One of the little reported details from the latest batch of Wikileaks material are cables showing that the Obama Administration worked hard behind the scenes not only to prevent any investigation of torture in the United States but shutdown efforts abroad to enforce the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture. This includes threatening the Spanish that, if they did not derail a judicial investigation, it would have serious consequences in bilateral relations. I discussed these cables on Countdown.
For two years, President Obama has worked to block the investigation of torture under the Bush Administration — even as both Dick Cheney and George Bush publicly admit to ordering waterboarding of suspects.
David Corn in Mother Jones has an interesting posting today on the issue.
A “confidential” April 17, 2009, cable sent from the US embassy in Madrid to the State Department discloses how the Administration discarded any respect for the independence of the judiciary in Spain and pressured the government to derail the prosecution of Bush officials. Human rights groups around the world had called for such enforcement in light of Obama promise that no torturers would be prosecuted and Holder’s blocking of any investigation into war crimes.
The Association for the Dignity of Spanish Prisoners had filed a demand for prosecution with Spain’s National Court to indict former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; David Addington, former chief of staff and legal adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney; William Haynes, the Pentagon’s former general counsel; Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy; Jay Bybee, former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel; and John Yoo, a former official in the Office of Legal Counsel. It had a compelled factual basis that these men ordered or facilitated war crimes — a record that has only become stronger since this confrontation.
American officials pressured government officials, including prosecutors and judges, not to enforce international law and that this was “a very serious matter for the USG.” It was Obama’s own effort at creating a “Coalition of the Unwilling” — nations unwilling to enforce treaties on torture and war crimes when the alleged culprits are American officials.
Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) joined the embassy’s charge d’affaires in the secret campaign to block the prosection of Judge Baltasar Garzón.
Corn notes that, during an April 14, 2009 White House briefing, he asked press secretary Robert Gibbs if the Obama administration would cooperate with any request from Spain on the investigation and prosecution. Gibbs insisted that this was nothing but “hypotheticals” and did not disclose that in fact the Obama Administration was working diligently to block the Spanish case.
Just as many conservatives abandoned their principles in following George Bush blindly, many liberals have chosen to ignore Obama’s concerted efforts to protect individuals accused of war crimes. Under our treaty obligations, the United States has the primary responsibility to prosecute torture by U.S. citizens. That responsibility rests with the Executive Branch – the prosecuting authority of the United States. What is particularly disgraceful is that Obama would refuse to fulfill this responsibility under our treaties and international law and then demand the same hypocrisy from our allies.
FLOG THE BLOG: Have you voted yet for the top legal opinion blog? WE NEED YOUR VOTE! You can vote at HERE by clicking on the “opinion” category. Voting ends December 31, 2011.
List of facilities ‘vital to US security’ leaked
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11923766
Professor I found the Unicorn, in China
To know for sure if it is a true unicorn, one would have to talk to the crowds who have touched Mr. Jia’s cow and document how many conditions were healed, how many guilty parties identified, how many virginity’s restored, etc.
http://www.gearlog.com/2010/12/unicorn_cow_discovered_in_chin.php
“I never thought I would see it on this blog. Most are complaining that BHO and his admin are full of the same old same old bs of government corruption, inequities and secrecy.”
That would only be because you don’t actually read this blog, Kurt, just troll. Or more to the point, you read but you don’t comprehend. The “complaining” – actually criticism – has been going on since he said, “look forward not backwards” in regards to prosecution of our very own domestic war criminals, Bush and Cheney. This is not a partisan issue. Our traditional conservative commentators have voiced the same criticism.
I never thought I would see it on this blog. Most are complaining that BHO and his admin are full of the same old same old bs of government corruption, inequities and secrecy. No different than what BHO was campaigning against while promising widespread change in the name of justice and righteousness. Nope. It’s the same old story with a new set of words. Here’s the killer … Michelle Malkin’s book “the Culture of Corruption …” was dead on in her assessment, according to the sentiment listed in this thread. Oh, the humanity!! And the blimp is toast.
So while we are saddled with this denizen of iniquities let’s try to make the best of it Somehow. Can we?
Carlyle Moulton, That’s why I have never been a big fan of the Senate. Once you start concentrating more and more power in the hands of increasingly fewer people the level of crazies needed to put a spanner in the works starts to become pretty small. Give me a Parliamentary Democracy.
My definition of the word “psychopath”, an individual who behaves like a nation.
That nations behave completely unscrupulously may perhaps be explained by so many high officials being smart psychopaths, but it is also possible that institutional structures somehow select for and amplify psychopath-like behaviour.
Oh! That awful Do It music stopped when I posted to Henry. LOL
Henry,
You said you didn’t understand why Obama was stopping the prosecution of Bush and or Cheney, etc.
I explained why at my comment above Dec.2, 3:07 p.m. The posting has gotten long and so you might have missed it. There are two good links about the topic as well.
WikiLeaks cables reveal how US manipulated climate accord
Embassy dispatches show America used spying, threats and promises of aid to get support for Copenhagen accord
Hidden behind the save-the-world rhetoric of the global climate change negotiations lies the mucky realpolitik: money and threats buy political support; spying and cyberwarfare are used to seek out leverage.
The US diplomatic cables reveal how the US seeks dirt on nations opposed to its approach to tackling global warming; how financial and other aid is used by countries to gain political backing; how distrust, broken promises and creative accounting dog negotiations; and how the US mounted a secret global diplomatic offensive to overwhelm opposition to the controversial “Copenhagen accord”, the unofficial document that emerged from the ruins of the Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009.
Negotiating a climate treaty is a high-stakes game, not just because of the danger warming poses to civilisation but also because re-engineering the global economy to a low-carbon model will see the flow of billions of dollars redirected.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/dec/03/wikileaks-us-manipulated-climate-accord
‘Obama Is not God’
US Drone Attack Raises Uncomfortable Questions for Germany
A US drone attack in Pakistan in October is thought to have killed a German citizen. The government of Chancellor Angela Merkel would prefer the case to simply go away, but one parliamentarian is refusing to let it be forgotten.
When a German citizen is killed in a foreign country under mysterious circumstances, one might expect an outcry from politicians and the media. But the case of Bünyamin E., a German of Turkish descent who is believed to have died in Pakistan on Oct. 4, has caused remarkably little fuss in Germany — partly because the 20-year-old was a suspected terrorist, but also because he was apparently killed by an American drone.
The case is awkward for the German government, as it involves the country’s most powerful ally and also raises uncomfortable questions about whether Germany provided support for the targeted killing.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,732684,00.html
“A Lesson Learnt: the rise and fall of Lariam and Halfan, by Dr Ashley Croft, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, April 2007.” Dr. Croft is one of the world’s experts on Lariam.
(Larium was the trade name for mefloquine.)
Links to all articles can be found at:
http://www.lariaminfo.org/
I think that they were testing it…
http://www.lariaminfo.org/ …an interesting site.
“MEFLOQUINE (LARIAM) ACTION”
Lariam was the trade name for mefloquine.
It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that they were testing it…
Four of many articles highlighted on the site:
“Before Walter Reed. . .” Dan Olmsted updates his report on the military’s abusive treatment of wounded soldiers and their handling of Lariam toxicity, Nieman Reports Watchdog, March 5, 2007 pdf .
Ordered Into Madness: The Military’s Use of Lariam, by Richard Currey, The Veteran, Nov-Dec 2005 pdf
Analysis: Iraq casualties and causality, Dan Olmsted, UPI, May 23, 2005 pdf. Did mefloquine (Lariam) trigger a number of suicides among soldiers serving in Iraq in 2003?
Consumer Reports, “Lariam’s Legacy,” March 2002. “The most-prescribed malaria drug could produce psychiatric side effects in more than one-quarter of all travelers who take it.”
Here’s another war crime: “Interrogators subjected Gitmo detainees to dangerous psychoactive drug: report
By Eric W. Dolan
Friday, December 3rd, 2010 — 11:12 am
Interrogators subjected Gitmo detainees to dangerous psychoactive drug: reportThe US military’s routine administration of high doses of a malaria drug, posing severe psychological side effects for Guantanamo Bay detainees, may have been the “psychological equivalent of waterboarding,” according to a published report.
An investigation by the Seton Hall University School of Law, a leading law school in the New York metropolitan area, found that administering 1250mg of the malaria drug mefloquine to Guantanamo Bay detainees was a standard operating procedure, “whether or not any use of the drug was medically appropriate.”
“Mefloquine was administered to detainees contrary to medical protocol or purpose,” Professor Mark P. Denbeaux, Director of the Seton Hall Law Center for Policy and Research, said. “The record reveals no medical justification for mefloquine in this manner or at these doses. On this record there appears to be only three possible reasons for drugging these men: gross malpractice, human experimentation or ‘enhanced interrogation.'”
