Meanwhile, back in the US...

[solarbird]

Glenn Greenwald takes apart the military explanation of three simultaneous 'suicides' at Gitmo. If you don't remember the event, I refer you to Andrew Sullivan, here:

You may recall the somewhat bizarre response of the Pentagon to the news in June 2006 that three prisoners at Gitmo had somehow managed to hang themselves simultaneously in one of the most watched, patrolled and monitored prison sites in the world. The facts were bizarre: prisoners somehow had been hanging for two hours with rigor mortis when they were discovered; and their bodies were found to have a rag stuffed deep down their throats. But the strangeness and pathos of this event was only matched by the virulent anger of the Pentagon which immediately accused these defenseless and dead prisoners of "asymmetrical warfare" against the US.

Greenwald and Sullivan are both talking about a Seton Hall report on the military's farcical non-investigation of the incident. There's a lawsuit from the families, but the Obama administration is doing everything in its power to prevent the lawsuit from moving forward, arguing that there are no constitutional limits on what the executive can to do anyone outside the United States:

...the Obama administration has surprisingly endorsed the same legal positions as its predecessor, insisting that there is no constitutional right to humane treatment by U.S. authorities outside the United States, and that victims of torture and abuse and their survivors have no right to compensation or even an acknowledgment of what occurred...

Scott Horton of Harper's talks about the Obama administration's efforts to redeem John Yoo and block any prosecutions of "Justice Department lawyers who counsel torture, disappearings, and other crimes against humanity." Notably:

In the face of actual criminal investigations, the DOJ has behaved usually like a criminal accused, and intent on obstruction, not like a law enforcement agency. Criminal investigations involving the conduct of Yoo and his fellow torture-memo writers are underway at this moment in a number of foreign jurisdictions, most notably including the two pending criminal cases in Spain. It’s noteworthy that the U.S. Justice Department, presented with letters rogatory from the Spanish court probing into the torture of Spanish citizens at Guantánamo and the role played by DOJ lawyers in this process, elected not to respond. Attorney General Holder traveled to Europe at the outset of his term, promising European justice officials a new era of cooperation. But in the first significant test case, he has continued the Bush-era cover-up of potentially criminal misconduct deep inside the Justice Department.

Comments

[phillipalden.livejournal.com]

John Yoo, (and David Addington,) should have their license to practice law revoked and both should face criminal charges. I say send the entire Bush II Administration to The Hague.

[brombear.livejournal.com]

The part that I find deeply troubling is that it is becoming more and more apparent to the world that our government it totally out of control, and will answer to no nation, nor follow it's own laws.