Obama Administration Defends Rummie In Torture Lawsuit

By Steve Hynd

Color me disgusted. The Obama administration is defending Donald Rumsfield in a lawsuit brought by victims of torture and is using essentially the same defense it is employing in a similiar lawsuit against lawyer/enabler John Yoo.

Dismissed at the urging of the Bush administration, the case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. In December, the case was sent back to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington for reconsideration, because the Supreme Court had ruled in Boumediene v. Bush that Guantanamo detainees have the right to challenge their detentions. It wasn’t clear what effect that ruling might have on the Rasul case.

Although some civil rights lawyers had hoped the Obama administration would change the government’s position — or at least try to settle this case, which is at the very least an embarrassment to the United States –  the former prisoners had no such luck. Today, the Justice Department filed a brief arguing, as it did in Padilla’s case against Yoo, that government officials are not liable for torture, abuse, denial of due process or religious rights, because the right of Guantanamo prisoners not to suffer those abuses at the hands of the U.S. government was not clearly established at the time.

That would seem to contradict previous statements by President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder that torture (including waterboarding) and other abuses are clearly illegal, now and always, and that the president can’t simply override that prohibition. It also may discourage those who are hoping the president will eventually support prosecutions of former Bush officials for exactly those crimes.

Reached today, the lead lawyer on the case, Eric Lewis, a partner at the Washington-based law firm, Baach Robinson & Lewis, said he was “disappointed” but “not surprised.”

The Obama administration has decided there will be no prosecutions for the torturers, for those who wrote justifications for torture - and now for those who ordered torture. The Obama administration have joined The Hollow Men.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

Comments

[Batocchio]

No good can come of this. I'll include this post in a roundup soon.

[par4]

Coddling banksters and war criminals will be this administrations downfall.