The Political Chase

Bush administration: ‘What court order?’

Months before the CIA destroyed videotapes of interrogations using waterboarding, a court ordered the Bush administration to not “discard evidence of detainee torture and abuse” techniques. However the order specifically stated “in Guantanamo,” so the administration just ignored the order for the various other torture centers spread conveniently around the world.

In fact, the administration was ordered not once, but twice, to protect evidence of torture before the CIA destroyed the tapes.

The CIA destroyed the tapes in November 2005. That June, U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. had ordered the Bush administration to safeguard “all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay.”

U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler issued a nearly identical order that July.

Obviously, court orders and laws implemented by Congress mean absolutely nothing to the Bush administration, therefore, why would anyone expect the lawbreaking mob in the White House to adhere to a court order issued yesterday “directing the…administration to preserve any evidence that might show…torture?”

BushCo operates no differently than the Corleones or the drug cartels in South America. They knowingly and willfully break the law before the courts are aware of their malfeasance. If they happen to get caught doing X in location Y and the court orders them to stop doing X in Y, ignoring the spirit and intent of the order, they just hop on a plane and go to A, B, C, D, E, F…n and continue doing X.  Hey, it’s just like real estate. Location, location, location.

At the time [Kennedy and Kessler issued their orders], that seemed to cover all detainees in U.S. custody. But Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the terrorism suspects whose interrogations were videotaped and then destroyed, weren’t at Guantanamo Bay. They were prisoners that existed off the books - and apparently beyond the scope of the court’s order.

Attorneys say that might not matter. David H. Remes, a lawyer for Yemeni citizen Mahmoad Abdah and others, asked Kennedy this week to schedule a hearing on the issue.

Though Remes acknowledged the tapes might not be covered by Kennedy’s order, he said, “It is still unlawful for the government to destroy evidence, and it had every reason to believe that these interrogation records would be relevant to pending litigation concerning our client.”

In legal documents filed in January 2005, Assistant Attorney General Peter D. Keisler assured Kennedy that government officials were “well aware of their obligation not to destroy evidence that may be relevant in pending litigation.”

Does the owner of 10 meth labs operating in multiple states stop producing meth just because one of the labs in Florida was forced to shut down? What’s the difference between BushCo Waterboarding Torture Centers and Billy Bob’s Meth Labs?

More later…