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pecuniumLast week the Telegraph quoted General Taguba: Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision [to contest a Freedom Of Information Act requirement to release photos], adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency. “.
Taguba has since said he was quoted out of context. That the photos in question don’t depict things quite that bad.
"The photographs in that lawsuit, I have not seen," Taguba told Salon Friday night. The actual quote in the Telegraph was accurate, Taguba said -- but he was referring to the hundreds of images he reviewed as an investigator of the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq -- not the photos of abuse that Obama is seeking to suppress.
So far so good.
The White House, however, is trying to make this more than it is, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs sent this round.
A number of you have asked about or reported on a recent article in the Telegraph that inaccurately described photos which are the subject of an ongoing lawsuit. Both the Department of Defense and the White House have said the article was wrong, and now the individual who was purported to be the source of the article has said it's inaccurate. Given that this false report has been repeated around the world, and given the impact these negative reports have on our troops, I felt it was important for you to see this correction.
There is a subtle attempt at conflation. The proper correction would not be to say the report was false, but that the photos in question do not, “show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency. “ It’s a neat ploy to 1: make it seem these photos aren’t so bad, and 2: have to be suppressed because they will hurt the troops.
The former is a bit of card-palming. Taguba didn’t say there were no such photos, merely that the photos named in the FOIA matter aren’t the one’s he talked about in his report on Abu Ghraib. The White House wants US papers to say the entirety of the quotation, not merely its context is false.
That’s the first thing. The second is worse. Not for the specific act, but the implication.
The White House supports a bill to make it possible for them to carve exceptions to the FOIA, on the president’s whim.
Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009
The problem is it’s a terrible repetition of precedent. A precedent which is just as bad when Obama does it, as it was when Bush did it, as it would be if anyone, anywhere did it.
The meat of the matter is: (d) Nondisclosure of Detainee Records- A covered record shall not be subject to--
(1) disclosure undersection 552 of title 5, United States Code (commonly referred to as the Freedom of Information Act); or
(2) disclosure under any proceeding under that section.
So, the FOIA will, (for a limited set of documents) no longer apply? Why?
Because the president doesn’t like being forced to release them. It hurts his feelings, or something. Which is crap. Presidents (and mayors, and school boards and congressmen, and the CIA, etc.) all hate to be told they have to cough up things which show the nasty things they (or their predecessors) have done.
I don’t know why Obama has been convinced to refuse the release. The people sponsoring this amendment (Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman) aren’t friends of either Obama, nor openness in government. Graham is a torture apologist (and Bush defender) and Der Leibermouse is in the game for himself. My guess is he’s been persuaded that allowing the spotlight to shine into these corners will put him in a pickle.
If something dramatic happens, it will be his fault. He’s being cagey. Someone (Rahm?) is saying, “you have to triangulate this one.”
That’s the first problem. This bill not only makes him look weak, it weakens him. He is showing he can be pushed around.
The second problem is more worrisome. This is more ex post facto legalising the illegal. This bill (like the telecom immunity, and the rewrite of FISA, and the “we won’t prosecute the little fish, nor go after the architects of our torture program) is saying, “the laws don’t apply to the gov’t.”
Which is wrong. The whole point of the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and its predecessors, all the way back to the Magna Carta, is that no one, not even the king, is above the law. The law is absolute.
Carving exceptions, esp. ones which have no review, no oversight, and no means of appeal is privilege, in the Roman sense of the word, privilegium, a construction from privus lex, private law; i.e. something which applied to only one person, or a small group, is not on. It's a rent in the fabric of society.
There are places where privilege needs to be in the law (though it’s often overbroad, as with police who are, “acting in good faith” being protected from overzealousness. It’s one thing to get an address wrong in a search warrant. It’s quite another to strip a car to parts and then leave it for the owner to repair when nothing was found).
But such exemptions need to be narrow, and the more power the official has, the more narrowly those privileges need to be built; the more oversight needs to be on them.
And no one, no one, should be allowed to get the law undone after the fact. If you think the need was so great, appeal to the jury. “Twelve people, good and true,” may elect to set you free, with an undertone of, “well done, thou good and faithful servant.” Fine. That’s one thing.
