Accountability Watch: Call To Disbar Torture Lawyers Is No Wild-Eyed, Left-Wing Plot

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Christine Bowman

It is not an eye for an eye, or a waterboard for a waterboard. In fact, it may better be described as a slap on the wrist. But a coalition of groups spearheaded by Voters For Peace and the Velvet Revolution, and represented at a D.C. press conference Monday by grass-roots activist and 2006 Green Party candidate Kevin Zeese, did move the accountability agenda forward by filing legal ethics complaints against 12 former Bush administration lawyers associated with providing legal justifications for torture. The disciplinary complaints seeking disbarment were filed with Wallace E. "Gene" Shipp Jr., bar counsel for the District of Columbia.

Rescinding the licenses of the likes of John Yoo and Jay Bybee may only embarrass and force torture-tainted lawyers to earn their money as lecturers or cable news pundits instead of by continuing to practice law, but it is a grass-roots start down the long road towards Bush Administration accountability. Citizens have found few paths other than through the ballot box, and even voting for Democrats has brought only mixed results.

An unsensational, straightforward presentation of the campaign's rationale can be found at the Velvet Revolution website:

Torture is illegal under both United States and international law. ...

Despite this well-established law, under the Bush administration, torture was authorized by George Bush and kept secret using classified designations. The White House requested legal memoranda to support its use of torture and it received those authored by a host of attorneys, including John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and Stephen Bradbury. Attorneys who advised, counseled, consulted and supported those memoranda included Alberto Gonzales, John Ashcroft, Michael Chertoff, Alice Fisher, William Haynes II, Douglas Feith, Michael Mukasey, Timothy Flanigan, and David Addington.

Several of these memoranda ... clearly demonstrate that these attorneys conspired to violate laws against torture and that their actions resulted in torture and death. Accordingly, these attorneys must be held accountable. ...

The individually tailored complaints allege that the named attorneys violated the rules of professional responsibility by advocating torture.

http://www.velvetrevolution.us/torture_lawyers/index.php

Media responses ranged from non-coverage (the few Google News hits on "Zeese" are here; and Google blog hits are here) to breath-taking brevity (112 words from AP) to biased (The NYT leads off, "A coalition of left-wing advocacy groups ...") to wryly sympathetic (Dana Milbank's Somewhere, Hammurabi Is Crying for The Washington Post).

Milbank outlined some of the frustrations with other channels that led to Monday's filings:

The Justice Department Office of Professional Responsibility's investigation into Yoo's and Bybee's actions, [Zeese] said, has suffered an "inexcusable delay" of nearly five years.

"Eric Holder has now testified that he approved renditions . . . during the Clinton administration," Zeese lamented of President Obama's attorney general.

Congress "seems unable to take action because of fear of its own complicity being exposed," he complained.

Obama "has now decided to hide evidence of war crimes by refusing to release photographic and video evidence, despite a court order to do so," Zeese argued.

The new top general in Afghanistan, Stanley McChrystal, is "responsible for commanding . . . Special Forces involved in torture."

What are citizens who believe war crimes were committed in their names to do? They still take a stand, albeit a humble one:

"I think we're setting a pretty low standard," Zeese said of his proposed disbarment-for-war-crimes punishment. "We're talking here about some of the most serious crimes you can commit, war crimes that violate all levels of law, international, domestic and constitutional."

There is indeed more than one way to skin a cat, or in this case, to attach real-world consequences to "inappropriate" actions by those charged with governing. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi took only one form of accountability off the table back in 2006 -- a Bush impeachment. Still, as has become ever more clear with each passing day, when it comes to assigning responsibility for America's torture undertaking, there's plenty of shared responsibility to go around. Perhaps Kevin Zeese has at least found a way to take torture memo author and now-Judge Jay Bybee off the bench.

Is that going too far? Would that be too much assignment of responsibility to expect?

A CNN poll conducted in April did not ask if Americans would support taking law licenses away from the torture memo lawyers and their close associates in the Bush White House. The polling did indicate that most believe waterboarding is torture, and 42 percent of Americans want Congress to investigate the wrongdoers. Reasonable steps. Neither "whitewash" nor "witchhunt." But accountability can start anywhere.

Update: Kevin Zeese is this week's winner of the BuzzFlash Wings of Justice honor.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS