Greenwald: (Britain's) Bizarre reaction to War Crimes allegations! They DEMAND investigations!

[nashville_brook]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/03/08-7

Britain's Bizarre Reaction to War Crimes Allegations: Investigations Needed
by Glenn Greenwald

Binyam Mohamed is the British resident who, two weeks ago, was released from Guantanamo and returned to Britain after seven years of detention, often in brutal conditions. Since his return, compelling evidence has been steadily emerging that British agents were knowingly complicit in Mohamed's torture while in U.S. custody -- including the discovery of telegrams sent by British intelligence officers to the CIA asking the CIA to extract information from him. How does a country with a minimally healthy political class and a pretense to the rule of law react to such allegations of criminality? From the BBC:

MPs have demanded a judicial inquiry into a Guantanamo Bay prisoner's claims that MI5 was complicit in his torture. . . .

allegations are being investigated by the government, but the Foreign Office said it did not condone torture.

Shadow justice secretary Dominic Grieve said the "extremely serious" claims should also be referred to the police. . . .

Daniel Sandford, BBC Home Affairs correspondent, said Mr Mohamed's claims would be relatively simple to substantiate.

"As time progresses it will probably become quite apparent whether indeed these are true telegrams and I think it's unlikely they'd be put into the public domain if they couldn't eventually be checked back."

The Conservatives have called for a police inquiry into his allegations of British collusion.

Mr Grieve called for a judicial inquiry into the allegations.

"And if the evidence is sufficient to bring a prosecution then the police ought to investigate it," he added.

Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Ed Davey said there was a "rock solid" case for an independent judicial inquiry. . . .

Shami Chakrabati, director of campaign group Liberty said: "These are more than allegations - these are pieces of a puzzle that are being put together.

"It makes an immediate criminal investigation absolutely inescapable."
(SNIP -- he cites many more)

Notice what is missing from these accounts. There is nobody arguing that the dreary past should simply be forgotten in order to focus on the important and challenging future. There's no snide suggestion that demands to investigate serious allegations of criminality are driven by petty vengeance or partisan score-settling. Nobody suggests that it's perfectly permissible for government officials to commit serious crimes -- including war crimes -- as long as they had nice motives or were told that it was OK to do these things by their underlings, or that the financial crisis (which Britain has, too) precludes any investigations, or that whether to torture is a mere "policy dispute." Also missing is any claim that these crimes are State Secrets that must be kept concealed in order to protect British national security.

(snip)

By stark and depressing contrast, America's political class and even most of its "journalists" -- in the face of far, far greater, more heinous and more direct war criminality by their highest political leaders -- are explicitly demanding that nothing be done and that it all be kept concealed. They're surveying undeniable evidence of grotesque war crimes committed over many years by our government -- including enabling legal theories that even Fred Hiatt described as "scary," "lawless" and "disgraceful" -- and are literally saying: "just forget about that; it doesn't matter." Our country is plagued by "journalists" like The Washington Post's Dana Milbank, giggling with smug derision over the very few efforts to investigate these massive crimes -- and then even lying on NPR by claiming that support for investigations is confined to "a small but very vocal minority within the Party - these are the same folks who were pushing for the impeachment of the President and the Vice President right up basically to the time of the Inauguration" (to see how flagrantly false is Milbank's statement about support within the Party for investigations, see here and here and here; the NPR host, needless to say, said nothing to correct him).

(rest at link -- do read the rest! How does Greenwald do it? Day after day, hitting it out of the park.)

[slipslidingaway]

1. K&R thanks n/t

[nashville_brook]

2. is anyone else like me, in being kinda shocked and a little hurt that Millbank has gone to the dark

side? remember the Olbermann exit?


http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Dana_Milbank_quits_Olbermann_over_disputed_0805.html
Dana Milbank quits Olbermann over disputed Obama quote
David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Published: Tuesday August 5, 2008

In a column that ran in the Washington Post last week, reporter Dana Milbank accused Barack Obama of "hubris" for having allegedly told a private gathering of members of the House of Representatives, "This is the moment ... that the world is waiting for. ... I have become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions."

Several Congressional aides quickly challenged Milbank's version of the quote, insisting that he had omitted a crucial transition and that Obama had really said, far more modestly, that the enthusiasm which has met him "is not about me at all. It's about America. I have just become a symbol."

(more at link)

[sam sarrha]

3. because there is no end to the Atrocities committed by the ReThuglican Ideologs, look at the torture

instigated in the South American Cone, 250,000 tortured to death/murdered in the most hideous manners... declared Genocide by the UN.. Viet Nam, Angola, Ethiopia-over 2 decades of genocide- Uganda Congo el salvador etc etc etc , torture murder rape sponsored by the ReThuglican Ideologs.. call them what they are Faso-Corporatist Nazi's. they would kill any brown or black baby if they could sell the ashes for a profit.. or at a loss if the Tax-Payers could be duped into Subsidizing it. like viet nam iraq afganistan ..like Tobacco.. kills 1200 people a day in the US alone.. it isn't the profit they hold sacred it is the killing and suffering that gives them the hard-on..:rant:

they give tax cuts to the rich BECAUSE... WEALTH is proof of gods favor of a man, it is a sin to tax or regulate a rich man/corporation

[flyarm]

4. one side does not work alone..if you remember the Supreme court said not once, but twice

that torture and the * gulags were illegal..but "someone said" ..impeachment was off the table..remember???????

so if someone in our highest seats of our government is doing something illegal..there is recourse..in fact it is mentioned 6 times in the constitution..6 times..Impeachment ...is not only for blow jobs ya know!! And those that preside over illegalities...and the power to do something about it...don't you think they have a responsibility to hold the people committing the crimes or possible crimes accountable???????

