The CAT'S Out of the Bag: CIA Interrogators Run Amok at Guantanamo

Tonight, I relax.

I just finished emailing my final brief of the year to my professor and boy does it feel good. It feels like I can finally sleep after having been denied it for days. . . like I have finally been allowed to sit after standing for hours. . . like I have finally stopped drowning. . .like the incessant blaring music has finally come to an end. . . like the questions have stopped. . . like the burlap sack has been removed from my head. . .like. . .

Well, you get the idea. The torture is over.

The issue of this brief? Whether the "enhanced interrogation techniques" (sleep deprivation, short shackling) that the CIA has been employing at Guantanamo Bay constitute torture.

I argued that they did. It was not a moral choice. If I had been assigned differently, I would have argued that they did not.

Just following orders.

Here's an executive summary of the assignment:

In 1984 countries across the land got together and agreed not torture people. I suppose at the time it was a novel concept. This agreement was called the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Torture was roughly defined as "inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering" on a detainee. A ton of countries, including the United States, signed on.

United States went home, and by 1992 had enacted its own statute, The Torture Statute (18 U.S.C. 2340), to implement its commitment to the CAT in domestic law. The language was virtually the same as the language found in the CAT.

Fast forward to circa 2003. In our fake case for class, a detainee who is about to be tortured (or if you prefer euphemisms: "enhancedly" interrogated), is suing the government and all of the officers who have signed off on these enhanced techniques for violating the statute.

Government says the claim is outrageous and they don't torture, and even if they use short shackling and sleep deprivation, that's not torture.

Therein lies the dispute.

And now to my main point of writing this blog. In the assignment, the detainee is suing people like John Yoo from the Office of Legal Counsel, William Haynes III the General Counsel to the Pentagon, and even Alberto Gonzalez when he was at the Department of Justice. But this might just be the tip of the iceberg.

It turns out, after last night's story on ABC NEWS, he could've been suing some other notable people as well: Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, Condoleeza Rice, George Tenet, Donald Rumsfeld, and Colin Powell, all of whom signed off on the methods IN DETAIL.

Here's the story that came out yesterday about how all of these public officials sat down in a smoke-filled room in the basement of the White House and started brainstorming in a way I like to call "thinking outside the statute."

If you'd like to watch the story that aired on TV, feel free to go here.

Here's a bit that I found particularly disturbing:

"According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: 'Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.'"

How Nixonian. With statements like that, it's going to be pretty tough to make the argument that you had no idea that you might be doing something morally wrong or even breaking the law.

But I guess I'll worry about that later. For now, I'm done wrestling with this issue. All that research, all that time formatting and struggling, it might not have been torture, but it was certainly and enhanced amount of suffering.

And now I'm ready to relax.

Two New Blawgs at the University of Iowa, and Brief Discussion of My Hypochondriasis

It's just recently come to my attention that two new blawgs have sprung up in the past couple of weeks.

There's the UI Law Blog, which seems to have been created after the uproar of the Law School's three-spot, world-altering, student enraging slide in the upcoming U.S. News Ratings. Thus far they've provided pretty straightforward content dealing with the goings-ons at the Law School.

And there's also a blog called The First Floor that looks to have enlisted the help of some astute and playful bloggers to get them going and should be a pretty good read. Special kudos to the designer for making such a viewer/user friendly and handsome blog. Here' s a link to what I found to be the best post thus far, called "Law Student Tourette's."

In other news, I'm always kind of fretting about all of the awful, degenerative things that could be going on inside my body without my even being aware. I hear stories about people with brain tumors going undetected for years until they're the size of tennis balls and I think "is that happening to me right now?" In fact, I think about it so much that I give myself a headache. Which makes me think I have a tumor. Which makes me. . . etc.

So I'm always kind of fretting about things like that while still going about my daily activities and trying not to let it affect me. But lately something has changed. I'm beginning to think that resistance might be futile, that my environment is destined to get the better of me.

