Spanish prosecutors reportedly will seek criminal charges against Alberto Gonzales, Federal Appeals Court Judge and former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, University of California law professor and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, former Defense Department general counsel and current Chevron lawyer William J. Haynes II, Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff David Addington, and former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith. In a particularly embarrassing moment for the United States, the Audencia Nacional court in Madrid asked if or when the United States was going to investigate and said that it would not order the investigation if such an investigation is begun — yielding to the United States. This is precisely what was discussed in previously on Countdown.
The Court noted that there was clear evidence of torture — a view shared by the vast majority of experts in the field. These men will not be able to travel freely once such charges are brought due to the threat of extradition. While the scene of a former Attorney General and a sitting judges accused of war criminals is shameful for our nation, it is far more shameful that the Obama administration has forced other nations to uphold international law because it is politically inconvenient to investigate known war crimes. This places the United States in the company with such countries as Serbia in shielding accused war crimes.
Bybee is particularly frustrating for civil libertarians. Bybee’s role in the torture program was already known when he faced confirmation. Despite objections, the democrats refused to block the confirmation, given a man accused of war crimes a lifetime appointment on the federal bench to rule on hundreds of cases.
The Spanish court has a credible claim in the investigation due to the alleged torture of five Spanish citizens held at Guantánamo. Now, the Obama Administration may actually seek to obstruct the investigation while preventing any special prosecutor from seeing the evidence in a domestic investigation.
The Investigation judge, Baltasar Garzón Real, gained international attention due to his investigation of Augusto Pinochet. I previously discussed the similarity of the status of Pinochet and George Bush due to the allegations of torture and war crimes. t Judge Garzón may have to step aside in presiding in the case given his role as investigator.
For the first story, click here.
I couldn’t find the e-mail address but here is phone and fax: I do think we should let Spain know not to cave.
Permanent Mission of Spain to the United Nations
809 United Nations Plaza, 6th Floor
New York, N.Y. 10017 USA
Telephone: 212-661-1050
Fax: 212-949-7247
geneva_mission
Mission permanente de l’Espagne auprès de l’Office des Nations Unies à Genève
Avenue Blanc 53, 1202 Genève
Case postale 201, 1211 Genève 20 Suisse
Téléphone : 731 22 30 – 732 99 30
Télex : 412 776 mpeg ch
Télécopieur : 731 53 70
mission web address Spain Mission to the UN
Spain’s UN email address: spain@un.int
As I understand Judge Garzon has the final say. The prosecutors (I believe their AG too) opposed him on Pinochet but he went ahead anyway. I want Garzon to take it forward. He appears to be a real man of justice.
“This is probably the result of the US making threats against Spain should they dare to proceed.”
That’s exactly what it is. And I’m telling Spain right now that as an American citizen that I am BEGGING for them to move forward with prosecutions.
This is an update. This is not a binding decision on Judge Garzon.
“MADRID – Spain’s attorney general on Thursday recommended against an investigating magistrate going ahead with a probe of six former US officials over allegations they gave legal cover for torture at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba.
Candido Conde Pumpido justified the move on the grounds that six former Bush administration officials cited in the court complaint, reportedly including former US attorney general Alberto Gonzales, did not physically carry out the torture acts which allegedly took place.”
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/04/16-4
Judge Garzon should emphatically reject that it is only the “wet workers” who are to be held accountable. The authors of the policy are the most culpable and I do not see how this recommendation fits into the framework of our own and international law. In fact, I believe it is an offense against the law to ignore those who put illegal policies in place. This is probably the result of the US making threats against Spain should they dare to proceed.
And I’m puzzled by how the press secretary and press core for the most part, found accusations of torture so very, very funny. Something is terribly wrong with this behavior:
(from alternet)
“Take the issue of torture and accountability for Bush’s crimes. Yesterday, Mother Jones Washington editor David Corn asked Gibbs whether the Obama administration would cooperate with the Spanish court that is bringing forward an investigation against former Bush officials for their role in making illegal torture a policy of the U.S. government. As Corn wrote later, “He had a predictable response: ‘I don’t want to get involved in hypotheticals.’ He quickly pivoted to point out that Obama has moved to prohibit torture at Gitmo and elsewhere.”
