouraging people with jury duty to refuse to convict people for crimes without victims: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/metro-billboard-ad...

They tried to get this guy for jury tampering: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/nyregion/indictment-agains...

Those campaigns managed to ruffle some feathers, and got lots of media attention because of it. I imagine that this propose whistle-blower campaign would raise even more.

I've seen hundreds of pointless protests in front of the Federal building in LA (where policymakers generally do not hang out) and one reasonable one, where the protesters out front had signs praising snowden and encouraging the workers inside to come clean about what their employer was up to.

There already is in the DC area. These ads have been all over Metro at the Pentagon station and areas where lots of other defense/government workers get on/off: http://oathkeepers.org/oath/

The bigger problem is societal acceptance of torture. There are countless fictionalized portrayals of the "good guys" participating in torture and not only remaining good but also getting benefit from it. That points to a deep seated cultural acceptance of torture. And you see it in practice as well. Many people believe that torture is acceptable if it's used towards important ends (stopping terrorism).

Even if we put the brakes on the use of torture in an official capacity in the here and now so long as it's culturally accepted to any degree it's only just a matter of time until it creeps back to the forefront.

Not too shocking. I'm sure this is too much of a generalisation but Anericans don't like to know of the atrocities done in their name as long as their "catching the bad guys". The global war on terror has you making enemies of people who would otherwise leave you alone...

> I'm sure this is too much of a generalisation but Anericans don't like to know of the atrocities done in their name as long as their "catching the bad guys"

I think it is worse than that. I think that they either don't care, or perhaps even support it as long as it isn't too close to home for them. See the treatment of torture on American television shows like 24 or Fringe (related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7017222).

Well I don't know, I doubt they care how close to home it is, provided they still get paid. The purest cynicism I ever did see was in response to the drone attacks on funerals. People cried "you're creating more terrorists". The cynics replied, "That's actually the point". A self perpetuating war machine. There are people out there that have this as their goal.

No corporation gets to count "peace" on their balance sheet, but man those bullets pile up on the bottom line.

I remember that discussion. When these wars "come home" then there'll be cries to stop the torture.

I think that will likely depend on how effective the government and media is at "othering" the targets of the governments aggression. An important part of any related propaganda would be ensuring that the bulk of Americans do not feel like they have any relationship with the victims, even though they both live in the same country.

JSOC running around killing almost maybe "bad guys" based on whom knows what evidence and also their own citizens now and then without a trial is disgusting. In retrospect, history may well judge Obama administration on par with the Salem witch trials for repugnant lack of morality. Who knows.

Also, the Metadata app on iOS puts drone strikes on a map. There are many in Yemen and Somalia, not just the Middle East proper. http://mashable.com/2014/02/07/apple-app-tracks-drone-strike...

I'm from Kenya and right now we've invaded Somilia in hopes of getting things, by that we mean Al Shabaab, under control. What worries me is that we're not as powerful or advanced as the US when/if they decided to attack us proper we're fucked.

Military adventurism, no matter the banner or origin, creates pernicious deferred blow-back.

When the rebels bring flying robotic IEDS to whomever they decide to target today, the shit is gonna be instantly way more complicated.

I'd say Westgate was a proper attack, no?

I mean a birage of attacks

We don't need them to leave us alone. We need them to not threaten the regimes that sell us oil. We also need to keep them from creating a competitor to western culture.

Bush authorized CIA to do 'whatever it takes'. CIA cited him on it in their interrogation guidelines. Some of the documents were released with authorization blacked out. Now white house trying to keep specific wording of that authorization hidden. Rest is purely speculation.

This is bipartisan issue. If Bush&Cheney administration goes down, so goes Clinton&Gore. Either everyone protects everyone else, or all go down together.

The CIA was granted permission to use extraordinary rendition (torture flights) in a presidential directive signed by Bill Clinton in 1995. The practize was started by George H. W. Bush in 1993.

Inserting "bipartisan" into the conversation is moot. This issue -- torture -- is one of authority and the moral beliefs of society.

Which means the issue is a systemic one, based on the morality of the political class? If so, then I agree.

Unfortunately for America there seems to be no hope on the horizon. All classes of societal are facing moral degradation. Whether it's the poor and their gang/crime issues, the middle class with their consumerism/ignorance issues, or the upper class for their greed/lack of empathy.

Obviously this can be generalized amongst most nations, but I think it's evidently more prevalent in America.

More prevalent in America than where? Russia, China, Burma, the UK?

Well the best in class of developed countries. The US does have the largest military, political hegemony, economic hegemony, and a huge amount of cultural influence compared to other sovereigns.

With that in mind the standard I have is high (top in class of developed countries for certain statistical measures) when you think about these social, cultural and economic dominances reverberate throughout the entire world.

You haven't explained why you think the decay is somehow worse in America. Only that if it was worse it would be influential.

i believe GP mentioned bipartisanship to point out that its unlikely either a D or R administration would actively try to rectify the situation because there's no political gain and there's likely political loss.

Exactly, Bush and Clinton can't raise funds for the new generation if they are political liabilities.

Ah, I see. In that case, bipartisanship here is still moot.[1]

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-antonym

No, this issue is not "non-partisan". Both sides support covering up the tracks of the ancien regimes of their successive dynsastys. A Clinton will be running again in 2016. So its best to bury this if you are a Dem, not to try to pin it on Bush (whom everyone already has their minds made up), because that will backfire, when the two sides look more alike than not.

it's not obvious that "bipartisan" and "nonpartisan" are always auto-antonyms. it may often be the case in practice, but there are are other parties for voters to choose from. for that reason, it's not a universal anto-antonym like say, flammable / inflammable.