Take water for instance. Though I have long railed against bottled water as being an anti-environmental elitist perversion, I have recently grown very suspicious of the cloudy, chemical smelling liquid coming out of my faucet.

A few things have made me rethink my commitment to using cheap and easy tap water. First, in a Civil Action, which we were compelled to read for Civil Procedure this year, the kids who drank cloudy water ended up getting cancer and dying. Point taken. Second, the recent news in the DM Register a couple days ago brought it to my attention that we have a major ammonia problem with our water supply. Third, when we signed our lease at the beginning of the year I had to sign some sort of release about lead poisoning. I know it was a long time ago, but I still think about it when I turn on the tap after a late night jog.

Though I'm not ready to start importing Norwegian glacier water just yet, I might start trying to fill up my nalgene bottle at the law school for a little while and see how that works. Which brings me to another carcinogen (assuming we can count "water" as the first carcinogen) that I initially resisted.

Mobile phones.

They used to say things like "Get a cell phone," or "Why don't you have a cell phone?" or, more frequently, "Nick is the stupid person who doesn't use cell phones." They used to taunt and ridicule me for my studied, Amish-like (Amish-ish?) obstinacy. The abuse, the jeers, the rocks hurled in spite and disgust, it's all coming back to me. And all because a little boy didn't want to use a cell phone. In the year 2003 the burden became too heavy to bear, and I broke down and purchased a cell phone of my own.

For all of the convenience and handiness of cell phones, it is a decision that I will probably come to regret.

It turns out that cell phones are probably causing cancer too. A study by an award-winning cancer expert has concluded that

"Mobile phones could kill far more people than smoking or asbestos. . ."

More than smoking? Really? Are you still considered a hypochondriac if the things you fear are REAL threats?

Feel free to read more about your imminent demise here.

My Bracket Was Ruined When Iowa Got a #27 Seed

It seems Iowa just can't catch a break.

First Drake falls due to a last second shot from Western Kentucky.

Then Iowa falls due to an elaborate, yearly calculus using a number of arbitrary factors from the people at U.S. News and World Report.

Apparently, Iowa's ranking in the annual U.S. News publication is going to fall next year from #24 in the nation to #27.

A blogger from the University covers the implications of this rankings slide pretty comprehensively in a couple of posts at a blog called Obscure Minority.

For the record, I'd like to note that I consider myself at least partially responsible for this slide. Specifically, I can recall at least three times the first semester that I missed classes; my understanding of the many provisions of the Uniform Commercial Code was less than complete; and just today I spilled a piece of popcorn on the floor and failed to pick it up.

An institution is only as good as the people traverse its halls. And in this respect, I have failed the University miserably.

Dart League Week 10: Are You Kidding Me?

After we won our 4th straight team game on Monday to advance to an 18-10 lead, I had already mentally chalked up the win in my head. If I was a basketball player, I would have taken a seat at the end of the bench with the substitutes, taken off my shoes and started mugging for the camera and laughing a lot and playing with the radio commentators shit at that big, long table. At some point I would have had a towel on my head.

In my mind, I was practicing saying things like "great game guys" in my most gentle and condescending voice. In darts, nothing is more painful than hearing those hollow, meaningless words at the end of the game; I wanted to be sure I was ready to inflict that kind of pain when our last winning dart found its mark.

After all, 4 team games in a row! How do you stop momentum like that?

I'll tell you how: you win the next four to win going away by a score of 25 -18. Damn the luck.

Here are some highlights:

As a team, we probably hit more 5, 6, and 7 marks than we have all year in any match. Individually, I won my first 5 games, only to give an uninspired effort in the 6th game which could have given us the win.

17 Briefs Filed in Iowa Gay Marriage Case

I feel like this quote from Dennis Johnson, the former Iowa Solicitor General of Iowa, pretty much sums it up:

"We have always been ahead of our neighbors in fighting for civil rights, and now is the time for our state to take the next step in ending inequality."

