I just have to say that I believe there's not a snowball's chance in hell that our government will cooperate with this case. Fortunately, even though President Obama dropped the ball on extracting justice from the likes of Rumsfeld, Tenet, Addington, Feith, Yoo, the demon king, Darth Cheney, and his intellectually-challenged, pretzel-eating, Alfred E. Neuman-lookalike co-conspirator shrub, there is no statute of limitations on war crimes and human rights violations. Of course, I've had my hopes of justice dashed many times before over the past ten to twelve years so I'm going to have to force myself to maintain at least a modicum of cautiously-applied optimism.
That said: the following can't be bad news.
A United Nations investigator has demanded that the US publish classified documents regarding the CIA’s human rights violations under former President George W. Bush, with hopes that the documents will lead to the prosecution of public officials.
The U.N. investigator's doc search centers around the CIA's infamously diabolical rendition and secret detention programs that of course have remained classified and either secretly buried deep under Cheney's undisclosed bunker -- or -- were shuffled away long ago and processed in his personal industrial strength, mobile paper shredder.
Ben Emmerson, the UN special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism, has recently claimed that the classified documents in question protect the names of individuals that were responsible for serious human rights violations.
The story comes from the RT Blog via Reuters:
“Despite this clear repudiation of the unlawful actions carried out by the Bush-era CIA, many of the facts remain classified, and no public official has so far been brought to justice in the United States,” Emmerson said in a report to the UN Human Rights Council, according to Reuters.
British born, Emmerson is relatively new blood in the leadership position of the
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, having taken on the daunting task back in August 2011.
Emmerson has been quoted in the past as saying:
The "war on terror" waged by Bush after al Qaeda attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 led to "gross or systematic" violations involving secret prisons for Islamic militant suspects, clandestine transfers and torture.
According to Emmerson, CIA "Black Sites" were far more abundant and widespread across the world than we previously knew about:
"There is now credible evidence to show that CIA 'black sites' were located on the territory of Lithuania, Morocco, Poland, Romania and Thailand, and that the officials of at least 49 other States allowed their airspace or airports to be used for rendition flights," Emmerson said, referring to clandestine sites where suspects were taken for detention without any extradition procedures, charges laid or access to a lawyer.
By stubbornly pursuing justice in this case, there's no doubt that Emmerson has inherited a herculean task. The residual stench of apathy and ambivalence concerning the torture and secret rendition programs still hangs thick and impenetrable over D.C., and the always trenchant
"looking forward - not backwards" modus operandi of our POTUS has been expertly carried out with deft and precision throughout the past four-plus years.
In loyal support of his boss, Attorney General Eric Holder offered this li'l diddy a few years ago:
"The Department of Justice would not prosecute any official who acted in good faith and within the scope of legal guidance given by its Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush era on interrogation."
I have a helluva tough time finding anything good at all about Dick Cheney supposedly having...
"... acted in good faith"
It never happened.
Trust me.
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