It’s quite another to say, “Whoa... that law didn’t apply to him.”
(comments at Pecunium
Taguba has since said he was quoted out of context. That the photos in question don’t depict things quite that bad.
"The photographs in that lawsuit, I have not seen," Taguba told Salon Friday night. The actual quote in the Telegraph was accurate, Taguba said -- but he was referring to the hundreds of images he reviewed as an investigator of the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq -- not the photos of abuse that Obama is seeking to suppress.
So far so good.
The White House, however, is trying to make this more than it is, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs sent this round.
A number of you have asked about or reported on a recent article in the Telegraph that inaccurately described photos which are the subject of an ongoing lawsuit. Both the Department of Defense and the White House have said the article was wrong, and now the individual who was purported to be the source of the article has said it's inaccurate. Given that this false report has been repeated around the world, and given the impact these negative reports have on our troops, I felt it was important for you to see this correction.
There is a subtle attempt at conflation. The proper correction would not be to say the report was false, but that the photos in question do not, “show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency. “ It’s a neat ploy to 1: make it seem these photos aren’t so bad, and 2: have to be suppressed because they will hurt the troops.
The former is a bit of card-palming. Taguba didn’t say there were no such photos, merely that the photos named in the FOIA matter aren’t the one’s he talked about in his report on Abu Ghraib. The White House wants US papers to say the entirety of the quotation, not merely its context is false.
That’s the first thing. The second is worse. Not for the specific act, but the implication.
The White House supports a bill to make it possible for them to carve exceptions to the FOIA, on the president’s whim.
Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009
The problem is it’s a terrible repetition of precedent. A precedent which is just as bad when Obama does it, as it was when Bush did it, as it would be if anyone, anywhere did it.
The meat of the matter is: (d) Nondisclosure of Detainee Records- A covered record shall not be subject to--
(1) disclosure undersection 552 of title 5, United States Code (commonly referred to as the Freedom of Information Act); or
(2) disclosure under any proceeding under that section.
So, the FOIA will, (for a limited set of documents) no longer apply? Why?
Because the president doesn’t like being forced to release them. It hurts his feelings, or something. Which is crap. Presidents (and mayors, and school boards and congressmen, and the CIA, etc.) all hate to be told they have to cough up things which show the nasty things they (or their predecessors) have done.
I don’t know why Obama has been convinced to refuse the release. The people sponsoring this amendment (Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman) aren’t friends of either Obama, nor openness in government. Graham is a torture apologist (and Bush defender) and Der Leibermouse is in the game for himself. My guess is he’s been persuaded that allowing the spotlight to shine into these corners will put him in a pickle.
If something dramatic happens, it will be his fault. He’s being cagey. Someone (Rahm?) is saying, “you have to triangulate this one.”
That’s the first problem. This bill not only makes him look weak, it weakens him. He is showing he can be pushed around.
The second problem is more worrisome. This is more ex post facto legalising the illegal. This bill (like the telecom immunity, and the rewrite of FISA, and the “we won’t prosecute the little fish, nor go after the architects of our torture program) is saying, “the laws don’t apply to the gov’t.”
Which is wrong. The whole point of the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and its predecessors, all the way back to the Magna Carta, is that no one, not even the king, is above the law. The law is absolute.
Carving exceptions, esp. ones which have no review, no oversight, and no means of appeal is privilege, in the Roman sense of the word, privilegium, a construction from privus lex, private law; i.e. something which applied to only one person, or a small group, is not on. It's a rent in the fabric of society.
There are places where privilege needs to be in the law (though it’s often overbroad, as with police who are, “acting in good faith” being protected from overzealousness. It’s one thing to get an address wrong in a search warrant. It’s quite another to strip a car to parts and then leave it for the owner to repair when nothing was found).
But such exemptions need to be narrow, and the more power the official has, the more narrowly those privileges need to be built; the more oversight needs to be on them.
And no one, no one, should be allowed to get the law undone after the fact. If you think the need was so great, appeal to the jury. “Twelve people, good and true,” may elect to set you free, with an undertone of, “well done, thou good and faithful servant.” Fine. That’s one thing.
It’s quite another to say, “Whoa... that law didn’t apply to him.”
(comments at Pecunium