I posed a follow-up: Have you spoken to the Spanish government about this case? He seized on my use of the word “you” and, with a broad smile, said, “I have not spoken with the Spanish.” Reporters in the room laughed. I obviously did not mean him personally; the “you” had referred to the Obama administration … The point was whether the administration had been in contact with the Spanish government about the Bush Six investigation. “The Justice Department?” I asked. Gibbs, though, essentially brushed off the question: “I would send you to Justice. Like I said, I’ve not spoken” to the Spanish government.
… Often White House press secretaries say, take your query elsewhere. Yet moments later, when a reporter asked Gibbs if Obama had any reaction to the conservative groups organizing “tea parties” of protest on tax day, he replied, “I’ve never monitored them nor spoken with the Spanish about them.” People in the room laughed. And when the questioning in the room turned to the all-important subject of the Obama’s new Portuguese water dog, Gibbs continued the joke. Noting that the dog might be spotted on the White House lawn later in the day or that it might not, he added that “the dog has also not talked to the Spanish about impending torture cases.” More laughter. But I wondered, had the press secretary just made a joke about a torture investigation?”
BVM,
You’re clearly not very bright and a propagandist (else you’d be attacking Bush not Obama) so why would anyone care who you trust to investigate U.S. war crimes? Our system was DESIGNED to be self-correcting. There is no better method to investigate and prosecute war crimes than an Independent Special Prosecutor although as the Spanish are showing there is more than one method to get to the truth. Now, would you rather the truth and punishment of misdeeds committed by U.S. officials be handled by American justice mechanism – saving face and showing the world the superior nature of a self-correcting system – or would you rather the Europeans clean our house for us? They cleaned their own house after WWII. It was called the Trials at Nuremberg. It our job to fix this and we should not abrogate that responsibility simply because our allies are willing to do it for us.
And you still haven’t told us why you hate our troops so much that you attacked funding them instead of the illegal treasonous action of Bush Co. that led to their misuse in the first place.
You really need to get another job. One more suited for your skill set. If your bosses ordered you to come in HERE and act like you have? Well they’ve just thrown you to the wolves.
Mike and Bron,
Thank you most sincerely for your concern for my well-being. It means a lot to me. The caffeine related issue is actually fairly minor, if not extremely annoying, and in no way life threatening. So barring accident or catastrophic biological failure, you guys should have me around bitching quite some time. We’re a long lived clan – nary a relative that didn’t live until their eighties absent accident (even the ones with chronic illnesses). In fact, my great grand mother lived to be 94 and was sharp as a razor until 6 mos. before her death. And I do mean sharp. You not only had to get up early to pull one over on her, you needed to stay up all night. But thank you for your concern. I like you guys too.
War Criminal Usurper President Obama Wants More War-Funding
The Notorious Liar Obama wants 83.4 B more to fund the U.S. War Crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Most all of the members of Congress are already highly complicit War Criminals in initiating, funding and occupation of these Wars of Aggression. Now Warmonger Obama seeks to murder and maim more people, make the new members of Congress into War Criminals and steal more of our money. Mass-murderer Obama is also trying to cause more soldiers to become War Criminals by sending them into these illegal wars.
The U.S. people generally don’t know what is going on due to the fascist U.S. main stream media and fascist U.S. Government telling them lies. But they are coming out of their stupor as they begin to see the many betrayals of Obama and the Congress. It is now becoming very transparent that most of Obama’s campaign promises were lies and they have looted our treasury.
Obama has been a War Criminal for years in funding US-led Wars of Aggression. He should not have been on the election ballot. He should not have been certified by Congress or sworn in as president. Legally Obama is not the president of the U.S. and can be arrested at any time for War Crimes, treason, mass fraud and a multitude of other crimes. We suspect that Obama is not even a U.S. citizen as no one has seen his long form birth certificate or his other documentation. He has had them sealed from the public.
Hopefully other countries will follow Spain and Britain in investigations and prosecutions. These actions will open up the War Crimes of Washington D.C. – the evil city of the world. Washington is seen to the world as the Berlin of the Hitler years of atrocities. The U.S. Government has violated the same law used to prosecute and convict the Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials. I do not advocate the death penalty but most of those Nazis were hung.
