rssObama Thanks U.K. for Concealing Evidence of U.S.-Sponsored Torture
Thursday, February 05, 2009 at 12:35 pm
- 14 Comments
In a followup to yesterday’s news that a British court ruled that it would conceal information about the rendition and alleged torture of Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed at the U.S. government’s request, the BBC today reports that in a statement, the Obama White House said it “thanked the UK government for its continued commitment to protect sensitive national security information,” adding that this would “preserve the long-standing intelligence sharing relationship that enables both countries to protect their citizens”.
Although a U.S. embassy spokesman in London also said that the U.S. government did not “threaten allies” such as the United Kingdom, that may just depend upon what you think “threaten” means.
Here’s how the U.K. court described the United States’ move: “[T]he United States Government’s position is that, if the redacted paragraphs are made public, then the United States Government will re-evaluate its intelligence sharing relationship with the United Kingdom with the real risk that it would reduce the intelligence provided.”
That sure sounds like a threat to me.
Call it what you will, the Obama administration is continuing the Bush administration’s policy of concealing evidence that the U.S.-sponsored torture and other abuse, humiliation and mistreatment of detainees. That is, as the U.K. court aptly noted, evidence of war crimes.
It looks like the Obama administration is increasingly being boxed into a corner: either it keeps concealing evidence that crimes were committed, in violation of the President’s recent pledges for a newly transparent government, or it lets the evidence come out and confronts the fact that it’s going to have to authorize some sort of an investigation of what abuses took place under the Bush administration and who was responsible.
Attorney General Eric Holder has said he didn’t make any promises to Republicans not to investigate Bush administration wrongdoing. His commitments will be tested in the coming months.
14 Comments
Comment posted February 5, 2009 @ 10:02 am
Do you think it could just be bad timing. The economy is still shedding jobs faster than a husky in summertime, so maybe this whole investigation into the crimes committed by the Bush administration could wait? I mean, the right is already not playing nice with Obama's plans to energize the economy, why piss them off more with an investigation into W's administration?
Comment posted February 5, 2009 @ 10:25 am
“That sure sounds like a threat to me.”
It sounds like yesterday's mistake to me. Miliband has withdrawn the statement the UK court referred to, more than twelve hours ago. Obama has not renewed Bush's threat from last year.
Comment posted February 5, 2009 @ 10:46 am
Oh, my, what a tragedy. Sounds to me like people in the trenches know what they are doing and another clueless reported trying to score a quick point.
Comment posted February 5, 2009 @ 12:13 pm
Actually, he hasn't withdrawn it, he just characterizes it differently. What's clear is that the US has told the UK that it does not want it to publish the information, and that doing so would harm their cooperative intelligence relationship. And the Obama administration has not changed that position. You can say that's not a threat or not diplomatic pressure if you want to, but in any event, it's a deliberate effort to conceal information concerning potential war crimes from the public. That strikes me as inconsistent with President Obama's pledges made in his first days in office.
Comment posted February 5, 2009 @ 12:15 pm
well, if it was just an ordinary citizen who'd committed egregious crimes we wouldn't expect prosecutors to hold off because the rest of the country was more interested in something else. Nobody's saying that President Obama needs to personally devote himself to prosecuting George Bush, but to deliberately conceal evidence of crimes that may have taken place, and that much of the world is indeed very concerned about, seems unwise at best, and at worst, an obstruction of justice.
Comment posted February 5, 2009 @ 6:27 pm
Trust me, I'd love to throw Cheney and Rove in jail. Bush should just be exiled to his ranch, he was just a front man.. I just think Obama is trying no to shake the hornet's nest. Especially with Panetta's confirmation on the horizon.
Comment posted February 5, 2009 @ 6:46 pm
Oh, my, what a tragedy. Sounds to me like people in the trenches know what they are doing and another clueless reported trying to score a quick point.
Comment posted February 5, 2009 @ 8:13 pm
Actually, he hasn't withdrawn it, he just characterizes it differently. What's clear is that the US has told the UK that it does not want it to publish the information, and that doing so would harm their cooperative intelligence relationship. And the Obama administration has not changed that position. You can say that's not a threat or not diplomatic pressure if you want to, but in any event, it's a deliberate effort to conceal information concerning potential war crimes from the public. That strikes me as inconsistent with President Obama's pledges made in his first days in office.
Comment posted February 5, 2009 @ 8:15 pm
well, if it was just an ordinary citizen who'd committed egregious crimes we wouldn't expect prosecutors to hold off because the rest of the country was more interested in something else. Nobody's saying that President Obama needs to personally devote himself to prosecuting George Bush, but to deliberately conceal evidence of crimes that may have taken place, and that much of the world is indeed very concerned about, seems unwise at best, and at worst, an obstruction of justice.
Comment posted February 6, 2009 @ 2:27 am
Trust me, I'd love to throw Cheney and Rove in jail. Bush should just be exiled to his ranch, he was just a front man.. I just think Obama is trying no to shake the hornet's nest. Especially with Panetta's confirmation on the horizon.
Pingback posted August 17, 2010 @ 3:27 pm
[...] That wasn’t the only step the Obama administration has taken to keep concealed the treatment to which Mohamed was subjected. Mohamed is also one of the five plaintiffs suing Jeppesen, a Boeing subsidiary, for its role in his “renditions” — the case where the Obama DOJ invoked the Bush theory of “state secrets” in order to demand that a federal court dismiss Mohamed’s lawsuit before any facts could be revealed about what was done to him. As The Washington Independent‘s Daphne Evitar put it: [...]
Pingback posted August 17, 2010 @ 3:46 pm
[...] a February, 2009 statement issued by Obama’s National Security Council praising the concealment of these paragraphs [...]
Pingback posted May 21, 2011 @ 6:50 am
[...] That wasn’t the only step the Obama administration has taken to keep concealed the treatment to which Mohamed was subjected. Mohamed is also one of the five plaintiffs suing Jeppesen, a Boeing subsidiary, for its role in his “renditions” — the case where the Obama DOJ invoked the Bush theory of “state secrets” in order to demand that a federal court dismiss Mohamed’s lawsuit before any facts could be revealed about what was done to him. As The Washington Independent‘s Daphne Evitar put it: [...]
Pingback posted May 21, 2011 @ 8:49 am
[...] a February, 2009 statement issued by Obama’s National Security Council praising the concealment of these paragraphs [...]
RSS feed for comments on this post.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
