President Obama and Torture

Dear Readers,

I was saddened and disappointed to learn today that not only will President Obama not permit the United States to honor its treaty obligations and its own laws and investigate and prosecute Bush Administration officials for torture and other war crimes, President Obama put inappropriate pressure on the independent judiciary of Spain to stop Spain from following its laws and doing what President Obama should be doing here.

Before getting to the inappropriate pressure on Spain's independent judiciary.  I want to remind you of several facts.

• Throughout American history waterboarding by other countries of our soldiers has been prosecuted by us as torture, and waterboarding is by all normal standards considered torture.
• Torture is a war crime under all definitions of that term.
• Any treaty that the United States signs essentially becomes United States law.
• The United States has signed treaties that obligate it to prosecute war crimes and has separate laws that make torture a criminal act.
• Both former President Bush and former Vice President Cheney have publicly stated that they authorized and approved the use of waterboarding.
• So it is clear that former President Bush and former Vice President Cheney have admitted to committing war crimes and violating American anti-torture laws, and there is clear documentation that other members of the Bush Administration were involved in the planning and execution of war crimes and the violation of anti-torture laws.
• President Obama has failed to investigate these crimes and now it is clear has been involved in preventing others from investigating them as well.

What kind of a leader is that?

But back to the recent revelations.  The information of President Obama's inappropriate interference with Spain's independent judiciary became known as a result of the cables released by WikiLeaks and the reporting of David Corn at MotherJones.  The complete story is here. 

A Spanish civil rights group asked Spain's independent judiciary to

indict six former Bush officials for, as the cable describes it, "creating a legal framework that allegedly permitted torture." The six were 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.

The Obama Administration as well as Senator Judd Greg (R-N.H.) and Senator Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) put pressure on the Spanish government to interfere with the investigation and potential prosecution in order to preserve good relations with the United States. David Corn's article continues

The Americans, according to this cable, "underscored that the prosecutions would not be understood or accepted in the US and would have an enormous impact on the bilateral relationship" between Spain and the United States. Here was a former head of the GOP and a representative of a new Democratic administration (headed by a president who had decried the Bush-Cheney administration's use of torture) jointly applying pressure on Spain to kill the investigation of the former Bush officials. Lossada replied that the independence of the Spanish judiciary had to be respected, but he added that the government would send a message to the attorney general that it did not favor prosecuting this case.

Unfortunately for justice, it appears that President Obama was successful at stopping an investigation and potential prosecution.  I believe this is the only known case of true bipartisanship that President Obama can take credit for.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal