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At the same time, it is worth noting that Obama has often done more than required to keep the "hidden primary's" masters content. He wasn't absolutely compelled by the U.S. political system: to vote (as a U.S. Senator in 2005) to restrict consumers' ability to successfully sue misbehaving corporations; to vote (as a U.S Senator in 2008) for enhanced federal domestic wiretapping powers under Patriot Act II; to speak (as President now) in hysterical and crackpot terms [8] about the alleged grave and imminent threat posed to world safety by al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan; to file a federal brief (as President this year) supporting George W. Bush' position on the denial of habeas corpus to "enemy combatants" flown to the U.S. prison at Bagram Air Force base in Afghanistan; to endorse the terrible George W. Bush position on "state secrets"; to repeatedly claim that a serious investigation of Bush administration torture practices would amount to a distracting focus on "the past" at the expense of sound policy in the present and future.
Could it really have ended any other way? As the New York Times reports, Barack Obama and the Democratic Establishment are coming down hard and fast to quell any incipient movement toward accountability for the Bush Regime's torture system.
These "leaders" continue to advance the bizarre and bogus argument that the nation has too many "urgent priorities" to bother with following its own laws. Obama told the Democratic poobahs from Congress that a "full inquiry" into the torture system would "steal time and energy from his policy agenda," the Times reports. But this argument -- indeed the entire issue of some sort of "commission" to investigate the high crimes -- is simply a cynical bait and switch.
It is really very simple. Ample, credible evidence of violations of federal law have been produced by a plethora of reputable sources -- including the United States Senate and even the Pentagon. It is the function of the Justice Department to investigate possible violations of federal law, and, if warranted, prosecute them. Barack Obama would not -- could not -- carry out such a criminal investigation or direct the prosecution. The United States Congress would not carry out such a criminal investigation or direct the prosecution. Not a single government official now involved in dealing with the wars, with foreign policy, with the economy and the bailout, with health care, with employment and housing, with the environment, with the budget, with immigration -- in short, with any single activity of governing whatsoever -- would have their "time and energy" taken up by a straightforward criminal investigation undertaken by the Justice Department. [I see that Paul Krugman is making this same point in the New York Times. So now, even "serious" people can't pretend not to have heard it.]
If anyone -- politician, pundit, pal at the water cooler -- gives you the argument that torture can't be investigated because it would be a "distraction" from other government business, they are either lying to your face, or else ignorantly repeating a lie that's been filtered down from the elite. The argument about "distraction" is ludicrous, and insulting, on its face. It is exactly like saying, "Oh, we can't investigate these murders by Al Capone and his mob, because the mayor and city council have a lot on their plates right now, with this Depression and all. This is a time for looking forward, not retribution."
We don't need a "truth commission." We don't need to "wait for the facts to be gathered," as that walking conglomeration of craven servility and moral corruption, Harry Reid, insists. There are enough clearly established, copiously documented, credibly supported facts already in the public domain to warrant a full-scale criminal investigation by federal law enforcement officials.
ninakat wrote:Published on Thursday, May 28, 2009 by TedRall.com
An Early Call for Obama's Resignation
With Democrats Like Him, Who Needs Dictators?
by Ted Rall
"Prolonged detention," reported The New York Times, would be inflicted upon "terrorism suspects who cannot be tried."
"Cannot be tried." Interesting choice of words.
Any "terrorism suspect" (can you be a suspect if you haven't been charged with a crime?) can be tried. Anyone can be tried for anything. At this writing, a Somali child is sitting in a prison in New York, charged with piracy in the Indian Ocean, where the U.S. has no jurisdiction. Anyone can be tried. Why is it, exactly, that some prisoners "cannot be tried"?
The Old Grey Lady explains why Obama wants this "entirely new chapter in American law" in a boring little sentence buried a couple past the jump and a couple of hundred words down page A16: "Yet another question is what to do with the most problematic group of Guantánamo detainees: those who pose a national security threat but cannot be prosecuted, either for lack of evidence or because evidence is tainted."
© 2009 Ted Rall
Ted Rall is the author of the new book "Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?," an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America's next big foreign policy challenge.
genericsyncretic wrote:Exactly. In my book there's two types of "cannot be tried" individuals. First we have the torture victims. Imagine the embarrassment of trotting a suspect into court who has suffered a complete and utter mental breakdown because of his treatment in captivity. He's probably only confessed to crimes that were entirely in his interrogators heads to begin with. Even if they were guilty beyond belief though, we can't have anyone seeing the psychoses brought on by "enhanced interrogation."
Before the election I was discussing Gitmo with some friends. It's really quite the gift left behind by our previous masters. Even if none of the prisoners we have left were terrorists in their pasts they probably damn well are now. I know if I spent six years being tortured and humiliated because a neighbor sold me to the imperial powers I would want to blow some shit up when I got out. It pains me to sort of agree with Cheney here, but the truth is "we" will be fighting these people on a battlefield someday if they were to be released. I want them released. Hell, I want them released and set up with pensions for life, and parades in their honor, and billboard sized formal apologies. I hate the self fulfilling "hardened terrorist" prophecy. 'Cause this late in the game I don't see any good option for these people, I really don't.
What I do know though is setting into law the foundations to continue doing this to people indefinitely is on par strategically to setting up our own Al-Qaeda training camps and handing every graduate one of those mythical "suitcase nukes" and a vial of anthrax rolled up in their diplomas.
barracuda wrote:This is crazytalk. After six years of torture, what you are likely to want to do is crawl under your bed and cry for years on end. This ain't some Rambo movie, in which monthly genital slicing makes you tougher. Maher Arar hasn't gone all Al-Qaida on his community, has he? Here's a standard operating procedure, generic: when you find yourself in agreement with Cheney on anything, stop, look into a mirror and say to yourself, "What the fuck was I thinking?"
Try these people or let them go. End of excuses.
The White House is actively supporting a new bill jointly sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman -- called The Detainee Photographic Records Protection Act of 2009 -- that literally has no purpose other than to allow the government to suppress any "photograph taken between September 11, 2001 and January 22, 2009 relating to the treatment of individuals engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside of the United States." As long as the Defense Secretary certifies -- with no review possible -- that disclosure would "endanger" American citizens or our troops, then the photographs can be suppressed even if FOIA requires disclosure. The certification lasts 3 years and can be renewed indefinitely. The Senate passed the bill as an amendment last week.
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