Legal Assault
by digby
The rightwing assault on the legal system continues apace. First you have this strange Pentagon lawyer and spokesman Cully Stimson obviously cooking up a rightwing noise machine operation with Monica Crowley and the Wall Street Journal editorial page to run a boycott on law firms that represent prisoners at Guantanamo. The Pentagon eventually “distanced itself” from his remarks but this guy has been out there saying all kinds of crazy stuff for some time. (In fact, all the people involved with Guantanamo often sound like psychos for some reason. Do they look for these creepy types specifically?)
Anyway, Cully Stimson has a history of saying nonsensical things in public. Like this:
O‘DONNELL: Welcome back to HARDBALL. You heard the claims of torture and abuse by detainees at Guantanamo Bay, but what really goes on there? Here to tell us is the official in charge of U.S. policy on interrogation and other matters in the prison is Cully Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs.[Right. He’s going to tell us what “really goes on?” Excellent intro Nora — ed]
Good evening to you, Cully. Let me begin by asking you about this Ruhel Ahmed. He says that he was held for two years in Guantanamo Boy is he a terrorists?
CULLY STIMSON, DEP. ASST. DEFENSE SECRETARY: Yes, he is a terrorist, he is a dangerous person. We had a right to pick him up. He was waging war against America and we were right to take him there.
O‘DONNELL: So why did we let him go?
STIMSON: We transferred him back to his home country, and I can assure you that the Brits are mitigating the threat that he poses.
O‘DONNELL: But many people may ask, if he‘s a terrorist, why is he still not there at Guantanamo Bay?
STIMSON: The president has said that we don‘t want to be the world‘s jailer. That‘s true. This is a world problem here, Norah. I mean what does the world do with hardened Islamic extremists, who are waging the war against basically western culture? And so we don‘t want to be the world‘s jailer, and we want to take responsibility for those that we have at Guantanamo and we‘re going through that process right now.
O‘DONNELL: And as you know Ruhel Ahmed is suing the defense secretary for $10 million. He claims that he was tortured at Guantanamo Bay. He says he was put in stress positions, in temperatures below freezing. Was he tortured?
STIMSON: No, he was not tortured. We have to under the law and for policy investigate every allegation of torture, no matter how ridiculous. We investigated his allegations and they were not found to be true. What is interesting to note, is that the Brits went to Guantanamo and visited him six times, and during each of those six visits, he never mentioned anything to them. And there were no marks, no nothing to support his allegation and lies of being tortured.
O‘DONNELL: Well lets set the record straight here. What is the U.S. policy regarding interrogation methods? In other words are things like isolation and extremely hot confinement areas, stress positions, shackled to the floor for long periods, are all of those legal and commonly used?
STIMSON: The interrogation techniques are open for the world to see. They are found in the army field manual. It‘s number 2452. You can put it in Google and figure it out. No, the techniques authorized by the army field manual are lawful, and they comply with the McCain amendment. They‘re legal and they comply with our obligations, our international obligations.
O‘DONNELL: So stress positions and hot and cold temperatures, those fall under the U.S. army manual?
STIMSON: Yes, I mean you can you read the army field manual and see for yourself. The interrogation techniques that we use at Guantanamo today are laid out for the world to see.
O‘DONNELL: Can you speak, some people, have, of course, accused the United States of torture in Guantanamo Bay. Can you speak to what type of care and feeding are the detainees receiving there at Gitmo?
STIMSON: Be happy to. We‘re proud of the care and treatment we provide detainees at Guantanamo. They get three square meals a day, culturally sensitive meals, blessed by an Imam. They have a menu Norah, that they get to order from every couple weeks. They have freedom of religion. They practice called to prayer five times a day. There are arrows pointing towards Mecca with the distance to Mecca listed everywhere. They get first class medical care, dental care.
O‘DONNELL: Is it true they get McDonald‘s?
STIMSON: During some interrogations, which are no different than you or I sitting across from each other today, some of them ask for McDonald‘s and sure, I‘ve watched some interrogations where they‘re chowing down on a Big Mac.
O‘DONNELL: Because they want to?
