Shouldn't We Be Doing This Ourselves?

SIX BUSH OFFICIALS TO BE INDICTED BY SPANISH PROSECUTORS: Human Rights lawyer and Daily Beast contributor Scott Horton reports that Spanish prosecutors will announce today that they are moving forward with the indictment of six top Bush officials who are charged with providing legal cover for torture.

The investigation deals specifically with the case of five Spanish citizens who were detained at Guantanamo Bay and allegedly tortured there. The Bush 6, as Horton calls them, are former attorney general Alberto Gonzales, former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith, former Cheney chief of staff David Addington, Justice Department officials John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee, and Pentagon lawyer William Haynes. The State Department has been in constant contact with the Spanish government since the case was initially filed on March 17. During a meeting at the American embassy in Madrid, "Spanish prosecutors advised the Americans that they would suspend their investigation if at any point the United States were to undertake an investigation of its own into these matters." Horton reports, however, that when "pressed to know whether any such investigation was pending," they received no answer. Still, Obama faces the ongoing issue of Republicans "promising to 'go nuclear' and filibuster" his legal appointments if he authorizes the Justice Department to release the torture memos written by the Bush 6.
-- citing an article by Scott Horton

All we have to do is announce a US investigation and the Spanish courts will drop this case. But we can't even agree to investigate this stuff. The Bush 6 worked very hard to "legally" define a black box where normal rules of justice and due process do not apply, a place where torture is legal and soldiers and operatives of the US government can hold any person identified by the President for any length of time with no review or consequence. I guess it worked. Because even the new administration doesn't seem willing to investigate these charges.
If Americans won't investigate torture and war crimes, then I guess it is a good thing that some other countries will.

We Americans need to reclaim our Honor

Dick Cheney has basically thumbed his nose at International Law, the Constitution of the United States, and most assumptions about how civilized people should treat each other.

The LA Times reports that when asked about waterboarding, Cheney said: "I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared," Cheney said in an interview with ABC News.Asked whether he still believes it was appropriate to use the waterboarding method on terrorism suspects, Cheney said: "I do."
His comments come on the heels of disclosures by a Senate committee showing that high-level officials in the Bush administration were intimately involved in reviewing and approving interrogation methods that have since been explicitly outlawed and that have been condemned internationally as torture.

My letters to my congressman and senators are going out, plus notes to the President Elect and the ACLU. If the United States legal system cannot conduct hearings to determine if Cheney and others are guilty of committing war crimes, then we should at least have the decency to turn this over to the International Courts in the Hague.

I’m tired of people just shrugging their shoulders and saying, oh well what can we do about it? We can do the same thing we would do if our neighbor down the street was abusing his kids—we can haul him into court and make him answer questions and determine if crimes have been committed. Cheney is pretty much confessing on camera to ABC. He is saying, I knew about torture. I helped plan torture. I approved of torture. And I still think torture is a good idea. Well, Mr. Cheney, I do not approve. The laws of the United States do not approve. International Law and treaties signed by the U.S. do not approve. This country has tried people in the past who have waterboarded U.S. troops and found them guilty and hanged them for it. Why should the rules be different for Mr. Cheney or anyone else?

If the officials in Congress and the Justice Department won’t initiate action on this then that only leaves the citizens of the United States to take care of this matter. Let’s reestablish the rule of law in our country and hold people accountable for committing crimes. And let’s start with Mr. Cheney, who has just been kind enough to confess on camera.