Hermann Goering’s descendants file wrongful conviction and wrongful death claims.
At least, that is the way the headline should read tomorrow, based on Thursday’s news.
From April 9, 2009’s McClatchy’s newspaper, “CIA to Close Secret Overseas Prisons, End Security Contracts:”
“The CIA is decommissioning the secret overseas prisons where top al Qaida suspects were subjected to interrogation methods, including simulated drowning, that Attorney General Eric Holder, allied governments, the Red Cross and numerous other experts consider torture, the agency said Thursday.
“In an e-mail to the agency's work force outlining current interrogation and detention policies, CIA Director Leon Panetta also announced that agreements with the private security firms guarding the so-called black sites will be ‘promptly terminated,’ and contractors no longer will be used to conduct interrogations.
“Panetta, however, said that CIA officers who were involved in interrogations using ‘enhanced’ methods authorized by the Justice Department during the Bush administration ‘should not be investigated, let alone punished.’”
The Obama Team, you have to give it to them, are very skilled at PR.
They have announced that they are shutting down the infamous “black sites” in places such as Afghanistan, Jordan, Poland, Romania and Thailand where the CIA tortured and, in some cases, murdered detainees.
Now Sen. Dianne Feinstein can say: "I have long fought to ban the use of contractors in interrogations and detention operations. So, I am very pleased that Mr. Panetta has announced that contractors will no longer conduct interrogations."
They can all sound like they are ending the atrocities committed under Bush and Cheney. We can all breathe easier that things have changed.
Except, that they haven’t.
Obama and his team have said on the record that for high-value detainees, they reserve the right to go beyond the Army Field Manual for interrogations.
Obama has on the record said that he will continue to use rendition.
Obama’s DOJ has said on the record that the hundreds of detainees being held and tortured at Bagram have no right to challenge their indefinite detentions.
Panetta says that these CIA officers will not be “investigated, let alone punished” because they were following “legal orders.”
The Obama team, to be consistent here, should next announce that the Nuremberg Verdicts - that found that Nazis whose legal defense at Nuremberg was that they were only following orders were GUILTY – should be overturned.
As Nazi leader Hermann Goering cynically stated while on trial at Nuremberg: the winners put the losers on trial.
According to our august leaders, it doesn’t matter what heinous acts a US representative commits as long as they were following the orders of their leaders. If they were following orders, then they are exempt from responsibility.
I do so admire the morality and legality being demonstrated by our leaders. They are setting world-standards for change and for hope.
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Comments
Unfortunately, this is a luxury that those who are being bombed in Afghanistan and Pakistan don't have.
It's an option that detainees being held and subjected to inhumane treatment, including torture, do not have in Bagram and Gitmo and other unpublicized sites.
It's a choice that those who realize how fragile the maintenance of civil liberties is don't have because these rights are at 11:58 pm on the clock that will sound their death knell.
On the one hand, yes, it would have been worse under Palin or McCain because their PRINCIPAL social base is reactionary. They would not be trying to appeal (or needing to appeal) to a more progressive social base to maintain credibility in office in the eyes of that social base the way that Obama must.
On the other hand, anyone who misses what Obama is actually doing and can't see the difference between his rhetoric and his actions needs a serious reacquaintance with reality.
To wit, in brief:
Obama has actually gone further than Bush and Cheney in his extraordinary claims for executive power. His DOJ this week filed papers in court asserting a new right - sovereign immunity - which means, as Glenn Greenwald put it:
"[T]he Obama DOJ has now invented a brand new claim of government immunity, one which literally asserts that the U.S. Government is free to intercept all of your communications (calls, emails and the like) and -- even if what they're doing is blatantly illegal and they know it's illegal -- you are barred from suing them unless they 'willfully disclose' to the public what they have learned."
He is escalating the illegal war and occupation on Afghanistan and escalating the illegal drone attacks upon Pakistan (that, according to the Times On Line, has created a "humanitarian disaster" and so far displaced 1 million Pakistanis). These illegal military strikes on Pakistan were first proposed by Obama in August 2007 and at the time greeted with disbelief by Bush on the grounds that it was so bellicose and aggressive. Subsequently the Bush White House adopted Obama's proposal. Thus, Obama was actually to the RIGHT on this issue of Bush and Cheney as well.
He has said he'll close Gitmo, but it's going to take up to a year and a) the torture's gotten worse there since his election; b) he's expanding the prison in Bagram and plans to send some of the Gitmo prisoners there where he's already declared that the detainees will have no right to challenge their detention.
He's retaining rendition. He's reserving the right to torture certain prisoners (so-called high value detainees). He's continuing the government spying on all of us.
There is more. I would refer you to some of my other posts.
He is better than Bush and Cheney on stem cell research and his attitude towards science and scientists, but his refusal to prosecute crimes against humanity and war crimes (along with other explicit and outrageous violations of the law such as overriding other branches of the government) means that any president from here on can do anything they want and say that Bush and Cheney (and now Obama) got away with it, so therefore so can I. This means, in other words, that the nature of American rule has been irrevocably changed.
http://news.antiwar.com/2009/04/09/gen-odierno-us-may-ignore-iraq-deadline-because-of-al-qaeda/
Many knowledgeable sources opine that we are only 1/2 way through this war. Yes, I voted for him, and he hears from me nearly every day about the lies and obfuscations he used to ensnare me, but he's a freakin' democrat and if there's one thing we should know by now is that they are complicit and expert at obfuscation.