Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Ben Wizner pt. 2: Q+A Session (Oct. 22)

In his question and answer session to his Oct. 22 lecture, Ben Wizner addressed much of the audience's lingering confusion surrounding the US' torture program. Here are a few of the points Wizner made:
  • President George W. Bush used "state secrets privilege" in an unprecedented manner. Rather than use the provision to withhold individual pieces of evidence at the case-be-case discretion of the judge, Bush used the provision to throw out torture cases before they even got to court. Rather than have to prove the "secret" nature of the individual evidence, the Bush admin. claimed blanket overriding secrecy and denied constitutional due process to the US' torture victims. This practice still continues successfully today in the Obama administration.
  • Wizner wholeheartedly denounced Obama's decision to keep many torture photos secret- photos he'd previously promised to release. Obama's argument, no doubt inspired by the generals and his military advisers, was that the release of the photos would jeopardize American soldiers. The underlying rationale, as Wizner pointed out, was the idea that the more international outrage the photos' release would cause, the greater the need to keep them secret. To quote Wizner, this is an "ass-backwards legal philosophy". State secrets should not be applied simply because the relevant material is more outrageous. The law doesn't protect things more when they are more repulsive.
  • Wizner is a strong advocate for targeting the publishers and commissioners of the OLC memos in particular because it will be extremely difficult to prosecute others involved. The DOJ would have an extremely difficult time prosecuting "lower-downs" who followed the DOJ's own directives during the Bush years. Conversely, it could be extremely difficult to prove culpability among high level Bush cabinet officials unless it can be proven that they specifically commissioned the memos. Targeting the authors and commissioners is perhaps the most effective path towards legally repudiating torture.
  • The media was another topic Wizner addressed in the Q+A. Wizner criticized the confrontational punditocracy that takes place on most mass media today. Every issue, he rightly argues, is oppositionalized, with one pundit arguing one position, and another pundit the other. Wizner contends that it is outrageous that media outlets give extremist wingnuts like Dick Cheney de facto equal legitimacy in the rhetoric of torture by giving their outspoken perspective equal airtime.
  • Wizner expressed extreme doubt that members of congress would be held accountable for their actions/inaction regarding torture. At the same time, he didn't close the door on future legal action should new evidence of congressional misconduct arise
Check back later this week for the third and final installment in the Wizner talks, where I discuss his intimate meeting with my Torture class!

See part 1 of the Wizner talks here.

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