Tuesday night at the monthly meeting of the largest county Democratic Party in the nation, Los Angeles, the vote was unanimous on a resolution calling for the impeachment of Judge Jay Bybee, author of the famous "torture memo" -- aka "the Bybee memo."
Unanimous. LACDP spoke with one loud, clear voice on this. Next week, we'll be working this resolution at the California Democratic Party Convention in Sacramento. And I hope Democrats (and Republicans, too) will join together in crafting resolutions calling for accountability. It's time to dismantle the Bush Administration's torture policy, and bring its facilitators to account.
We need to counter the establishment pressure to move away from this evil with our own pressure, to support the rule of law, to recognize that justice delayed is justice denied, and that a failure to hold accountable these acts will result in them returning, in spades, in the future. Without this accounting, in a very real sense our democracy dies.
And there is an actual mechanism, a way to leverage grassroots anger and push the elected officials who can make these decisions, at least in one case. We can prove the desire for accountability in the country and take a systematic approach to restore democracy and the rule of law. And it starts with Jay Bybee.
Dday, digby and tristero have all written about it since at Hullabaloo. I agree with dday 100%. This is the beginning of how the grassroots can organize to force the beginnings of accountability in Washington. More background, info on what's to come and how to do it on the flip.
History's Actors strike again with their reality-forging-powers. From the August 1, 2002 Bybee memo (p16):
Specific Intent: To violate the statute, an individual must have the specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering. Because specific intent is an element of the offense, the absence of specific intent negates the charge of torture. As we previously opined, to have the required specific intent, an individual must expressly intend to cause such severe pain or suffering. [..] We have further found that if a defendant acts with the good faith belief that his actions will not cause such suffering, he has not acted with specific intent. [...] A defendant acts in good faith when he has an honest belief that his actions will not result in severe pain or suffering. [...] Though an honest belief need not be reasonable, such a belief is easier to establish where there is a reasonable basis for it. [...] Good faith may be established by, among other things, the reliance on the advice of experts.
