JUST NOT RIGHT

Not a UT alumnus, is this a Metallica Fan or a Founding Father's Nightmare?

JUST NOT RIGHT

chereek@sbcglobal.net
© 2009 Craig Chereek, all rights reserved
Thursday, November 26, 2009

October 3, 2009, I offered a pre-emptive solution to possible European charges against US citizens. You’ll find it here in the category “Impolitics”, entitled “EIGHT SAD YEARS.

November 5, 2009, the Italians indicted 23 Americans, including an Air Force pilot. a CIA case officer, and one of their own, for kidnapping. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-thur-nw-cia-renditionnov05,0,31329.story

The indictment lists the victim as a citizen of yet a third country, an Egyptian cleric snagged off the street in Milan back in 2003, bound and bagged and flown from Avianno Airport to a US Base in Germany; all part of the Bush White House’s “Extraordinary Rendition” program.

Justice is only Legally Blind

To understand this indictment and its timing, we need to compare a couple of make-believe kidnappings. Let us pretend, like in Milan, they are witnessed and reported to the press. There may even be videos coming to YouTube…

First. let’s suppose that, without consulting the US Government,  a crack British Special Squad secretly bags themselves a ” New-IRA” priest off a side-street in Chicago and hustles him by black helicopter to an isolated detention in the snowy woods of Canada. Suppose an FBI agent helps them with intelligence and safe houses. The press, tiptoe-ing around the religious angle, would tsk, tsk, all about the difficulties posed by our extradition process and relations with our Irish population. Cable tongues would wag, justifiably concerned about our nation’s sovereignty. State Department lights might burn late into the morning, but the Justice Department would close up in time to get to Connecticut for dinner, as usual. No prosecutions would result, although the agent might be reassigned to Nome. Diplomatic exchanges might get frosty overnight, but after privately trading greater co-operation in future extraditions for public contrite promises not to do it again, we’d all be back to business as usual by the time the Financial Markets opened.

And now suppose the same kidnapping is committed by a squadron of Hugo Chavez’ Venezuelan paramilitary extremos, against a pro-democracy blogger, a young political refugee from Maracaibo, coming out of a Kinko’s in Alexandria, Virginia. This time, too, they bind and gag him, bag him and throw him in the trunk of a Buick. But these guys make a run to the marina, where they load him onto a fast cigarette boat to Cuba… and suppose a rogue US Customs agent helps them with intelligence and safe passage. Ranking members would be plaiting hangman’s nooses in the Hallways of Congress. The lights would burn late in the Pentagon. The Joint Chiefs of Staff would be living on coffee, moving a Carrier Battle Group to the Caribbean, military leave would be cancelled, we might even go to war.

We’ve been acting like we expect our NATO partners to treat our indiscretions as though they were more like the first scenario than the second. Most of the world feels somewhat differently, even most of our friends do. The Italian government is evidently firmly convinced their electorate does.

So, before blaming the Italians, ask yourself, how would you feel if any foreign nation started snatching people off the street here in America? How would you feel about the Feeb who helped them? What kinds of emails do you think our elected representatives would be receiving?

Italian politicians were under a lot of pressure, and by our inaction, we left them little choice.

In the above article, I warned that Europeans would not “wait forever for the US to prosecute those on Pennsylvania Avenue who actually gave the order” for the program that resulted in the operation. Only we have that evidence.

Italy merely prosecuted those implicated by the evidence it had.

How many other nations can do the same? According to the LA Times , “…U.S. operatives left a trail of cellphone calls, credit card charges and photo ID documents. The evidence enabled … Italian police to assemble a detailed case that became an anatomy of a rendition.” http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-italy-verdict5-2009nov05,0,2106586.story

Evidently some of our tradecraft is a little sloppy. Do we have any reason to believe US rendition operations left any less evidence behind them anywhere else? Do we have any reason to think this is the last such indictment possible on the evidently widespread practice? The presumption must be that NATO nations everywhere are littered with the same kind of records.

How do we stop this from snowballing? There is still only one way.

Make further low-level prosecutions unnecessary.

Our own Justice Department indicting a former Vice-president would be, I suspect, an apology acceptable to those whose hospitality, jurisdictions and laws we have apparently trampled.

We need to get off the dime NOW and prosecute the Bush/Cheney leadership that authorized the operation. the very freedom of more Americans who were merely doing their jobs is in question. Anything less than that undermines the troops. Cheney, if this rendition program was his baby, hung himself out to dry, he can take his own fall. Surely he has asked, and even ordered others to do the same for the “good of the nation.” The Bush/Cheney Administration put American troops in jeopardy by merely giving them such illegal orders, and we will become Cheney’s informed and willing accessories-after-the-fact, his stooges, if you will, if we leave those Americans -who dutifully followed what were presented as lawful orders- hanging now.

More important to history, even beyond the threat to American troops, and beyond straining our relationships with our allies, even beyond pouring gasoline on the cartoon hate of our enemies, by their own light, these were illegal orders, clear abuses of discretion committed under color-of-authority, and certainly unconstitutional. To leave them there in history, uninvestigated and unprosecuted, for all future generations of young Americans to stub their consciences upon, is just not right.

THESE WERE ILLEGAL ORDERS - A Modest Proposal

If the Justice Department is paralyzed, the Uniform Code of Military Justice has a remedy for those who give illegal orders, Cheney was Vice-Commander-in-Chief, placing him squarely in the Military Chain of Command.

What historical irony that would be, Cheney being hustled off to a US military prison, guarded by American MP’s, tried by an American Military Tribunal, and potentially shot like Saddam… and the law provides for it, but I think we’d ALL be better served if a civilian process were announced by the President, with the Attorney General by his side, on the Evening News.

(I can almost hear the speech: “In calling for a new Special Prosecutor Statute, with all it may entail, we are NOT looking back, we are seeing this as the only honorable way to clear an obstacle that is yet before us. For the unity of the Nation going forward, and for the sake of legislative bipartisanship, we fully intended to leave it alone, but the weight of accumulating evidence now finding its way to light raises some deeply disturbing questions. American men and women who followed some questionable orders are now at risk of foreign prosecution under the laws of some of our closest Allies. American law appears to have been broken. The law binds us to follow the evidence. It is, indeed, our constitutional responsibility.  And may no man ever be above the law, especially one elected to act in service of the Law.”)

And let no former VP be shot by an American firing squad; unthinkably, that would be lawful, and the law could still do that. Admittedly, a JAG officer would need some real courage to bring those charges, but it’s a proposal many could live with. Few, anywhere, would question its Justice. in an Old Testament sort of way, and that might be just the kind we need.

Cheney could plead guilty, refuse to testify, fall on his sword and become a martyr himself… now that’s irony.

But a simple conviction and a loss of pension would send the same messages: This man behaved in violation of his oath, our national principles, and our Law.  No man is above the law. The Constitution and its institutions work.

Quite different messages are sent by our continued inaction.

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