Please consider this entire reply to be motivated by nothing other than a good-faith best effort to delineate what might be questionable about "
EXECUTIVE ORDER -- REVIEW AND DISPOSITION OF INDIVIDUALS DETAINED AT THE GUANTÁNAMO BAY NAVAL BASE AND CLOSURE OF DETENTION FACILITIES. Which I put in small caps to indicate that I am not yelling, merely adhering to the same all-upper-case-title stylistic convention wrt executive orders that the executive whom I'm quoting does. Please also consider me to be speaking throughout in a calm tone of voice, to people I like and with whom I have no bone to pick, and not to pan or to any one poster.
And finally, just to rap up with fun little preamble: Please seriously consider and take into account that (a) I am not an attorney; and (b) that if you can read, you can both read and comprehend all of the relevant, applicable and current public legally valid treaties, acts of congress, EU reports, or finding, or white papers (or et cetera) just as well as I can. None of it is dense with jargon or ponderous or incomprehensible absent legal expertise or anything of that nature. Indeed, anyone who's a regular consumer of information on the leading news stories of the day probably has already read the most pertinent parts many, many times over the last eight or so years. Plus, fwiw, in general, I love and appreciate Scott Horton, and very much respect his work.
professorpan wrote:For what it's worth, here's an article suggesting there's a big difference between rendition programs and the Bush/Cheney "extraordinary" renditions program. I don't know enough about the legal aspects of this, but it suggests that the Right is deliberately distorting the truth about Obama's executive order.
It does suggest -- indeed, it pretty much concludes by flatly stating -- that. And as I read it, even more than that, although possibly not intentionally. Nevertheless. I think it would be fair to say that it suggests that when it comes to reporting or analysis that's critical of that particular executive order: Caveat lector, because there's a strong chance that there are partisan spooks playing mind games with you.
And that's never bad advice, imo. Because among other things, "Caveat lector" is never bad advice in general, imo. Especially wrt stories that deal with a political topic that has a huge potential for unusually extreme consequences of either a positive or a negative nature for one or the other side of the aisle. Or, as in this case, both sides. And all the moreso when it appears in an explicitly partisan venue, where the baseline odds that it might be colored by innocently wishful thinking are always pretty high, even when the story is not the work of a witting water-carrier.
In short, try reading Scott Horton's excellent suggestion in a way that's congruent with the axiomatic principle that underlies Scott Horton's excellent suggestion. It isn't actually even necessary to evaluate it on its legal merits in order to do that on a basic level. (Unless you want to consider the possibility that he uses his own legal expertise as a blunt instrument with which to stun the reader into submission in the second graph, I guess. Although I personally don't read it that way, and think it would be a somewhat-to-very unfair reading, I should hasten to emphasize. I just meant that in this instance the disclosure of and basis for the writer's legal expertise is a material aspect of the reporting and therefore a perfectly legitimate primary subject for consideration by the reader. Whether he or she ends up voting to acquit or not.)
Here are some of the non-legally oriented questions that crossed my mind. Anyone who wants to borrow them is free to do so. There's no presumption of greater or lesser credibility in any of them, they really are just the questions that crossed my mind. I (personally) was satisfied with the answers to some and not satisfied with the answers to others. But who the fuck cares how well I think he supports his argument? Other than me? I'm not trying to argue for or against, I'm only trying to make two points:
(1) The legal aspect of his post is, in itself, narrowly construed and uncomplicated to assess on its merits. Even Wiki has a clear take on the gist of it, And no one who cares about the issue needs to feel any more tentative about it than they want to be. I swear to god, that in the abstract, legal issues as broad as this one are almost always both interesting and user-friendly for comprehension purposes. They only get too complicated for non-legal professionals to address when they collide with reality in a courtroom. Where they're addressed by legal professionals, as they should be. In addition to which, the law as it now stands was mostly both established and extensively reported upon within the last four years. And quite probably discussed on this board at the time. So you probably know it already.
