Obama Administration Secretly Worked To Prevent Prosecution of War Crimes By The Bush Administration

[Bluebear]

by Jonathan Turley

One of the little reported details from the latest batch of Wikileaks material are cables showing that the Obama Administration worked hard behind the scenes not only to prevent any investigation of torture in the United States but shutdown efforts abroad to enforce the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture. This includes threatening the Spanish that, if they did not derail a judicial investigation, it would have serious consequences in bilateral relations. I will be discussing these cables tonight on Countdown.

For two years, President Obama has worked to block the investigation of torture under the Bush Administration — even as both Dick Cheney and George Bush publicly admit to ordering waterboarding of suspects.

http://jonathanturley.org/2010/12/02/wikileaks-obama-administration-secretly-worked-to-prevent-prosecution-of-war-crimes-by-the-bush-administration/

Sorry, no mitigating photo of Obama splashing in the ocean was included in the article.

[RandomThoughts]

1. I can say this, when that was first reported back when it happened.

I actually agreed that the political capital at that time would be better spent on things like taking care of the wreck of economy, and health care, although that didn't get to far either.

The theory was correction of justice for those things could be done after health care and fixing other stuff, but then health care dragged out for some reason, and nobody ever went back to that issue.

:shrug:

I figure people should not hate people that do that, but it makes sense to have some system of justice in place in a society. The Anarchy that was installed many years ago really is a bad way to have a system.

[el_bryanto]

2. I can understand that reasoning

It's problematic either way.

And of course nobody should be surprised that when elected a somewhat mainstream, middle of the road candidate like Obama, he acted in a mainstream, middle of the road kind of way.

Bryant

[Mnemosyne]

7. Seriously? Torture and protecting war criminals is middle of the road? Seriously?! Wow. n/t

[el_bryanto]

9. Unfortunately, yes.

Do you really see Obama as an extremist within the context of how Washington currently works? You can argue the whole system is out of whack (i'd agree with you there) but within that system, he's pretty middle of the road.

Bryant

[Mnemosyne]

13. I want a new country then. n/t

[displacedvermoter]

8. I can say this, when I learned the Obama Admin was NOT

going to tackle the issue of investigating and prosecuting war criminals and war profiteers, I knew that there would be no
groundswell of support for the "change" the great man campaigned on. I knew that many just plain folks would not be aware of what had really gone on in the previous administration, and that by leaving people ignorant of all of this -- not having televised Watergate-type hearings and perp walks of Bush-era criminals -- there would be a fairly quick GOP turnaround.

Preposterous, and dare I say, weak, or perhaps complicit.

[Bluebear]

14. Well said.

[displacedvermoter]

16. I'm just a whiner and complainer!

[rhett o rick]

27. If we allow criminals to run free, they will come back and do it again and again. nm

[rhett o rick]

28. self delete. dup

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Poboy]

4. RECOMMEND!

[Solly Mack]

5. K&R

:)

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

6. But..but..it's dangerous for "we the people" to know that. K&R

[leftstreet]

10. K&R

[xchrom]

11. More confirmation that the law is not applied equally.

At this point it's kinda jumping up and down
And causing a scene.

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

15. Deleted message

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[Name removed]

17. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Poboy]

18. kick

[VMI Dem]

19. KnR.

[TexasObserver]

20. I'm beyond being surprised.

Simply appalling.

[Jack Sprat]

21. In the words of The Exorcist, "They are all One" n/t

[slipslidingaway]

22. knr nt

[Swamp Rat]

23. k&r

[Subdivisions]

24. Why are these threads about Obama war crimes getting shot all to hell??? n/t

[Bluebear]

25. Because it's OK when "our side" does it.

[Occulus]

31. Because this site is overrun by Republicans posing as Dems.

And I do mean overrun, in numbers I never thought possible.

[slipslidingaway]

26. Do we still pretend that we abide by treaties? Greenwald - 2/09

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/02/16/treaties/index.html

"...And yet those who advocate that we refrain from criminal investigations rarely even mention our obligations under the Convention. There isn't even a pretense of an effort to reconcile what they're advocating with the treaty obligations to which Ronald Reagan bound the U.S. in 1988. Do we now just explicitly consider ourselves immune from the treaties we signed? Does our political class now officially (rather than through its actions) consider treaties to be mere suggestions that we can violate at will without even pretending to have any justifications for doing so? Most of the time, our binding treaty obligations under the Convention -- as valid and binding as every other treaty -- don't even make it into the discussion about criminal investigations of Bush officials, let alone impose any limits on what we believe we can do..."

[Bluebear]

30. Thank you.

[struggle4progress]

29. Here's the cable at The Guardian:

US embassy cables: Don't pursue Guantánamo criminal case, says Spanish attorney general
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 1 December 2010 21.30 GMT
... Zaragoza has also told us that if a proceeding regarding this matter were underway in the U.S., that would effectively bar proceedings in Spain. We intend to further explore this option with him informally (asking about format, timing, how much information he would need, etc.) while making it clear that the USG has not made a decision to follow this course of action. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/202776

Turley, as usual, provides a completely unreliable summary

[Karmadillo]

32. War criminals of a feather flock together.

nt

[Poboy]

33. .

[Poboy]

34. .

[Mimosa]

35. Of course they did. When did a President prosecute a previous administration?

It will never happen in the Corporate States of America. War is our business. :sarcasm: