Super-dooper top secret laws
Scott Horton has a post about how the Obama administration is continuing the proud tradition of harassing defense attorneys trying to defend their clients at Gitmo. DoJ investigators are looking to see if defense attorneys might have broken the law:
Horton believes that the reason for this harassment is to "draw a tight black curtain around the criminal activities that occurred at the CIA black sites". Why, because they're afraid:
The specter of 9/11, what really happened, who the actors were and who sponsored them, is the 900 pound gorilla that haunts the national security state. The government, press, and public keep their eyes averted as much as possible. Even so, any deviation from the official story, even a small part of it, cannot be exposed to the light of day on the risk that it might snowball. What stories some of the inmates at GITMO might tell if they were given the chance! That's the real danger, not prosecution by some European bozos.
The justification for the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, the showcases of the never ending GWOT, are wholly dependent on the narrative we've been force fed. What would happen if it were shown that other actors were involved?
At least, someone would have to think up another justification for our wars.
What’s going on here? Is this really about whether defense lawyers broke the law? If so, it’s a law which the Justice Department apparently cannot identify—another one of those super-dooper top secret laws.That's the great thing (from the government's point of view), top secret laws are difficult to defend against, no one can tell you what you may have done.
Horton believes that the reason for this harassment is to "draw a tight black curtain around the criminal activities that occurred at the CIA black sites". Why, because they're afraid:
What are they afraid of? The answer is clear enough. Criminal prosecutions are now pending against individuals involved in the extraordinary renditions program in Italy; criminal investigations are underway in Spain, Poland and the United Kingdom. The disclosures about the Lithuanian black site will probably lead to a criminal probe in that nation as well. The Justice Department’s transparent objective here is to avoid the discovery of information that could further the prosecution of criminal conduct.This may be true, but is it the full story? Just as the destruction of the interrogation tapes could have had another reason, not to hide the torture (which everyone knows and has admitted happened), but rather to hide the false testimony that was fed to the tortured during the process.
The specter of 9/11, what really happened, who the actors were and who sponsored them, is the 900 pound gorilla that haunts the national security state. The government, press, and public keep their eyes averted as much as possible. Even so, any deviation from the official story, even a small part of it, cannot be exposed to the light of day on the risk that it might snowball. What stories some of the inmates at GITMO might tell if they were given the chance! That's the real danger, not prosecution by some European bozos.
The justification for the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, the showcases of the never ending GWOT, are wholly dependent on the narrative we've been force fed. What would happen if it were shown that other actors were involved?
At least, someone would have to think up another justification for our wars.
posted by Dick Durata at 3:18 PM
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