Well, if we won't do it, I guess the Spaniards will!
When Nancy Pelosi took impeachment off the table, I knew the idea of holding the Bush administration accountable for their crimes was probably a lost cause. The current administration doesn't seem very gung ho to investigate either.Spanish judge accuses six top Bush officials of torture
Legal moves may force Obama's government into starting a new inquiry into abuses at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib
- The Observer, Sunday 29 March 2009
- Article history
Criminal proceedings have begun in Spain against six senior officials in the Bush administration for the use of torture against detainees in Guantánamo Bay. Baltasar Garzón, the counter-terrorism judge whose prosecution of General Augusto Pinochet led to his arrest in Britain in 1998, has referred the case to the chief prosecutor before deciding whether to proceed.
The case is bound to threaten Spain's relations with the new administration in Washington, but Gonzalo Boyé, one of the four lawyers who wrote the lawsuit, said the prosecutor would have little choice under Spanish law but to approve the prosecution.
"The only route of escape the prosecutor might have is to ask whether there is ongoing process in the US against these people," Boyé told the Observer. "This case will go ahead. It will be against the law not to go ahead."
The officials named in the case include the most senior legal minds in the Bush administration. They are: Alberto Gonzales, a former White House counsel and attorney general; David Addington, former vice-president Dick Cheney's chief of staff; Douglas Feith, who was under-secretary of defence; William Haynes, formerly the Pentagon's general counsel; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, who were both senior justice department legal advisers.
Court documents say that, without their legal advice in a series of internal administration memos, "it would have been impossible to structure a legal framework that supported what happened [in Guantánamo]".
Why?
Torture is wrong. Period. There is no evidence that I can find of a "24" like instance where the world was saved by beating or waterboarding someone. In fact, Huff Post is linking to a Washington Post article regarding the "harsh treatment" of Abu Zubaida. No plots were foiled, time was wasted and we undermined our principals. Pretty sure that = EPIC FAIL!
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