Veracity Radio

Reuters is reporting that Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon is going to continue with investigation of the Cheney/Bush Administration officials involved with torture at Guantanamo. Earlier in the day, the Spanish Attorney General moved to dismiss the charges.

This is on the heels of the Obama Administration’s grand failure to keep the promise of accountability and his legal obligations to investigate crimes. He’s placed political expediency above the law again. Eric Holder announced that the administration would not seek to charge CIA officers who engaged in the “enhanced torture techniques” so long as they were doing so in “good faith” to the legal opinions rendered by the OSC.

Can you imagine how defense lawyers can utilize this sort of formula now for their rape and murder cases? If they can just find various areas where “moving forward” is more valuable than “dwelling on the past” they’ll be able to get any of their defendants off. Further, they could always go for an equal protection claim that shows their client received a greater sentence than Officers who tortured and killed detainees.

Let us not forget we have accusations of deaths in custody including the accusation of murder committed at Bagram Air Base.

Did the United States ever really have integrity? Was it an illusion to begin with? Or is this just an aberration and an anomaly the US character?

Secret Torture Memos have been released by the Obama Administration. These memos show the administration did willfully violate U.S. law and international laws and treaties by seeking to give legal cover for interrogation techniques that clearly cross the line into illegal treatment of detainees.

Here are the memos by Jay Bybee and Steven G. Bradbury

Memo One

Memo Two

Memo Three

Memo Four

The repeated calling of detainees as “terrorists” does not finalize their legal path. They have not been adjudicated and thus are simply suspects. Torturing suspects is a violation of our fundamental standards of law.

Now the Obama Administration is telling the CIA that they will not be prosecuting the officers who were “just following orders”. Apparently Obama’s constitutional law background doesn’t understand this change in legal standards. From now on, anyone who is given an illegal order can simply hope to have a memo stating it was legal.

This muddying of the legal waters isn’t only a US problem. The Spanish chief prosecutor has said he would not recommend proceeding with prosecution of US officials. The nature of the investigation isn’t in the hands of the prosecutor but the judge and it will be a couple more days before we hear what he will recommend. Stay tuned…

Mark Danner appeared on Rachel Maddow to discuss the now released report from the International Red Cross Available here

Danner’s journalism is top notch. Thanks Mark.

Larry Wilkerson appeared on Rachel Maddow with up close insight to the Bush/Cheney administration:

Mark Danner appeared on Washington Journal. Unfortunately I didn’t know until he was about half way through. He’s a solid reporter and knows his beat.

But one of the key sections was responding to a caller who rattled off the pablum of the Bush apologists regarding the Geneva Conventions.

Here’s Mark Danner’s recent article

and Continue reading

Will Canada arrest George Bush when he visits Calgary today?

Canada has laws regarding people suspected of war crimes visiting their country.
Stay tuned to see if they’ll act on them with war criminal suspect George W Bush.

Former White House spokesmodel Ari Fleischer has continued his duty as lying mouthpiece for the Cheney Bush administration’s campaign to launch war on Iraq. Fleischer has been making the rounds to revise history and spit shine the turd legacy of the Cheney Bush administration.

But this week he visited Chris Matthews and tried to pull this on someone who pays attention. Now frankly, Matthews is often too close to these topics to keep his eye on the ball, but he did do a great job of keeping the truth up while Fleischer tried to conflate evidence to provide a final outcome that is utterly horseshit.

Now when he visited the D.L. Hugley show he found someone who is more comedian that reporter or political wonk, and Hughley let him go with little question. But Matthews didn’t do so. Then today Matthews noticed the final statement that Fleischer made that Saddam Hussein wouldn’t hit the U.S. “again”. This implied Saddam was involved in 9/11 which he wasn’t.

Question:
Should Fleischer be tried for his part in spreading these lies?

The Iraqi journalist who fired away 2 shoe shots at disgraced former president George W Bush has been sentenced to 3 years in Iraqi prison. Muntadar al-Zaidi has become a folk hero for his actions which clearly tell us what many think of the Cheney Bush war on their country. So much for “greeted as liberators” and the parades of hope and freedom promised by Herr Cheney. al-Zaidi has filed an appeal.

Al-Zaidi yelled, “Long live Iraq!” as the sentenced was announced.

We’ll keep you posted.

The Italian Constitutional Court has ruled that prosecutors violated “state secrecy laws” in building their case against Italian and U.S. agents who are accused of extraordinary rendition of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, aka Abu Omar.

Though the case has not been thrown out it has set back the case which resumes hearing on March 18, 2009. The case claims that the CIA led team kidnapped Abu Omar in Milan and took him to US bases in Italy and Germany before they flew him to Egypt in 2003. Abu Omar says he was tortured there and held without being charged.

The court ruled that the prosecutors improperly used classified secrets to prepare their case. Much of the indictment rests on the “secrets”, and no word has come as to how the lawyers will be able to make their case without being able to rely upon these materials.

From Berlisconi till now, Italy maintains it had no role in the Nasr rendition.

The case involves twenty six American agents and several Italian agents.

We will keep you posted.

Seymour Hersh is reporting that the Cheney Bush Administration were operating an “Executive Assassination Ring” under the “Joint Special Operations Command” which reported directly to the White House. Hersh is planning on writing an article on the revelation and spoke of it Tuesday night at the University of Minnesota.
Hersh: Bush Admin Ran “Executive Assassination Ring”

Mr. Hersh claims the operation involved sending agents to countries and executing suspects on a “target list”

We’ll follow this story and keep you posted.