On eve of receiving Nobel, Obama's DOJ files amicus brief upending Nuremberg Protocols.

by ImpeachKingBushII

If you thought that your vote for President Obama last November helped usher in a new era of justice for the ones who turned the United States of America into a nation of lawless torturers and war crminals, and thus guaranteed the restoration of the rule of law and America's standing in the world, then you better hang on to your ruby slippers baby, because Dorothy you're not in Kansas anymore.

Not only are the authors of the infamous Bush torture memos, John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and Steven Bradbury --which gave Bush and everyone else in his regime of thugs legal cover to torture in all of our names-- not going to face a Judge and answer to anyone in our Judicial system for their war crimes, but our new president(sic) has taken it upon himself to defend Bush's enablers in Federal Court, thus upending the 64 year old Nuremberg and Tokyo precedents that sent the Judges and lawyers of the German Reich and Imperial Japan to prison. Apparently, the only change we're going to see here is the same old obfuscation, secrecy and lack of transparency we all grew to love so much about Bush.
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Nan Aron of the Huffington Post writes on 12.10.09, basically saying there's a new Sheriff in town, and he's determined to keep his jails locked-up to keep criminals from getting inside them::

"The Department's amicus brief is, as a substantive matter, disingenuous at best. As Scott Horton notes, federal law has long held that government officials who are responsible for torturing individuals may be held accountable in court for their conduct - a principle enshrined in lawyer can be held accountable for unethical and/or illegal conduct that in some way involves matters of national security is through internal review by the Department's OPR and Office of Inspector General, bar disciplinary action, and crimdecisions from the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals which DOJ failed to cite in its brief. DOJ now argues that the only way a government inal prosecution. As Horton, writes, "It effectively boils down to the Justice Department saying that it alone will decide about the accountability of its staffers for wrongful conduct that damages others."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

Constitutional law Professor and licensed and practicing world renowned defense attorney, Jonathan Turley, appeared on KO last night and writes on his blog yesterday, 12.09.09:

"John Yoo is being defended in court this month by the Administration. Not the Bush Administration. The Obama Administration. As with the lawsuits over electronic surveillance and torture, the Obama administration wants the lawsuit against Yoo dismissed and is defending the right of Justice Department officials to help establish a torture program — an established war crime. I will be discussing this issue tonight on MSNBC Countdown.
[...]
The Obama Administration has gutted the hard-fought victories in Nuremberg where lawyers and judges were often guilty of war crimes in their legal advice and opinions. The third of the twelve trials for war crimes involved 16 German jurists and lawyers. Nine had been officials of the Reich Ministry of Justice, the others were prosecutors and judges of the Special Courts and People’s Courts of Nazi Germany. It would have been a larger group but two lawyers committed suicide before trial: Adolf Georg Thierack, former minister of justice, and Carl Westphal, a ministerial counsellor.
[...]
If successful in this case, the Obama Administration will succeed in returning the world to the rules leading to the war crimes at Nuremberg. Quite a legacy for the world’s newest Nobel Peace Prize winner."

all emphases mine
For the full article please visit Professor Jonathan Turley's blog at the link below:
http://jonathanturley.org/...

After 8 long years under the Bush Caligula years, where the Constitution was treated with no more respect than a common street whore and America's good name and reputation was nothing less than "quaint and irrelevent", I was proud to support and vote for Obama last year. I bought the bill of goods that he was selling us, that he was our best hope to restore the rule of law, a rule of law that was barely on life support by the time Bush had left office. "Little boots" trampled it under foot at every turn by the pleasure of his own will so many times that its face was barely recognizable by anyone, including its closest of kin.

Source: Daily Kos

Nuremberg Revisited: Obama Administration Files To Dismiss Case Against John Yoo

John Yoo is being defended in court this month by the Administration. Not the Bush Administration. The Obama Administration. As with the lawsuits over electronic surveillance and torture, the Obama administration wants the lawsuit against Yoo dismissed and is defending the right of Justice Department officials to help establish a torture program — an established war crime. I will be discussing this issue tonight on MSNBC Countdown.

