What makes this particularly appalling and inexcusable is that Senate Democrats had long vehemently opposed the use of the "state secrets" privilege in exactly the way that the Bush administration used it in this case, even sponsoring legislation to limits its use and scope. Yet here is Obama, the very first chance he gets, invoking exactly this doctrine in its most expansive and abusive form to prevent torture victims even from having their day in court, on the ground that national security will be jeopardized if courts examine the Bush administration's rendition and torture programs -- even though (a) the rendition and torture programs have been written about extensively in the public record; (b) numerous other countries have investigated exactly these allegations; and (c) other countries have provided judicial forums in which these same victims could obtain relief.The only thing I have to add is, this is why we bloggers still say
The least Eric Holder can do is tell us who he's protecting. As if we don't already know.
Well, I did a little checking.. not a lot but a little.. and from what I could tell.. Mr. Letter is the atty's name who answered for the DOJ and he is a Bushie burrower. That makes me wonder right there. I know I could never get anything through to Glenn Greenwald so I didn't even try.
ReplyDeleteAgain, I think it is just a little much to be attacking him and branding him a failure and we are barely 3 weeks into the Presidency. But I am sure seeing a lot of this. What is is with the Dems. I saw this in the campaign, that we wrung our hands, we are losing constantly, now we are throwing our President to the wolves on the right, geeze I think the man has a little bit on his plate right now and he might be a little bit busy. We might need to cut him just a bit of slack for a few days... As for Eric Holder...he has been in office for what not even a week...I doubt he has even got his people in place as of yet... like I said this guy is a hold over from the Bush gang...what does he really know about Obama???
I read your post very carefully...twice. Annette points out that this administration has been in office less than a month. But as a Canadian observer, I always felt that the transition time was to be used for the purpose of getting all ducks in a row, in order to take early action on just this sort of thing.
ReplyDeleteBut I think that until the stimulus thing gets passed, Obama has to stay pretty focused on the economy.
My guess is that any action on the issue will be left to "a third party" and the international court.
In the final analysis it's likely that the only punishment to be meted out to the perps - will be restricted travel options to countries that might respect the arrest warrants of co-signatories.
That's what happened to Augusto Pinochet.
Also - we outsiders are convinced that there is an unseen "shadow government" in the U.S. that is able to pull the strings on "national security".
There - I said it.