Here’s a bit more on Spain’s decision to investigate the rendition of prisoners by the U.S.:
Apologists for America’s torture regime, from Vice President Cheney on down through Bill O’Reilly and his “folks,” will no doubt write this off as European anti-Americanism, Europeans gleefully sticking their noses into America’s affairs in order to make America (and her wildly unpopular president) look bad (or worse).
The treatment (torture) of detainees at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, and other U.S. detention facilities is, in my view, a national travesty. It’s done more to tarnish America’s image in the world than pretty much anything else, including the Iraq War itself. Something needs to be done about it — John McCain and others are trying, but the Bush Administration is resisting.
But the rendition of prisoners involves other jurisdictions, and those jurisdictions — Spain, Germany, Italy, and others — have every right to investigate CIA activities on their own soil. It’s a shame that these other jurisdictions may end up exposing what Americans should expose for themselves about their own government, but if that’s what it takes, so be it.
See also this piece on detainees in the Post — by a pro bono lawyer for Gitmo detainees, P. Sabin Willett. It’s a powerful defence of habeas corpus (yes, the Bush Administration has made such defences of habeas corpus necessary).
Click here (and then scroll down a bit) for a list of some of my previous posts on related subjects, including Bush’s denial that the U.S. engages in torture, Cheney as an enabler of torture, Lynndie England and the offences at Abu Ghraib, Dick Durbin’s courage to tell it like it is, and Amnesty International’s report on human rights abuses.