Here's a story from Lambda Legal, about the 17 friend-of-the court briefs that flooded the Iowa Supreme Court this past week on behalf of 6 gay couples seeking to get married.

Here's the DI's story.

Here are just a few of the signatories, in addition to the more than 200 faith leaders and Iowa Law School's own Angela Onwuachi-Willig, that I saw while scanning the articles:

Joy Corning, former Lt. Governor of Iowa
Salley Pederson, former Lt. Governor of Iowa
Dr. Kevin Mumford, History Professor at the University of Iowa
Dr. Dianne McBrien, Clinical Associate Professor of Pediatrics
Randall Wilson, Legal Director at the ACLU of Iowa Foundation

Iowa: Converts Welcome!

I've always considered myself somewhat of a spokesperson for the state of Iowa. When speaking to non-Iowans, I often tout our top-notch committment to education, or brag about our first in the nation caucus, or describe our beautiful countryside, or even boast about (what I consider to be) the above average civility and good-naturedness of Iowans.

I'll casually drop the fact that Iowa is one of the top producers of wind energy in the nation, or that our state is one of the few between New York and California that could send our 7 electoral votes to either a Democrat or Republican year in and year out. (Little known fact: Dukakis won bigger in Iowa in 1988 than in any other state except Rhode Island).

And so I'm always happy to see others, especially converts from afar, singing its praises.

I just read a blog post by one such convert (Thoughts on the Iowa caucuses from Black Iowan) which outlines a UI law professor's thoughts about the caucus process and people's misconceptions of the state of Iowa, with a special slant on issues of race and gender. The post is a little dated, but for those of you who already miss the caucus circus, it shoudl be a fun trip down memory lane.

And as a bonus, here's the quote of the week from Iowa Writer's Workshop alum and food author Ted Lee:

"Everyone said, 'Oh my God - you being a food guy, what are you going to do there?' That was simply because the people I was around were so provincial," Ted Lee, 36, said. "[Iowa] is a place where people live very close to the food - I felt like I was living in Europe."

For the full DI article about his award winning book, The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook, click here.

Dart League Week 9: Shakespeare's Writes Us Another Tragedy

Michigan vs. Ohio State, Duke vs. UNC, Iowa vs. Western Michigan, and finally, the Club Car vs. Shakespeare's. These are the rivalries that have routinely captured the hearts and imaginations of citizens and sports fans around the world.

And as expected out of any major rivalry, it was a struggle all night long, with no points coming cheap.

As was not expected, Shakespeare's pulled away for a surprising 27-16 victory over a superior and more handsome team (that's right, put it on your bulletin board Shakespeare's).

But, as is often the case, handsome alone doesn't win you dart matches. You also need to throw darts and win big games, which we quite spectacularly failed to do.

Things were falling into place in the first round, as we came out with a 8-8 tie ballgame. Then the second round things unraveled as we saw a number of close games slip from our grasp and we began to lose hope.

But even as the lead began to accumulate and become insurmountable, we never, as a team, lost sight of our sense of revenge. As our team captain said: "If there is any justice in this world, we will be meeting Shakespeare's in the second round of the playoffs this year."

Congratulations to our worthy adversaries Shakespeare's, who proved, once again, to be an obstacle that we were unable to overcome. They kept cool heads and steady hands in our house, with our music, and our fans. For this they are to be commended. We look forward to seeing you again soon.

As always, there were a few highlights:

I won my two individual matches again, coming off the bench late in the game as Kyle was unable to play. Will and I had the most dominant win of the night, polishing off a game of 501 in the 8th round with an avg. of over 75 points per round and only needing one dart to double out for the victory.

In addition, I was able to eke out a win in the post game 20$ money match. That was a big victory because I had previously forsworn gambling on darts only the week before, and a loss would have made me depressed and irritable.

But who needs money? I would have traded back at least 4 of those 20 dollars for a dart match win.

You've got to know what's important in life.