Please contact Congress members and all other authorities and inform them of the situation. Please forward this to other countries and their national criminal courts for investigations and prosecutions of U.S. War Crimes. We must get Obama and other murderous, treasonous fascists out of our government while we still can.
I do not trust the U.S. Government to do investigations and prosecutions of U.S. War Crimes
This is an important story. One of our detainees awaiting release managed to report having been severly beaten in Gitmo. Here’s a bit of the story and the link from al jazeera:
“Guantanamo detainee claims abuse
Al-Qurani said he has been subjected to ill-treatment almost every day
An inmate in the US prison facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has told Al Jazeera that he has been beaten while in custody and had tear gas used on him after refusing to leave his cell.
Mohammad al-Qurani, a Chadian national, said in a phone call to Al Jazeera that the alleged ill-treatment “started about 20 days” before Barack Obama became US president and “since then I’ve been subjected to it almost every day”.
“Since Obama took charge he has not shown us that anything will change,” he said.
On his second day in office, Obama ordered the closure of the prison, which has been heavily criticised by rights groups over reports of ill-treatment of detainees.
Obama also signed an order ending the harsh interrogation of prisoners – including the waterboarding technique that causes detainees to feel like they are drowning…
‘No change’
After being transferred to a different area of the prison for those awaiting release from Guantanamo Bay, al-Qurani was allowed to make phone calls and he called Sami al-Hajj, an Al Jazeera cameraman who spent six years in Guantanamo before being released last year.
Al-Hajj said that while the US did have a new administration, “there has been no change in the administration of Guantanamo”.
“The people managing the detainees there haven’t changed yet. These are the same people who were there during the Bush years and so they use the same methods,” al-Hajj said.
Describing a specific incident, which took place after change in the US administration, al-Qurani said he had refused to leave his cell because they were “not granting me my rights”, such as being able to walk around, interact with other inmates and have “normal food”.
A group of six soldiers wearing protective gear and helmets entered his cell, accompanied by one soldier carrying a camera and one with tear gas, he said.
“They had a thick rubber or plastic baton they beat me with. They emptied out about two canisters of tear gas on me,” he told Al Jazeera.
“After I stopped talking, and tears were flowing from my eyes, I could hardly see or breathe.
“They then beat me again to the ground, one of them held my head and beat it against the ground. I started screaming to his senior ‘see what he’s doing, see what he’s doing’ [but] his senior started laughing and said ‘he’s doing his job’.
“He broke one of my front teeth. Of course they didn’t film the blood, they filmed my back so it doesn’t show.”
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/04/2009414233431153300.html
Again, I don’t think we can avoid asking the question as to why these people have not been fired and why complaints of abuse by the attorneys for the detainees are going ignored. These rapip response teams are filled with people who are known bad actors. They do not control the president, he controls them. There are trained military police only a phone call away from being put in place by our president. There is no excuse not to put professional MPs in charge of Gitmo. Allowing vunerable people to be abused and stonewalling investigations into that abuse is not acceptable. The president has said many times he is up to the many challenges that he is facing. This is one phone call, one direction away from being resolved–get rid of the known goons and put professionals in charge.
BVM,
If you’re going to push conspiracy . . .
The occupation of Iraq, as opposed to the first Gulf War, started on March 20, 2003 at the order of George Bush at the provocation of Dick Cheney, Halliburton and the the Secret Energy Task Force.
This order was issued by the President despite the fact that on 9/11 we were attacked by Saudi nationals operating out of Afghanistan using Saudi money to fund their operation. No Iraqi men or money have ever been linked to the 9/11 attack.
No evidence of WMDs or Saddam supporting Al Qaeda was ever found, indeed, evidence abounds that Saddam had abandoned his chemical weapons manufacturing capacity out of fear of the U.S. after the first Gulf War. In addition, it is a well known fact that Saddam was intolerant of religious based terrorists operating from within his borders as they posed a threat to him as much as any one as he ran a secular despotic state where he was the sole holder of power. He’d have taken orders from a Mullah and then shot them for giving him an order.
