Thursday Morning Coffee--Mocha Java

The Obama Administration is trying to do the Bush people a favor--and they are getting no thanks. The new Solicitor General claims that we can hold "terrorists" for a sustained period of time without bringing charges because we are "at war". The Administration uses the state secrets defense in the trial brought by ACLU on behalf of those people who had been renditioned. Democrats are bringing a bill on the House floor to prevent civil litigation on these activities. The force-feeding of Gitmo detainees is upheld by a federal judge. And Leon Panetta says he will not prosecute CIA agents who engaged in the waterboarding and retention programs.

For reasons that escape me, conservatives who want desparately to defend Gitmo refuse to see how the Obama Administration just wants to move on and is actually protecting Bush operatives. Instead, Senators Inhofe and others are conducting political tours of Gitmo to try and save the facility.

Senator Leahy's suggestion of forming a bipartisan Truth Commission has met resistance from Republicans. But there are other reasons to oppose such a Commission. As Jonathan Turley of George Washington University argued on television, truth commissions are used in developing democracies that have a weak legal structure and are meant more to establish an historical record. The problem with creating one in the United States is that you are in fact arguing the Bush case that these episodes are unique and separate and that the United States can and will violate its treaty commitments. He has been the most forceful in arguing that if there is no legal investigation or prosecution then the Obama Administration owns the crimes. A ironic note on that is that the force feeding case in Miami became v.the Obama Administration, instead of the Bush Administration which did the deed.

Yesterday,Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Canada said he did not intend to raise the Omar Khadr case with Barack Obama next week. Canada's three opposition leaders called for Khadr's immediate release from detention in Gitmo. Khadr was wounded and captured by American soldiers in a July 2002 firefight in Afghanistan. The opposition has maintained that Khadr was unlawfully recruited and used as child soldier. The Canadian authorities have planned a rather elaborate repatriation project that would include placing him in a foster home since his parents were close to bin Laden.

The Mohammed case even gets murkier. The Janitor, who was renditioned on the basis of satirical article on how to build an H-Bomb, has ,according to official documents, had his genitals sliced by a scalpel and subjected to more than waterboarding. What's strange is that the U.S. dropped all claims he was a terrorist last year and continue to hold him.

These cases will proliferate as bilateral issues in the months ahead. They are not only embarassing but it is rather doubtful the Obama Administration can avoid the onslaught of legal cases. One of the key issues of the Torture Convention, which we ratified under Ronald Reagan,was the responsibility of other countries to bring violators to justice. With the U.N. Special Rapporteur Mr. Nowak on record saying he had the documents on file approved by Donald Rumsfeld authorizing torture, I can't see a European prosecutor or government avoiding the opportunity to pursue this.