“At best it represents monumental incompetence,” he added. “At worst, it’s torture.” (see raw story)
millsapian87,
Thanks for the clarification.
Liberal? Conservative? No difference. Our government now is like professional wrestling. They put on a good show, get in the ring (Congress), and get the people divided, ranting, and hating one another. Then they do their fancy flips and flops with their useless bills–where the outcome was already known beforehand. It is all a smoke screen. Congress now is like musical chairs trading off one corrupt party with another. If does not matter who appears to be running the show.
The proof is there was never any oversight to the crimes of the Bush administration. Not one in the last 4 years from the dems. No one is caring to look, or wants to look. They are all guilty. Obama’s actions here are also proof to this, and his resigning of blackwater’s billion dollar non-bid contract, the patriot act, and his healthcare bill that was written by the insurance lobby, and drug companies. And who is going to jail in regards to the banks? No one. He was a supposed washington outsider that surrounded himself with insiders.
Anon nurse, this is just to clarify what you posted. I work in a Government shop, and this is the justification for State’s policy.
They are not forbidding us from reading Wikileaks, only from doing so using Government computers. The reason is the classification issue.
If one reads Wikileaks and accesses a still-classified document, that information is downloaded and stored on the computer by the web browser. That computer is now storing classified information. If the asset is not cleared for classified info, then it must be disconnected from the network, sanitized and reloaded. That is THE LAW.
So the over-arching intent is to prevent a hugely expensive fustercluck of having to sanitize and reload every damn workstation in the building because people were reading Wikileaks. People can lose their clearances and/or go to jail for storing classified data on unauthorized assets, inadvertently or no.
Annie,
Don’t forget his terrible economic views! My point is there are people on the right who are anti war. If you want to form a coalition on that basis, it is possible. If you do not want to do so, go with god! As I said, people can only do what they can do.
The only requirement for real change is to stop condoning illegal and immoral actions because they are being done by people on your “side”. Consistent principles of right and wrong must be honestly and rigorously applied to our own actions. Many liberals have been failing this task miserably. This task was also failed by conservatives under Bush.
Ron Paul is anti-gay and anti-abortion. Won’t form coalition with him or his son.
Jill
I’m quite aware that torture is illegal anywhere in the world by anyone. As you say, the current administration is also aware. Your confidence that only you have the moral high ground and all the facts is very off-putting. I am fully prepared to hold the current administration guilty of any torture condoned by this administration – once it is proven it was condoned.
I am also fully prepared to condemn the current administration if they do not bring to justice those in the previous administation that condoned torture.
I think that where we part ways is that you expect it to have already been done, where I expect that precipitous action can lead to an unsatisfactory conclusion. I want these guys nailed completely and that, or so it seems to me, takes a thorough and probably lengthy examination of the facts, given the seriousness of the charges. I’m not sure what the DOJ’s priorities are, but I’m willing for them to proceed at their own pace. It’s the DOJ’s job, not the President’s, to investigate and bring to trial any wrongdoing – even the President’s. After all, almost everything comes to light eventually; anyone that thinks they can control the information is fooling themselves – as Wickileaks is proving.
It seems you are willing to accept anything that seems to verify your position; I’m more inclined to suspect the motivations of others – as in the case of this Spanish prosecutor. Perhaps that’s a result of having often seen what seemed to be a sure thing turn out to be not at all what was portrayed a la Mr. Breitbart.
I have a some doubts about President Obama’s ability to govern effectively, but this area is not one of them – yet.
Thank you for the invitation to join the Vetrans March for Peace, but I believe I’ll stick to my regimen of checking out facts and making my views known in other ways. Enjoy.
There are plenty of people in the right wing who are anti war. Ron Paul and his followers are just one example. Chomsky, Hedges, Nader and Scheer, none of whom could possibly be called right wing, have been urging liberals to take the anger of the right wing seriously. That would be a very good start towards coalition building.
Liberals right now largely ally themselves with Obama and the Democratic party no matter how unjust, immoral, cruel or criminal these actors are. Liberals have to stop this. They must work for justice and oppose injustice. That is the way to form coalitions–by having real principles, state them clearly and stand up for them.
There is no one right answer. Everyone should do what they can, however they can do it. But the one thing every liberal must cease is justifying illegal and depraved actions because they are done by Obama and other Democrats.