Not only is this illegal, it's immoral and just plain crazy. Keeping someone awake that long induces psychosis, and how does that give you useful information? Sounds like the Bush Administration was getting some kind of sick gratification from torturing people.

But of course, the Cowboy Administration was more interested in starring in their own action movie than in following our laws:

A year after the Bush administration abandoned its harshest interrogation methods, CIA operatives used severe sleep deprivation tactics against a terror detainee in late 2007, keeping him awake for six straight days with permission from government lawyers.

Interrogators kept the unidentified detainee awake by chaining him to the walls and floor of a cell, according to government officials and memos issued with an internal CIA report. The Obama administration released the internal report this week.

Though the detainee's name and critical details are blacked out in the memos, there is only one detainee known to have been in CIA custody at that time: Mohammed Rahim al-Afghani, an alleged al-Qaida operator and translator for Osama bin Laden.

The documents show that even as the Bush administration was scaling back its use of severe interrogation techniques, the CIA was still pushing the boundaries of what the administration's own legal counsel considered acceptable treatment.

The documents describe two instances in 2007 in which the CIA was allowed to exceed the guidelines set by Bush administration lawyers allowing prisoners to be kept awake for up to four days.

The first episode occurred in August 2007, when interrogators were given permission from the Office of Legal Counsel to keep an unidentified detainee awake for five days, a U.S. government official confirmed. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the report's details.

According to the documents, the sleep-deprived prisoner was kept awake by being forced to stand with his arms chained above heart level. He wore diapers, allowing interrogators to keep him chained continuously without bathroom breaks.

The second incident occurred in November 2007. After again asking permission from Justice lawyers to keep a detainee awake an extra day, interrogators pressed to extend the treatment for another 24 hours, depriving the prisoner of sleep for six straight days.

It is unclear from the documents whether the two incidents involved the same detainee. CIA spokesman George Little would not provide the identity of the prisoner referred to in the document.

(Suzanne Ito writes for and manages Blog of Rights, the blog of the national ACLU.)

June 26 of this year marked the International Day in Support of Torture Victims, and the anniversary of the United Nations' Convention Against Torture. On that day, the ACLU joined countless other human rights groups in calling for Accountability for Torture. We asked people to send Attorney General Eric Holder the Office of Legal Counsel memos—the actual evidence released through ACLU lawsuits that revealed the fact that high-level Bush administration officials had sanctioned these illegal acts—and urged him to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate these crimes.

We were pleased when Newsweek's Daniel Klaidman reported that Holder was indeed considering an investigation. But now a month has passed, we haven't heard much from the Justice Department. So last week, the ACLU renewed its call for accountability by launching a new video, featuring director Oliver Stone, composer Philip Glass, Rosie Perez, and many others reading from the torture memos, and calling for accountability.

The public knows that detainees were tortured during the Bush presidency. From the photos from Abu Ghraib, to congressional reports (PDF), to the torture memos themselves, it's crystal-clear that these abusive interrogation practices were authorized by the highest levels of the Bush administration. Even Dick Cheney couldn't resist a little cheerleading about how effective he thought waterboarding was.

It is a core premise of American democracy that no one—not even the president—is above the law. When we hear Attorney General Holder is considering only investigating those who carried out the torture, not those who authorized the torture in the first place, it sickens us to think how this clashes with the most fundamental American ideals of fairness. Too much evidence of high-level orders exists to limit criminal investigations to "a few bad apples." We cannot compromise the rule of law because we're afraid the outcome might be politically messy, inconvenient or even painful. To not investigate is to tell future presidents and their administrations that they're above the law, and that would render our system of justice meaningless.

So please watch the video, and send it to Attorney General Holder. It's time for a comprehensive investigation of the Bush era torture policies.

abu mugawama: Good News from Pakistan! The Taliban's strategic communications reek almost as bad as ours!

Pruning Shears: This Week In Tyranny

Daily Kos: Ghetto Loans and the latest sub-prime scandal

Alas, a blog: Under the rules of engagement developed in the Bush Administration, we can waterboard Scott Roeder

TBogg: A guy who worked in the BUSHCO Office of Legal Counsel weighs in on blogger ethics!

Brilliant at Breakfast: Ex-SEC Chairman to advise Goldman Sachs -What's wrong with this picture?

Phyllis and Del on their wedding day

Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon were issued a marriage license in 2004 when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered that same-sex couples could apply for them. Sadly, it was voided by the courts just a few months later. Phyllis implored the courts to reconsider:

Del is 83 years old and I am 79. After being together for more than 50 years, it is a terrible blow to have the rights and protections of marriage taken away from us. At our age, we do not have the luxury of time.

When the California Supreme Court did legalize gay marriage in June of 2008, Del and Phyllis were the very first gay couple married by Mayor Newsom.