So to be clear, the invasion and occupation of Iraq in March of 2003 was done under false pretenses. Those false pretenses were put forth by the Bush Administration. Instead of rightfully attacking Saudi Arabia, Bush and Cheney’s long time business partners, lies and propaganda were used to justify invading a third country that had not attacked us. Conveniently, one of the biggest economic benefactors of doing this was Dick Cheney’s company Halliburton. The Bush Crime Family made out financially quite well too. There was a conspiracy alright. But Obama had nothing to do with it.
On March 20, 2003, Obama was still an Illinois Senator (NOT a U.S. Senator, a state Senator), civil rights attorney and Constitutional Law professor at the University of Chicago Law School. He had neither that access nor the power to influence decision making in the Federal government or the Bush Administration as he was not a part of the Federal government. He was not elected to U.S. Congress until November of 2004.
You cannot argue conspiracy after the fact either. Obama cannot be an accessory to conspiracy to commit treason in this instance as acts and omissions are not enough – especially when the acts, or votes, you point to were to FUND TROOPS, not start an illegal war. Keeping our troops safe by giving the the proper funding to operate is NOT the treason here. Starting an illegal war for profit against a country that did not attack us on 9/11 is the actual treason and conspiracy. In fact, Obama was quite vocal before he was elected to the U.S. Senate about invading Iraq as being a “dumb war”. ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhpKmQCCwB8 ) Obama lack both the mens rea and actus rea required to be an accessory after the fact to conspiracy to commit treason. By definition of the elements of the crime of conspiracy and accessory to conspriacy, you have failed to prove your charge.
The same cannot be said of Cheney, Bush, Halliburton and every person in attendance at Cheney’s Secret Energy Task Force Meeting.
Your weak attempts at smearing Obama by fallaciously pointing to his choice to support our troops (not a crime as you suggest but his duty as a U.S. Senator vs. the plan to and authorization of the initial illegal invasion of Iraq – two distinct and seperate actions) as a form of conspiracy fails is a stunning example of the logical fallacy known as post hoc ergo procter hoc. Correlation is not causation, Troll. Keeping our troops supplied in NOT the same as starting an illegal war, you simpleton. The same cannot be said for Bush Co., whom it is well known by now, lied about WMDs and Saddam’s support of Al Qaeda to both Congress and the American people in their lead up to the invasion. Those were the justifications that they used at the time. Even the Brits admit the intelligence on Saddam’s WMD capacity was “sexy-ed up”. Obama had nothing to do with any of these events. He was occupied elsewhere as evidenced above. To be clear, the crime and any related conspiracy was starting the war, not funding our troops.
There was a conspiracy all right. But the conspirators were Bush Co., PNAC, the Secret Energy Task Force participants and the Neocons. They committed treason which lead to war crimes authorized under the Bush Presidency and at the insistence of Dick Cheney. And every one of them deserves to be hanging from a tree by their neck right now. Food for crows.
Now, bring some better evidence of Obama being a co-conspirator to treason or shut your pie hole. You suck as a propagandist and you have all the argument skills of a bag of Skittles. On the plus side, you do give me a chance to expound upon the conspiratorial treasonous guilt of the Neocons so if you just want me to keep making the real criminals here (your employers) more visible, you keep on coming back. BTW, I wouldn’t show this thread to your bosses as evidence of your work product. It’ll get you fired.
Buddha:
ditto what Mike said, you have to watch doctors like hawks, they can kill you if you dont pay attention to what they are doing. Contrary to their opinion of themselves, they are actually not that bright as a whole. There are some brilliant ones but they are few and far between and if you find one hold on to them and treat them like gold.
“Yes, I’ll stipulate he’s walked into a real shit storm and that it’s early – maybe even too early – for harsh criticism.”
Buddha,
You might be missing my point. I’m not asking you to like or trust the guy, nor am I asking you to hold your tongue, as if I could with any reasonable expectation of success. Let it all hang out and raise your voice loud in protest. What I am saying though and in its’ laundry list your post bolsters it, is that there are so many urgent problems and he’s been in office too little time, with a less than supportive Congress to render judgment as to his purposes. Keep attacking because that adds to the cacophony that will give him the power to act,
we must overcome the phony Beltway Centrism of the MSM, Congress and the Corporatists. Down the road we’ll see if he’s the real thing, or another egomaniacal phony.
