Obama’s “Nation of Laws”

Obama proudly declared yesterday that ours is a “nation of laws” at the same time he announced that CIA torturers would not be prosecuted for their crimes.

Life in Washington is one damn paradox after another.

Kudos to the American Civil Liberties Union for their lawsuit that compelled the disclosure of the torture memos yesterday. But these are probably only the tip of the iceberg. Hopefully the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and supporters of disclosing Bush-era crimes will have sufficient clout to force the government to reveal far more information on the torture scandal. Obama becomes complicit for all the crimes he covers up.

I will be curious to see if the revelations of how the Justice Department tortured the law and rationality to set loose the CIA will have any broader impact on how Americans view the federal government. I ain’t holdin’ my breath.

Antiwar Radio: Ivan Eland and Harper Magazine’s Scott Horton

Ivan Eland and Harper Magazine’s Scott Horton will be the featured guest on the Scott Horton Show at Antiwar Radio on Friday, April 17th.

Eland will be on at 2:30PM Eastern and Horton at 3:30PM Eastern.

Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute in Oakland, California and is the author of several books, his most recent being Partitioning for Peace. His weekly column can be found at Antiwar.com/eland. The other Scott Horton is an international human rights lawyer and contributing editor to Harper’s Magazine. His blog, No Comment, can be found at Harpers.org.

The Scott Horton Show airs Tuesday through Friday from 2PM-4PM Eastern at Antiwar.com/radio, where additional archives from past shows can also be found

The ICRC Torture Report

A few weeks ago, Mark Danner at the New York Review of Books published an article about a classified International Committee of the Red Cross report written for the CIA’s eyes only. It described in detail the tortures committed against those held in the CIA’s “Ghost Prison” “Black Sites,” including pretty much everything the Soviet GPU would have done.

In my interview with Danner on February 18th, he explained that the U.S. government granted full access to the ICRC in the understanding that the report would be kept between them.

Well, on April, 2, Danner published a second article: “The Red Cross Torture Report: What it Means,” and published also the entire text of the ICRC report.

We here at Antiwar.com just wanted to make sure you all had a chance to read it [.pdf]. Please do.

Missing Charles Goyette

I’m always getting emails that go something like this:

“Hey Scott, what the heck ever happened to Charles Goyette?! We’re sick and tired of you, yada, yada, yada…”

Well a blogger named Mark Yannone has outdone all of you:

October 11, 2005: A year into his award-winning stint at KXXT 1010 AM, Charles Goyette reviewed highlights of some of the accumulated evidence of the criminal behavior of the Bush administration. It was seditious talk like this that had gotten this truth-seeking gentleman of peace and reason removed from KFYI 550 AM the year before. “Charles Goyette presents Bush administration crimes”

June 13, 2008: Charles Goyette completed his last day at KFNX 1100 AM, the fourth and final radio station in the Phoenix, Arizona, market to “kick the commie bastard off the air.” That was the best description my neighbors could come up with when they heard this internationally acclaimed talk show host reveal the truth about the lying warmonger in the White House and his lying enablers in Washington. In contrast, Cindy Sheehan called to thank him and to bid him farewell. Charles asks once again that we “bring ’em home.” Charles Goyette: Bring ‘Em Home”

Today Americans, Iraqis, Afghans, Brits, and other coalition forces are still fighting and dying, and Americans are paying hundreds of billions of dollars annually for it — priceless lives, and money we don’t have — spent for nothing.

I’m in agreement with Mr. Yannone. Goyette show rules.

For the record, Charles is still doing great and is dying to get back into the radio game. The only trouble is that he’s spent much of the last year putting together a new book explaining what the government has done to our money.

And I don’t imagine it will be much longer before we can again post his great interviews at Antiwar Radio…

Taking Hostages for Torture

Republican senators are threatening to block confirmation of key Obama nominees if the Obama administration makes public the Bush administration Justice Department memos that explicitly authorized torture and other barbaric relics.

Human rights/constitutional lawyer Scott Horton notes, “It now appears that Republicans are seeking an Obama commitment to safeguard the Bush administration’s darkest secrets in exchange for letting these nominations go forward.”

Funny to remember how many people believed that Washington would no longer be sordid after Bush and Cheney left office.

If the Obama team rolls over for this Republican power play, this will be a symbol of the bipartisan complicity in the worst abuses of recent years.