Martin and Lyon had already been together for 55 years at the time of their marriage.

Del Martin died just two months later from complications from a bone fracture. Del was 87 years old and had been in failing health for some time. Because Del and Phyllis were legally married, when critical choices had to be made about Del's condition, Phyllis had the right to act in the best interests and wishes of her wife.

Unfortunately, there are now thousands and thousands of same sex couples in California who do not have that same right--one of the more than 1000 denied to them and which seems to get lost in the hysteria and just bizarre logic of those fighting against equal protection for all citizens.

There is now a site designed to help couples--both gay and straight--discuss the uncomfortable subject of end-of-life issues: Compassion & Choices:

Most Compassion & Choices supporters would eagerly bargain away a few days of extended life in an intensive care unit in exchange for final days spent at home, in relative comfort and meaningful communion with those they love. Such folks don’t adhere to the doctrine of redemptive suffering and would rather slip away peacefully if imminent dying would be otherwise prolonged and agonized.

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Perhaps he'll have time to modify his position after he's impeached:

WASHINGTON — Judge Jay S. Bybee broke his silence on Tuesday and defended the conclusions of legal memorandums he had signed as a Bush administration lawyer that allowed use of several coercive interrogation practices on suspected terrorists.

Judge Bybee, who issued the memorandums as the head of the Office of Legal Counsel and was later nominated to the federal appeals court by President George W. Bush, said in a statement in response to questions from The New York Times that he continued to believe that the memorandums represented “a good-faith analysis of the law” that properly defined the thin line between harsh treatment and torture.

[...] Until recently, Judge Bybee had been a largely unseen figure in the debate. In contrast, John Yoo, his deputy at the Office of Legal Counsel, who is generally believed to have been the memorandums’ principal author, has defended them regularly. But Judge Bybee has come under renewed attention. Some people have called for his impeachment, he is being investigated by the Justice Department on his professional standards, and he has even become estranged from friends.

Judge Bybee said he was issuing a statement following reports that he had regrets over his role in the memorandums, including an article in The Washington Post on Saturday to that effect. Given the widespread criticism of the memorandums, he said he would have done some things differently, like clarifying and sharpening the analysis of some of his answers to help the public better understand the basis for his conclusions.

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Not content with its past role in screening candidates for positions in the Bush judiciary and Justice Department, the conservative Federalist Society is back to defend the Bush torture team it helped create. Ironically, the Federalists' conference call Monday came just three days after McClatchy reported that Steven Bradbury - one of its members and a figure at the center of the storm over the release of the OLC torture members - refuted their claim that the military's SERE training program proved the United States did not torture terror detainees.

As Politico reported, the National Review hosted a media conference call featuring many of the usual suspects among the Bush torture apologists:

The lawyers' group, which was a pipeline for judges in the Bush White House, is hosting a call this morning with National Review writer Andy McCarthy, a former federal prosecutor, lawyer David Rivkin, and Chapman University Law School Dean John Eastman.

Their claim, as Politico noted, was that the "much-criticized memos from the Office of Legal Counsel were perfectly reasonable." McCarthy brushed off the CIA's use of waterboarding on terror suspects by proclaiming "they were not going to be killed by the tactic." Eastman, whose university is hosting Federalist Society member and Bush torture architect John Yoo as a visiting professor, insisted the treatment was no worse than that undergone by American service personnel:

Eastman responded to The New York Times's Scott Shane about the use of waterboarding during the Spanish Inquisition and by the Japanese military, and responded "that psychological reviews of graduates of the military's SERE program, in which members of the U.S. military were waterboarded, is a more relevant example.

"Why would I go and look at something the Spanish Inquisition did just because it was also called 'waterboarding'?" he asked.

Perhaps because, as the Bush Office of Legal Counsel chief and 2005 torture memo author Steven Bradbury concluded four years ago, "SERE trainees know it is part of a training program."

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(h/t Heather)

In this clip you can see how easy it is for conservatives to have their talking points easily slipped into the traditional media at the drop of a hat. Even when they are meaningless and laughable. Today's accomplice is Bob Schieffer from Face the Nation. Sen. Pat Leahy is getting very adept in catching this from the talking heads that are interviewing him.

BOB SCHIEFFER: Well, is there the risk? I mean, and you know the argument you-- we’ve been hearing it all that-- that we somehow criminalize our political system. I mean, you know, in banana republics one group throws out the other group and they put them all in jail and then they stay there till somebody else comes along and throws them in jail.

SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY: (Overlapping) But I'm not--

BOB SCHIEFFER: Are we going down that kind of trail here?

SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY: No. I think not. And I-- you know, I've heard the talking point that’s-- usually by people who are afraid they may be looked are the ones making that-- making that argument. But I'm not out for some kind of vengeance and, certainly, if you have people in the field who are told here are the orders from the White House, here is a legal memo telling you what to do and how to do it.

Now, nobody is going to prosecute them, although, I would note that when FBI agents were there and they saw what was being done, when they reported back to the headquarters, FBI director Mueller said, "No, you can't do that. That violates our own rules. That violates our understanding of the law. You have to step back" -- and they did, till word got around.

What I want to know is this: Who were the people in the Office of Legal Counsel, in the President's Council office, even in the Justice Department who knew this was against the law and still told people to go and break the law? I am far more concerned about those people than I am going after somebody in the field.

Does Bob Schieffer actually know what the term "Banana Republic" means?
From Wikipedia:

Banana Republic is a pejorative term for a country that is politically unstable, dependent on limited agriculture (e.g. bananas), and ruled by a small, self-elected, wealthy, and corrupt clique.[1] It is most commonly used for countries in Central America and Africa such as El Salvador, Belize, Grenada, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, and South Africa. In some cases, these nations have kept the government structures that were modeled after the colonial Spanish ruling clique, with a small, largely leisure class on the top, and a large, poorly educated and poorly paid working class of peons, though it might have the (fake) trappings of modernity (such as styling itself a republic with a president etc.)

Frequently the subject of mockery and humour, and usually presided over by a dictatorial military junta that exaggerates its own power and importance—"the epaulettes of a banana republic generalissimo" are proverbially of considerable size, usually portrayed in satire with a pair of mops—a banana republic also typically has large wealth inequities, poor infrastructure, poor schools, a "backward" economy, low capital spending, a reliance on foreign capital and money printing, budget deficits, and a weakening currency. Banana republics are typically also highly prone to revolutions and coups.

And then Bob takes what Dick Cheney says as gospel about CIA memos that will exonerate4 him. Isn't it obvious to Schieffer that if there were any of these "memos," Bush would have leaked them already?

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Will you join me please and Sign the petition? With the revelations that Jay Bybee was in the middle of trying to legalize torture for the Bush administration, particularly with the evidence that he penned the disgusting torture memo in 2002, I fully support all efforts to have this man impeached. The OLC is supposed to give sound legal opinions to the executive branch, not bend the law to fit their sick world view which makes this all the more egregious.

As Jeffery Toobin writes in the New Yorker:

The first, and very chilling memo in the group is an analysis of the various techniques that were used by C.I.A. interrogators on Abu Zubaydah. The author of the memo, which is dated August 1, 2002, is Jay S. Bybee, who was the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel. Bybee concludes that all of these various techniques, including waterboarding, do not constitute torture under American or international law.

Bybee is generally the forgotten man in torture studies of the Bush era. The best known of the legal architects of the torture regime is John Yoo, who was a deputy to Bybee. For better or worse, Yoo has been a vocal defender of the various torture policies, and he remains outspoken on these issues. But whatever happened to his boss?

Today, Bybee is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He was confirmed by the Senate on March 13, 2003—some time before any of the “torture memos” became public. He has never answered questions about them, has never had to defend his conduct, has never endured anywhere near the amount of public scrutiny (and abuse) as Yoo. It is an understatement to say that he has kept a low profile since becoming a judge.

He certainly slipped under my radar. When you study men like Cheney, Yoo and David Addington---it's very easy for a man like Bybee to slip through the torture cracks. Now he's on the 9th circuit and for a man to be involved in one of the most revolting moral and ethical violations in American history, he has forfeited the right to be on the 9th circuit. The only thing left to figure out is how to do it.

The NY Times is also asking of Bybee to be impeached"

That investigation should start with the lawyers who wrote these sickening memos, including John Yoo, who now teaches law in California; Steven Bradbury, who was job-hunting when we last heard; and Mr. Bybee, who holds the lifetime seat on the federal appeals court that Mr. Bush rewarded him with.

These memos make it clear that Mr. Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution. Congress should impeach him. And if the administration will not conduct a thorough investigation of these issues, then Congress has a constitutional duty to hold the executive branch accountable. If that means putting Donald Rumsfeld and Alberto Gonzales on the stand, even Dick Cheney, we are sure Americans can handle it. After eight years without transparency or accountability, Mr. Obama promised the American people both. His decision to release these memos was another sign of his commitment to transparency. We are waiting to see an equal commitment to accountability.

Well, not surprising--it's up to us to do it and to push the tools we have at our disposal.

d-day has more:

And there is an actual mechanism, a way to leverage grassroots anger and push the elected officials who can make these decisions, at least in one case. We can prove the desire for accountability in the country and take a systematic approach to restore democracy and the rule of law. And it starts with Jay Bybee.

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