The Obama Administration has filed a brief that brushes over the war crimes aspects of Yoo’s work at the Justice Department. Instead, it insists that attorneys must be free to give advice — even if it is to establish a torture program.
In its filing before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Justice Department insists that there is “the risk of deterring full and frank advice regarding the military’s detention and treatment of those determined to be enemies during an armed conflict.” Instead it argues that the Justice Department has other means to punish lawyers like the Office of Professional Responsibility. Of course, the Bush Administration effectively blocked such investigations and Yoo is no longer with the Justice Department. The OPR has been dismissed as ineffectual, including in an ABA Journal, as the Justice Department’s “roach motel”—“the cases go in, but nothing ever comes out.”

The Justice Department first defended Yoo as counsel and then paid for private counsel to represent him (here). His public-funded private counsel is Miguel Estrada, who was forced to withdraw his nomination by George Bush for the Court of Appeals after strong opposition from the Democrats.

Yoo is being sued by Jose Padilla, who was effectively blocked in contesting his abusive confinement and mistreatment as part of this criminal case and in a habeas action. The Bush Administration brought new charges to moot a case before the Supreme Court could rule. The Court previously sent his case back on a technicality.

It is important to note that the Administration did not have to file this brief since it had withdrawn as counsel and paid for Yoo’s private counsel. It has decided that it wants to establish the law claimed by the Bush Administration protecting Justice officials who support alleged war crimes. They are effectively doubling down by withdrawing as counsel and then reappearing as a non-party amicus.

The Obama Administration has gutted the hard-fought victories in Nuremberg where lawyers and judges were often guilty of war crimes in their legal advice and opinions. The third of the twelve trials for war crimes involved 16 German jurists and lawyers. Nine had been officials of the Reich Ministry of Justice, the others were prosecutors and judges of the Special Courts and People’s Courts of Nazi Germany. It would have been a larger group but two lawyers committed suicide before trial: Adolf Georg Thierack, former minister of justice, and Carl Westphal, a ministerial counsellor.

They included Herbert Klemm, who was sentenced to life imprisonment and served as minister of justice, director of the Ministry’s Legal Education and Training Division, and deputy director of the National Socialist Lawyer’s League.

Oswald Rothaug received life imprisonment for his role as a prosecutor and later a judge.

Wilhelm von Ammon received ten years for his work as a justice officials in occupied areas.

Guenther Joel received ten years for being an adviser (like Yoo) to the Ministry of Justice and later a judge.

Curt Rothenberger was also a legal adviser and was given seven years for his writings at the Ministry of Justice and as the deputy president of the Academy of German Law

Wolfgang Mettgenberg received ten years as representative of the Criminal Legislation Administration Division of the Ministry of Justice,

Ernst Lautz (10 years) had been chief public prosecutor of the People’s Court.

Franz Schlegelberger, a former Ministry of Justice official who was convicted and sentenced to life for conspiracy and other war crimes. The court found:

‘…that Schlegelberger supported the pretension of Hitler in his assumption of power to deal with life and death in disregard of even the pretense of judicial process. By his exhortations and directives, Schlegelberger contributed to the destruction of judicial independence. It was his signature on the decree of 7 February 1942 which imposed upon the Ministry of Justice and the courts the burden of the prosecution, trial, and disposal of the victims of Hitler’s Night and Fog. For this he must be charged with primary responsibility.

‘He was guilty of instituting and supporting procedures for the wholesale persecution of Jews and Poles. Concerning Jews, his ideas were less brutal than those of his associates, but they can scarcely be called humane. When the “final solution of the Jewish question” was under discussion, the question arose as to the disposition of half-Jews. The deportation of full Jews to the East was then in full swing throughout Germany. Schlegelberger was unwilling to extend the system to half-Jews.’