More concerning to me is your health because I’ve come to like you. I may have missed the issue, or perhaps you’ve never gone into detail, but please take some advice re: medicine from an old hand. I’ve had 3 MI’s and now have Congestive Heart Failure, I’ve even got a Pacemaker. What has kept me alive this far is that I check out everything my Doctor’s tell me even if I trust them. My wife comes along to each visit because we’ve found that a patient hears the Doctor’s words selectively. I have and have had some of the best Doctors, but even they in the rush of their day make mistakes, it’s your job as a patient to ensure the mistakes aren’t fatal. Apply that skeptical nature of yours to your Doctors and we’ll have you around bitching here for a long, long time.
Mike
“Obama, Bush and many of their administrations are War Criminals. Most all of Congress is highly complicit too.
They all belong in the same trial.”
Buena Vista,
Silly Wabbit. Think you have radical chops, but merely a mirror image of your Right Wing counterparts. Saw your website, which I assume is why you’re posting here, to stir up some visitation. You’re so reminiscent of some of my radical cohorts way back when. Humorless warriors with a Stalinist psyche (the man’s psychology, not his politics)whose attitude is “hipper than thou.” Your “war criminal” argument re: Obama is fallacious on the merits and I assume dishonest. Why dishonest, you may ask if your mind had an inquisitorial bent, because I assume that you are intelligent enough to know that those funding bills in context had nothing to do with support of the war but merely to support the military. They were designed as a trap by the Republicans, who then could use the issue “didn’t support the troops” in campaigning.
Before you crusade to reform our country’s governmental system and the world it might be instructive for you to understand how it really works, not how you would want it ideally to work. Rhetoric is easy reform and revolution are hard. By your writing I see that you like easy. We’re in an ongoing struggle here that has lasted thousands of years and one of the main reasons the thugs have run the show is because your type of idealist is more interested in ejaculation, than reforming humanity.
“Damn you Juan Valdez and your treacherous mule!”
LMAO!
Buddha:
“A country is only as great as it’s physical production capacity and the only capacity we’ve been protecting is the capacity to manufacture bullshit like credit default swaps – a concept that is not only ridiculous but mathematically offensive.”
Excellent point. Production and not consumption is the life blood of an economy. As I have said many times the kind of capitalism we now have protects the rich and punishes the poor and middle class. We need real unfettered capitalism, that will make the idle rich actually have to pay attention to what is going on or loose their fortunes. The kind that allows the poor and middle class to move upward and not be held back by taxes and by debt.
Hellooooooooo – WHAT…???
——-
In USC § 2441 – War crimes the key word that fits Obama is conspires. I count it at 9 times in the law.
conspire – to act or work together toward the same goal
As Senator, Obama in voting at least 11 times to Fund the Wars of Aggression conspired. Obama is a conspirator, traitor and a War Criminal.
In USC § 2441 – War crimes the key word that fits Obama is conspires. I count it at 9 times in the law.
conspire – to act or work together toward the same goal
As Senator, Obama in voting at least 11 times to Fund the Wars of Aggression conspired. Obama is a conspirator, traitor and a War Criminal.
When the CIA was established in 1947, it was with the idea that the Agency would be free of influence by the executive branch and vested the ability to function independently.
In it’s entire history, all that changed with the entrance of
VICE PRESIDENT, Cheney, on the international scene, pounding his fists on the desk of CIA analyst insisting they simply were “not looking in the right place” for WMD’s in Iraq.
George Tenet should have, respectfully, shown him the door!
Too bad…
Wow! Too much work today kept me away from this important discussion. I am a big Obama fan, but I have to admit to serious frustration over the missed opportunities to reel in the lawlessness of the Bush regime. I realize that it less than 100 days into Obama’s term, but his Justice department had made some amazing blunders in keeping the fraudulent arguments of the Bush regime and in the most recent filing, they even went farther than the Bush regime in the Bagram prisoner Habeas Corpus case. There is still time for the Obama administration to correct these problems, but I agree with Buddha that I need to see some positive steps very quickly. For the Spanish court to take the steps that we should be taking is embarrassing. There is no logical reason to avoid a special prosecutor investigation into the torture issue. With the legal actions that we have seen the Obama Justice Department make, the light at the end of the tunnel is not very bright. I am still hopeful, but not stupid.