And they have a responsibility to turn it over to a special prosecutor..to investigate ..at least investigate it???????????????

But nooooooo not in 2006 and not now..now the same people who did nothing are suggesting another white wash commission..

[nashville_brook]

9. i allowed myself to get a little hopeful that Obama would air some of this out. fooled again.

it's what i thought about Clinton in 92 regarding Iran-Contra. was Bill Hicks really so prescient in his "puppet on the left/puppet on the right" bit? is there really a showing of the Zapruder film from that's shown after the swearing-in?

"any questions?"

[sam sarrha]

13. well..... you must have missed my previous rants onRreed & Palosi, not pretty, they deserve statues

in the GOP Coporo Fascist Hall of Shame.. big gold plated ones

[nashville_brook]

8. great rant. i'm given to reading this in terms of Iraq+Bush only -- but it's historical.

[flyarm]

5. yes indeed nashville_brook..Greenwald does keep hitting it out of the park!! eom

[noise]

6. Torture lovers keep using double think to justify their favored interrogation method

It would be nice if anyone claiming torture was a desperate effort to get intel would bother to look at the results attained by the CIA. Jane Mayer quotes a CIA official who claims 90% of the intel was crap. I would guess this is a low ball number. And here is the unbelievable description of the torture program by Scott Shane:

The very fact that Mr. Martinez, a career narcotics analyst who did not speak the terrorists’ native languages and had no interrogation experience, would end up as a crucial player captures the ad-hoc nature of the program.

Inside a 9/11 Mastermind's Interrogation

The sad part is that qualified FBI interrogators were removed so the Bush administration could implement their torture program. If this was the brilliant plan for high level detainees imagine the standards for the military torture program. Actually one doesn't have to imagine this as there are several books and documentaries that explain how absurd it was.

It's also difficult to believe officials like Bush, Tenet and Rice as they were never honest about 9/11. We were supposed to simply trust them when they told us there was nothing they could have done to prevent 9/11 and after 9/11 they simply had to have police state powers to prevent future attacks.

[nashville_brook]

7. this is simply baffling to me -- what, really did they think they were accomplishing?

they aren't getting usable intel. they're ruined their standing internationally. they achieved nothing. so, really, what we're left to believe is that they did it b/c it made them... what? feel like big authoritative men?

this, i don't believe. i think they tortured people for OUR benefit. it was a message to anyone here who would presume to get in their way.

[noise]

10. Naomi Klein suggested the intimidation motive in her book

Intimidation also being part of an occupation strategy.

Sadly, authoritarianism has been conflated with patriotism. It's now to the point where one is considered out of line for questioning the true motives of the torture program.

There are other more likely motives:

1) Inflame the insurgency. Justify continued occupation. Keep the perpetual WoT meme alive.

2) Fit "tough on terror" GOP bottom of the barrel fascist propaganda. IOW, appealed to the GOP base.

3) Attain desired intel. For example al-Libi's false confessions about Iraqi weapon programs.

[peacetalksforall]

11. The interrogator was a narcotics analyst. Hmmmmm.. Sure goes toward my

growing feeling that there is NO war against terrorits. There is only turf wars. There is only an oil and drug turf war - or it can be called an earth resource wars. Yep. No to a war on terrorits. Yes. To an earth resource turf war. All accompanied by the subsequent invention of using torture to gain competitive intelligence.

Torture was justified by quoting international rules in its defense. Is it really only used because of the use of the CIA and NSA to gain info from oil and drug runners and pipe destroyrs for the benefit of corporations and entities who would profit. An example of a drug entity would be a U.S. government group who facilitates the sham of a federal war and benefits also from the side wealth - weapons, contracts for goods and services, protection companies, ongoing co-alition deals.

The near opaque curtain is lifting. A reasonable person can't take all the lies that we have learned from and switch to believing the liars. There is no truth with the liars. So start from the point where you don't believe they tortured for normal war reasons. If not, why did they do it?

A side benefit of the surf wars has been the faintly opaque curtain side benefits - protecting Israel and using it to create the war package while advancing the turf holdings.

Corporate media has co-operated perfectly.

We've been had. But, we're starting to see the big picture behind the curtain.

At least that's the way I would write it if I were a Clancy or Greene or other writers who have also included these themes.

Watch 'An Unholy Alliance' (a recent referral) that has links from DU. It's in six parts.

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. Greenwald doesn't link to the stories about the British government trying a cover-up, though

As was reported a few days earlier:

Miliband now says the case has nothing to do with the contents of the documents but with the principle that English courts should not disclose information from a foreign government against its wishes – even, apparently, when they contain evidence of torture. The high court judges and Mohamed's lawyers were certainly interested in their contents.

And so, of course, is Miliband and the US authorities, and especially the CIA.

Miliband told the court that disclosure of the documents "would seriously harm the existing intelligence-sharing arrangements between the United Kingdom and the United States and cause considerable damage to the national security of the United Kingdom". He added that John Bellinger, the US state department's chief legal adviser, affirmed "in the clearest terms" that disclosure would result in "serious damage to US national security". It has subsequently emerged that the Bellinger letter was solicited by Foreign Office officials to help Miliband make his case in the English high court.

It was this argument that persuaded the high court judges, extremely reluctantly, to say that not even a summary of what is in the US intelligence documents now in Miliband's possession could be disclosed. The judges repeatedly used the word "threat" to describe the US attitude – no fewer than three times in a single paragraph of their February 4 judgment.

The next day, Miliband denied to MPs in an emergency statement that the US had made any such "threat". As the government dug itself deeper into trouble, officials made clear they were worried about what the US would think of being at the receiving end of such a derogatory, aggressive, term.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2009/feb/19/torture-humanrights

Though I admit I haven't seen anyone in the British media saying the Foreign Secretary is doing the right thing in trying to cover up the crimes.