It was the “ideas” that these lawyers advanced that made the war crimes possible. Other officials were tried but acquitted. All of these officials used arguments similar to those in the Obama Administration’s brief of why lawyers are not responsible for war crimes that they defend and justify. Bush selected people like Yoo to justify the war crime of torture. If they had written against it, the Administration might have abandoned the effort. The CIA director and others were already concerned about the prospect of prosecution. The Obama Administration’s brief revisits Nuremberg and sweeps away such quaint notions. Indeed, the brief for Yoo could have been used directly to support legal advisers Wolfgang Mettgenberg, Guenther Joel, and Wilhelm von Ammon.

If successful in this case, the Obama Administration will succeed in returning the world to the rules leading to the war crimes at Nuremberg. Quite a legacy for the world’s newest Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Source: Jonathan Turley

John Yoo cancels class when “student” protests torture

The Right to Torture Americans

Conservatives are protesting a federal judge’s ruling that torture victim Jose Padilla’s civil lawsuit against former Justice Department attorney John Yoo be permitted to continue. The conservatives feel that Yoo, who authored some of the infamous torture memos for the Bush White House, should be immune from lawsuits from Americans who were tortured as a natural consequence of such memos.

Let’s sum up what conservatives (and neo-conservatives) are saying about the America in which we now live. They’re saying that the federal government now wields the power to torture Americans and that Americans had better get used to this new way of life. Any American who is tortured should forget about ever suing any federal official who either does the torturing or who authorizes or facilitates it.

At the same time, conservatives say that federal torturers should be immune from criminal liability for torturing Americans, no matter how many criminal laws against torture they violate. The idea is that the federal torturers would become despondent and demoralized if criminal prosecutions were initiated against them. And how could we expect the torturers to continue torturing Americans if the torturers faced the prospect of criminal prosecution in the future?

Of course, the same rationale holds true for official investigations into the torture of Americans and others. If such investigations were to be conducted, then how could we count on the torturers to be ready and willing to torture in the future?

What Jose Padilla’s lawsuit is exposing is the harsh truth about the country in which we now live. Padilla is an American citizen. He was tried and convicted in a federal district court of a federal criminal offense, to wit: terrorism, and he is now serving time in a federal penitentiary for that crime. No one disputes that Padilla is a criminal.

But prior to the time that Padilla was convicted, federal officials incarcerated him in a military dungeon run by the Pentagon, where he was held for years and intentionally denied a speedy trial and due process of law. U.S. officials made it clear that if they wanted, they could keep Padilla incarcerated for the rest of his life without a trial.

During the time this American was incarcerated in that military dungeon, he was knowingly and deliberately tortured through isolation and sensory deprivation. Moreover, he was subject to being treated to the entire panoply of torture and sex-abuse techniques that the Pentagon and the CIA have imposed on people in their prison camps at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere.

Padilla’s civil lawsuit is not just about him. It’s about what federal officials, including those in the Pentagon and the CIA, can now do to all Americans.

That’s a discomfort, not only for the American people, who are now subject to be treated in the same way that Padilla was treated, but also for those who wish to continue portraying the United States to the rest of the world as a paragon of freedom, morality, human rights, and due process of law.

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that when it comes to torture, liberal icon Barack Obama has turned out to be no different from conservative icon George W. Bush. They both utter the same anti-torture mantras (“We don’t torture” or “We won’t torture anymore”) while steadfastly insisting on civil and criminal immunity for federal torturers and steadfastly opposing official investigations into the federal government’s torture regime.

Was John Yoo simply delivering a good-faith legal opinion on torture or was he instead knowingly, intentionally, and deliberately participating in and facilitating an illegal torture regime through the issuance of bogus legal memos? Jose Padilla’s lawsuit, which will likely entail depositions under oath, might go a long way to answering that question, much to the chagrin of the defenders of torture.

by Jacob G. Hornberger

Source: The Future of Freedom Foundation