STIMSON: Yes, they want to.
O‘DONNELL: Let me ask you specifically about this movie, of course which we just talked about in the last segment, “The Road to Guantanamo,” which is a docudrama. Are you concerned, and are there concerns at the Pentagon, that this could change some public opinion? As you know most Europeans don‘t like the policy. The President of the United States has said that he thinks Guantanamo Bay should be closed down. Are you concerned that this could shift public opinion even further?
STIMSON: Not at all. You can call it a docudrama. I call it a propaganda film. This is pure fantasy. He would have you believe, I have not seen the film, and I am not going to pay my money because I don‘t know where the money is going to go, quite honestly, if I paid to see this movie.
This is essentially the same dark conspiracy-type charge he made against the lawyers who represent the prisoners. He implied they were being funded by terrorists. Here, he claims that the maker of this film is working for terrorists.
He is quite convinced, as are so many of these wingnut freaks, that anyone who doesn’t sign on to the program, no questions asked, is in bed with terrorists. This man should be nowhere near the government or the Pentagon. He’s paranoid, terrified, stupid or some combination of all three.
O‘DONNELL: You know Ruhel Ahmed, just on this show, called Osama bin Laden a terrorists and then a second later, he called President Bush a terrorist.
STIMSON: I heard that. It sort of shows you the mentality of this guy.
O‘DONNELL: Well except then you have to wonder, what then is he doing out on the lose in England?
STIMSON: Look, here is what he did. It‘s interesting, as I understand the film starts in 2002. They should have gone backwards a little bit and started in 2001, because in 2001, he was visiting Islamic extremist book stores. In September of 2000 he went to Pakistan and trained at terrorist training camps for about 40 days. And then went to the front lines and fought with the Taliban. And then he would have us believe, if I understand the way the movie plays out, he would have us to believe he was going to a wedding.
O‘DONNELL: If these guys are so bad, and terrorists, why not bring them to trial, charge them with murder, terrorism and put them to death?
STIMSON: That‘s a great question. And this is important for the viewers to understand. During a time of war, let‘s say during World War II, that everyone can remember, sort of basic history there. This country is entitled to detain enemies against it. We don‘t have any obligation to give them a quarter so they can call a lawyer. We don‘t have any obligation when we had 400,000 Nazis here in this country at the beginning of World War II, to give them a trial.
When he isn’t ginning up a boycott of law firms who have the temerity to defend prisoners, this man speaks incoherent gibberish. He needs to be fired.
But they aren’t firing him. They are, instead, firing a bunch of other lawyers — US Attorneys some of whom have been doing investigations into Republican malfeasance. A whole bunch of them — seven so far, an unprecedented number. And they are being replaced by GOP dirty tricks operatives. I’m not kidding. From Josh Marshall:
Okay, so we already know that the White House has now taken the unprecedented step of firing at least four and likely seven US Attorneys in the middle of their terms of office — at least some of whom are in the midst of corruption investigations of Bush administration officials and key Republican lawmakers. We also know that they’re taking advantage of a handy provision of the USA Patriot Act that allows the White House to replace these fired USAs with appointees who don’t need to be approved by the senate.
Read on to see what kind of people they are naming to replace these US Attorney’s. You won’t believe it.
Dianne Feinstein made a speech about this on the Senate floor this morning. (You can see the Youtube here.)
This is a scandal. The administration is firing federal prosecutors for no reason and putting their cronies in office without senate confirmation to get them through the next two years. They are working with political operatives to intimidate law firms into not representing terrorist suspects. They are, once again, undermining the spirit of our constitution and our legal system as they have been doing since they took office in 2000. The country voted for oversight last November to put the brakes on just this kind of behavior.
The administration is not acting like people who believe they can prevail if they play by the rules set forth in our legal system. Or maybe it’s just another outright power grab by the executive branch. Either way, it’s the latest in a long line of constitutional outrages and the congress must thoroughly investigate it and expose it to the public. The Republicans are trying to set new precedents with this stuff and it will only work if the Democrats fail to step in and say no.
We need immediate hearings on this issue.
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