The Obama administration threatened the British government with denial of strategic threat information if it didn't shut down a trial brought by one of the people (Binyam Mohamed) who was tortured after rendition. Chris Floyd explains the cases and then has this to say:
As noted above, the high court judges have made clear that there was indeed a direct threat. Any weasel-word statements to the contrary by Miliband -- or the State Department of Hillary Clinton -- are, to put it bluntly, lies. If they are not, then let us see Miliband and Clinton and Obama sue the judges for libel.
The Obama intervention in the UK case is just one of several moves his administration is making to protect Bush and his torturers -- and to preserve the presidential "prerogatives" that Bush asserted to justify torture, eavesdropping and aggression in the first place. Since taking office little more than two weeks ago, Team Obama has already gone to court to protect and preserve Bush's blatantly illegal program of warrantless surveillance on U.S. citizens -- and, incredibly, to uphold the nefarious torture memos of John Yoo and quash court cases stemming from the illegal and unconstitutional incarceration without charges and subsequent torture of U.S. citizen Jose Padilla. [For more, see Arthur Silber's devastating analysis of these court moves, and their deeper implications, in "The System. Baby."]
Let's be very clear about all this. The Obama Administration is going to court to uphold -- to uphold -- the president's "prerogative" to arbitrarily declare any U.S. citizen an "enemy combatant" -- even if the citizen is arrested on U.S. soil -- and have that citizen held for years on end, without charges, in federal brigs where he can be isolated, broken and subjected to "harsh interrogation techniques." The Obama Administration is going to court to uphold -- to uphold -- the "prerogative" of government lawyers to proffer blatantly illegal memos concocted solely to justify an already existing system of crimes that are punishable by death under American law. The Obama Administration is continuing the Bush Administration's blatant blackmail against the nation's closest ally in order to keep evidence of torture -- evidence which involves no "sensitive" national security information whatsoever -- from being made public.
Is this clear enough for you? Is this what you voted for? And more importantly for all you savvy progressives out there who never want to commit the heinous sin of "making the perfect the enemy of the good" -- is this what you are willing to countenance and defend, with increasingly strained and painful moral contortions (like the ones that have greeted Obama's rendition policy), for the next four to eight years? Did you oppose the depredations of the Bush Regime out of principle -- or out of partisanship?
Do you really believe that an administration that goes to such lengths to protect torturers will ever actually prosecute any of the perpetrators of this abhorrent system? Do you really believe that an administration that sees torture and torture memos as "prerogatives" to be preserved will not itself commit tortures -- even if it confines itself to the various torture techniques laid out in the Army Field Manual (a Pentagon product that has suddenly become as sacrosanct as the Constitution in some progressive quarters)?
And here's one more question for you, from a long, long time ago: "How many times can a man turn his head, and pretend that he just doesn't see?"
No comments:
Post a Comment