To clarify, I was commenting on the fact that introducing the notion of bipartisanship to the discussion was moot (unworthy of talk) in the sense that issues like this should transcend Left/Right ideology and moot (worthy of talk) in that it's an interesting phenomenon to me that someone immediately commented on parties, as though the American system has very deeply ingrained this sense of parties that there is no alternative to.

Your point about the words though is even more intriguing (I love words!) and I had actually never thought about the two together like that -- I don't often see "nonpartisan" -- to the extent that for a second I thought what you were saying didn't make any sense.

Blue team, red team, green team... It's mostly the same crap. It boils down to working relationships.

CIA was founded as the intelligence directorate beholden primarily to the executive branch.

Transparency of approach, rationale needs to be made public. Otherwise it's too easy for hobgoblins in the press to make up stories and people to write books on where is Hoffa buried.

"These are not just academic exercises. We’re not analyzing the media on Mars or in the 18th century or something like that. We’re dealing with real human beings who are suffering and dying and being tortured and starving because of policies that we are involved in. We, as citizens of democratic societies, are directly involved in and are responsible for." (Eminent MIT political activist)

The patterns of drone strikes and raids points to JSOC as processing an ever-growing kill list directed by the POTUS. Feel free to peruse Dirty Wars docu.

If you believe in karma then you know this doesn't bode well for future Americans. I doubt the next few generations of Pakistani will like them.

That said there's so much room for improvement at this point. Eventually people are going to start losing faith in these 20th century institutions and ideas, and hopefully the Millennials and future generations will fix it.

Unfortunately for the baby boomers and gen x, history will look back on them as morally bankrupt, hypocritical and selfish.

The psychological precept of projection on an institutional level effectively inspiring terrorist behavior, to further continue what the institution was doing. It's as diffuse and pointless as Vietnam.

People are framing this as a coverup story.

It is that, of course.

But the reason it has happened is because the executive branch of government is fighting to preserve its power, even across party lines (ie, the Obama Whitehouse is covering up things that happened in the Bush Whitehouse).

Coming from somewhere with a Westminster system of government I find that dynamic quite interesting. Clearly in this case it is bad, but I do like the way the US system isn't as bound along party lines as Westminster systems usually are.

Next time we get an opportunity for a constitutional amendment, I suggest mandatory death penalty for any official found to have condoned or covered up the use of torture.

Is "torture" here waterboarding only or something even worse? I'm not condoning waterboarding, but it's already unofficially common knowledge. What other "enhanced interrogation techniques" were used under approval?

Sleep deprivation, which was subsequently "overused." I put that in quotes because "too much torture" implies accepting some torture.

Mock execution, apparently.

I'm almost sure there is no way this will lead to blow back - no way this comes back to us. /s

This might be a completely crazy thought:

Given technological enablement, why cant govt be more run as a StackOverflow tempered by the elder wisdom of the Supreme Court? Rip the executive branch out and make the president more of a city manager than the political emperor. Absolute power corrupts...

You mean Direct Democracy? I suspect folks here would be even more unhappy with policies under that regime.

I for one do not want to live in a society governed by "Twitch plays constitutional law".

> folks here would be even more unhappy

Maybe. But we could have a constitutional direct democracy (to provent the policies which would make us unhappy), in addition to having smaller countries. In the UK, for example, making the counties into states like in the USA, but with direct democracy and rather than having a centeralised government for the whole country have a EU-like meeting as though they were seperate countries. It's a merky idea, but that's what I'm currently in favor for. We should be able to call a referendum to get rid of certain laws but maybe the government should continue to create the laws as means of reducing idiocracy (like in Switzerland, but even that has dumb laws being passed sometimes, but it by far has more personal freedom than in UK/USA in my opinion).

I hope that makes sense, I'm not good with english.

We need more apolitical city managers getting things done and fewer Henry VIII's playing figurehead and having mercurial power to chop heads on a whim (ie JSOC).

Putting aside the new dynamic of not having an elected executive...what exactly does StackOverflow run, i.e. execute? The job of the executive branch is to execute the laws of the land. StackOverflow is for fostering discussion and finding answers.

I'm not sure what a StackOverflow that has the ability to take action would look like...though judging by HN's frequent unhappiness with SO's moderation actions, I'm thinking it would not be optimal.

The problem isn't necessarily who has the power or how many people are in control of it (the President isn't a monarch, and congress holds most of the power generally). The larger problem is the size of the power and the weakness of the current checks against it.

The way the system works today politicians bribe the public with their own tax dollars and in so doing get to hold onto power and the perks thereof. But even if we make it more direct the problem of people funneling the government trough into their own mouths, to the detriment of society, will still exist and, if anything, be even worse. And that's aside from the explosion of bureaucracy and regulation which has happened and continues to happen which is also a big part of the mess we're in.

Edit: Also I should mention that a lot of the aspects of the system works today which seem like defects (gridlock, slowness, etc.) are there by design. The system is designed so that gridlock is typical and to have a lot of friction on big changes. That ensures that the power of the government isn't subject to random vicissitudes, fads, or slight changes in the balance of power. It takes consistent majorities in public opinion over periods of time to translate into action, or very large majorities to translate into action quickly.

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