(2) That doesn't even matter. As pan correctly points out, the main suggestion of the post doesn't actually turn on a legal question but rather on a political one. Given which, caveat lector. It can't hurt.
strong word. justified by ____?
piece of reporting in the Sunday Los Angeles Times, we are told
use of first-person plural in same way as the hoary old rhetorical technique for reader recruitment the undue exploitation of which Pauline Kael was famously and harshly criticiized by Renata Adler, and as such worth idly noting though not judging
that Barack Obama “left intact” a “controversial counter-terrorism tool” called renditions. Moreover, the Times states, quoting unnamed “current and former U.S. intelligence figures,” Obama may actually be planning to expand the program. The report notes the existence of a European Parliament report condemning the practice, but states “the Obama Administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush Administration’s war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.”
factual and tonal accuracy of his summary of the
LAT article, scale of one to ten?
The Los Angeles Times just got punked.
strong word. justified by ____?
Its description of the European Parliament’s report is not accurate. (Point of disclosure: I served as an expert witness in hearings leading to the report.) But that’s the least of its problems. It misses the difference between the renditions program, which has been around since the Bush 41 Administration at least (and arguably in some form even in the Reagan Administration) and the extraordinary renditions program which was introduced by Bush 43 and clearly shut down under an executive order issued by President Obama in his first week.
Wait. Back up. The description of the report was inaccurate how? You can't just say that and then move on to a bigger problem. What is the inaccuracy? Inquiring minds want to know.
There are two fundamental distinctions between the programs. The extraordinary renditions program involved the operation of long-term detention facilities either by the CIA or by a cooperating host government together with the CIA, in which prisoners were held outside of the criminal justice system and otherwise unaccountable under law for extended periods of time. A central feature of this program was rendition to torture, namely that the prisoner was turned over to cooperating foreign governments with the full understanding that those governments would apply techniques that even the Bush Administration considers to be torture. This practice is a felony under current U.S. law, but was made a centerpiece of Bush counterterrorism policy.
Again, wait. On what basis are you claiming without qualification and with full certainty that it was a Bush program not a CIA program? Because if you can back it up without qualification and with full certainty, then, dude: As you just said, it's a felony. A major felony. Disclosing the evidence is so much a part of the public-service part of the Fourth Estate's mandate, it's practically an imperative. Please share.
The earlier renditions program regularly involved snatching and removing targets for purposes of bringing them to justice by delivering them to a criminal justice system. It did not involve the operation of long-term detention facilities and it did not involve torture. There are legal and policy issues with the renditions program, but they are not in the same league as those surrounding extraordinary rendition.
So...how does that add up to two fundamental distinctions rather than one fundamental distinction? What are the legal and policy issues with the regular vanilla. good old-fashioned American renditions program to which this EO has apparently restored us? And how are they in a different league than those surrounding extraordinary rendition? And what do you mean by "surrounding"? Also -- yeah, in the publicly known letter of pre-Bush rendition, it purportedly did not involve the operation of long-term detention facilities and did not involve torture. But on whose word are you taking it that it didn't involve one or both in practice, if anybody's? Unnamed current and former CIA officials? Who else would know?
Moreover, Obama committed to shut down the extraordinary renditions program, and continuously made clear that this did not apply to the renditions program.
In what legally and practically meaningful terms? Why no quote and/or quotes that usually and logically follow a statement of this kind here?
In the course of the last week we’ve seen a steady stream of efforts designed to show that Obama is continuing the counterterrorism programs that he previously labeled as abusive and promised to shut down. These stories are regularly sourced to unnamed current or former CIA officials and have largely run in right-wing media outlets. However, now we see that even the Los Angeles Times can be taken for a ride.
Strong words of condemnation. Justified by_____?
* * * * *
But that's just me. You may not have those questions. Or you may have answers you chose not to prejudice the board by sharing. And by all means, you make the call about whether any of that is worth discussing. I'd be interested, if anyone wants to discuss it.
