'Mormon mafia'
Many people are aware of the role of former Justice Department Legal Counsel Jay Bybee in writing the infamous torture memos that opened the door to the horrors of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prisons. Groups are pushing for the impeachment of Bybee who is now a federal appeals judge in Las Vegas.Bybee is a member of the Utah-based Church of Jesus Christ Latter-day Saints and other LDS lawyers have argued that he violated his professional and religious ethics in signing the memo.
Fewer people, not even readers of Mormon Times, know that two of Bybee's co-religionists, CIA psychologists James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, were the architects of the so-called "Clockwork Orange" interrogation methods used by the CIA under Bush and Cheney. According to The New York Times:
The use of psychologists was also considered a way for CIA officials to skirt such measures as the Convention Against Torture. The former adviser to the intelligence community said, “Clearly, some senior people felt they needed a theory to justify what they were doing. You can’t just say, ‘We want to do what Egypt’s doing.’ When the lawyers asked what their basis was, they could say, ‘We have Ph.D.s who have these theories.’The Times links to a 2007 article in Vanity Fair that reported that many in the intelligence community were outraged with Mitchell and Jessen's techniques:
Mitchell and Jessen’s methods were so controversial that, among colleagues, the reaction to their names alone became a litmus test of one’s attitude toward coercion and human rights.Bybee was confirmed as a federal judge in 2003—before the torture memos became public. The New Yorker's legal affairs writer Jeffrey Toobin points out:
Their critics called them the “Mormon mafia” (a reference to their shared religion) and the “poster boys” (referring to the FBI’s “most wanted” posters, which are where some thought their activities would land them).
He has never had to defend his conduct. It is an understatement to say that he has kept a low profile since becoming a judge. . . .
Bybee is generally the forgotten man in torture studies of the Bush era.
12 Comments:
How did the memo's permit abu grab, just wondering
I consider Bybee, Mitchell and Jessen horrible human beings for what they did. It will be a good day for all humanity when these three are seriously punished.
Why didn't Obama release those parts of the memos that list the other torture techniques like pulling fingernails, burning with cigarettes, cutting off fingers and toes, gouging eyes, cutting out tongues, breaking bones, whipping, slowly lowering into meat grinders, removing heads, etc., etc.? We all know that Bush, Cheney, et al encouraged that too. Obama, Reid, Pelosi are shills for the Bush administration. Where is the outrage?
I can't find anyone claiming that the US military or CIA pulled out their fingernails, burned them with a cigarette, cut off their fingers and toes, gouged their eyes, blah blah blah, any of the other crap you listed.
Do you have any evidence to support your claim?
I didn't think so.
My outrage is right here, directed at you, for being so fucking stupid.
Yeah, that's right you can't find the evidence because anybody that threatened to tell is buried on Bush's ranch in Crawford.
It was a joke, but sad to say, there are plenty of people that probably agreed with it. My point was that those methods are torture. Waterboarding is a walk in the park compared to that.
Those evil neocon bastards, how dare they scare those poor helpless innocent "insurgents".
Hmmm...if waterboarding is a walk in the park, I guess there's no reason to engage in those practices. Right!
Not if it worked and we got info that saved lives, right?
To deny that it worked is ignorant.
Clearly I meant it was a walk in the park compared to the other methods.
If you were going to be "tortured" and were given the choice of all the aforementioned methods, which would you choose?
Yes, it would be scary as hell but it doesn't go to the level of torture. The interrogated are not maimed or subject to intense pain.
I haven't seen any alternatives offered from the critics of water-boarding, have you? Perhaps we could offer a Twinkie, just out of their reach and tell them they could have it if they just tell us what we want to know.
The Deseret Morning News censored this comment I sent when the story about Bybee appeared"
Not only should he be impeached, he should be brought before a Mormon church council (or whatever) and excommunicated. Now that we know about the other two torture lovers (and Constitution and American law violaters), they too should be excommunicated by that outfit that rules Utah, the Mormon so-called church.
By the way, isn't it odd the Mormon so-called church hasn't commented about the fair-haired Mormon torture-loving boys, or about Americans involved in torture?
I guess that's why it's referred to as so-called.
What is going on with these old Mormon attorneys and their lack of ethics?
1)Judge Bybee - participating in the Bush torture memos
2)Quintin L. Cook - all but robbing that Marin County hospital before retiring
3)Dallin H. Oaks - misrepresenting basic legal concepts in Prop 8 to scare (though in fairness, he no longer practices)
Please tell me there are ethical Mormon attorneys!
Mormon's ethics change according to what they want to accomplish. They all think they are above the law because they think they are God's in training. Total assholes.
Yeah, I've never met a group of people with a more distorted moral view. On any given occassion, lying, cheating, stealing, discriminating, sexual deviancy, killing, (add now torturing), can be justified. And yet they can be extremely good in other ways. I suppose that's what happens when you abandon the moral code all humans are born with and trust in another human for your moral guidance.
Wouldn't it be interesting to waterboard Bybee and crew even 5 times in one day and see if it changes their mind on whether or not it's torture.
I'm a former Mormon and still have a lot of ties to the community, including most of my extended family. Reading the accounts of the Bush torture program, I've been disturbed to learn of the central roles that members of the Church played in developing and condoning the program. Bybee, of course, is Mormon, but so were the CIA contractors who reverse-engineered the SERE torture techniques for use on detainees, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen.
I've written a detailed post at my blog, (http://leftwingcentrist.blogspot.com/) that goes into this in more depth and tries to answer how someone with a similar background to mine could have done these things. (I hope Glen won't mind me providing the link.) I'm sure some readers will disagree with my conclusions but I think the questions need to be asked. Thanks.
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