We are all waterboarders now

WikiLeaks' cables reveal US skulduggery in protecting the CIA ... Time runs out for torture prosecutions ... Frightening Republicans capture key House committees ... Industries own the regulators ... Roger Fitch reports from Washington

"This nation, as experience has proved, cannot always remain at peace, and has no right to expect that it will always have wise and humane rulers, sincerely attached to the principles of the Constitution. Wicked men, ambitious of power, with hatred of liberty and contempt of law, may fill the place once occupied by Washington and Lincoln; and if this right is conceded, and the calamities of war again befall us, the dangers to human liberty are frightful to contemplate."

US Supreme Court, Ex parte Milligan, 1866

This month marks 10 years since the modern Supreme Court installed a president who arguably fulfilled the dire warning of the 1866 court. 

December 12, 2000, has been recalled by The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin.

In a timely coincidence, many of the works of George W. Bush and his merry gang are receiving renewed attention. The media are analysing thousands of US diplomatic cables revealed by the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. Many seem to document foreign skulduggery by the appointed president - and his successor, too.

The cables disclose obstructions of justice in other countries, as for example when US diplomats warned Germany not to issue arrest warrants for CIA agents accused of abducting and torturing a German citizen.

The US also tried to stifle Spain's investigations of Bush Gang torture. Law prof-blogger Scott Horton has more.  

Emptywheel concludes the contemporary DoJ "investigations" of torture were just a diplomatic stunt.

Reaction to the cables varied. For some, the leaks actually improved their opinion of US diplomacy, while one wit was reminded of teenage high school gossip.  

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Attorney General Holder: slipping down the indexThe festering saga of unpunished Bush crimes offers a revealing example of US justice these days and helps explain why Attorney General Eric Holder is not rated a success.

The US no longer ranks high on the Rule of Law Index, as Dan Froomkin sadly notes.  

Examples abound. As I reported in August, the Obama administration allowed the eight-year limitation for prosecuting John Yoo and Jay Bybee for their initial torture memos to expire.  

Now, the DoJ has also succeeded in running out the limitations for acts taken to conceal the torture the DoJ's legal hacks approved. In November, the five-year statute for the destruction of the torture tapes lapsed.

In an amazing coincidence, the Justice Department announced the very next day that the malefactors would not be prosecuted. Quelle surprise!

Jurist and NPR have more.

Adding insult to injury, the CIA's Assistant General Counsel claims (in a Chicago law review article) that there's no legal bar to rendition to torture.

The Harvard Law Review has even printed a defence of the CIA agents who abducted an Egyptian in Milan and were tried last year in absentia by the Italians.  

The claims that the trial of the agents violated the NATO Status of Forces Agreement and the European Convention on Human Rights may be valid, but the article has little to say about the US obstruction that caused the Italians to proceed in absentia.

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Bush: "I'd do it again"Perhaps it's the powerful whiff of legal impunity in the air that has prompted the torture godfather, George W. Bush, to speak out.

In his new book tour, Bush has brazenly bragged he approved torture, and would do it again.  

As Dahlia Litwick laments, "We are all water-boarders now".

Amnesty seized on Bush's admission in calling for an investigation, but it is doubtful anything will happen to torturers in the US.

None of the civil damages claims against US officials or contractors for torture or rendition have succeeded due to the Bush/Obama assertions of "enemy combatant" and that fatal Catch-22, "state secrets".

You would think victims had a brilliant civil remedy under the American Torture Victims Protection Act, but that's limited to torture or extrajudicial killings under the "authority, or color of law, of any foreign nation".

If there is to be any monetary compensation for US torture, it will evidently be provided by the British, who have agreed to settle claims that the UK government was complicit in US torture and renditions.

Aamer: $1 million compo, but still insideOne of those who will be paid by the Brits is Moazzam Begg, about whom surprisingly good things were said by a US diplomat in a leaked WikiLeaks cable.  

The UK Independent has Begg's reasons for settling.

Another of those compensated, Shaker Aamer, continues to be held at Guantánamo after winning close to $1 million from the British.

The US has rebuffed all demands for his release.  

Poland may also be forced to account, for hosting the CIA torture of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri at a dungeon in that country.

Al-Nashiri's torture tapes were among those the CIA conveniently destroyed.

*   *   *

With the Congressional elections over, blame is being laid on President Obama's failure to do any of the things he promised his base. 

As a result, Democrats did not vote on election day, in enormous numbers.

One losing congressman put it down to the Democrat leadership's "appeasement" of Republicans.

Murdoch: runs the Republicans publicity machineOthers blamed $40 million of free publicity given to Republican Party hopefuls by Murdoch's Fox News.

In any case, the character flaws of Mr Obama are beginning to receive the attention they deserve in the mainstream media.

The consequences of the 2010 election will certainly be grave.  

The new Republican committee chairmen are a fright. ProPublica has more.

Come January, six committee chairs will be owned by the very industries they regulate.

Republicans will also be holding hearings on "scientific fraud" in global warming.

It's just one of the benefits business gets when it owns the House.

And lastly, the new chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform can't wait to use subpoena powers against a president who never laid a glove on the Bush Gang when he had the chance.