David Corn, a MoJo writer I normally respect, has tortured the WikiLeaks cables for a narrative of bipartisan collusion:
On April 15, Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), who’d recently been chairman of the Republican Party, and the US embassy’s charge d’affaires met with the acting Spanish foreign minister, Angel Lossada. The Americans, according to this cable, “underscored that the prosecutions would not be understood or accepted in the US and would have an enormous impact on the bilateral relationship” between Spain and the United States. Here was a former head of the GOP and a representative of a new Democratic administration (headed by a president who had decried the Bush-Cheney administration’s use of torture) jointly applying pressure on Spain to kill the investigation of the former Bush officials. Lossada replied that the independence of the Spanish judiciary had to be respected, but he added that the government would send a message to the attorney general that it did not favor prosecuting this case.
Mind you, the president has ended torture by US forces, but ending torture is not enough for those who demand prosecutions. Obama never promised purges; upon taking the oath of office, he promptly followed the example of Nancy Pelosi, who took impeachment of his predecessor off the table in 2006.
The call to “look forward” may infuriate Glenn Greenwald and David Corn, but allowing former White House staff to be tried in Spain would be an historic surrender of sovereignty — one that few governments on Earth would willingly make. But let Corn continue:
The next day, April 16, 2009, Attorney General Conde-Pumpido publicly declared that he would not support the criminal complaint, calling it “fraudulent” and political. If the Bush officials had acted criminally, he said, then a case should be filed in the United States. On April 17, the prosecutors of the National Court filed a report asking that complaint be discontinued. In the April 17 cable, the American embassy in Madrid claimed some credit for Conde-Pumpido’s opposition, noting that “Conde-Pumpido’s public announcement follows outreach to [Government of Spain] officials to raise USG deep concerns on the implications of this case.” (Emphasis mine)
Corn conflates credit-taking with actual credit. Put another way, there is nothing here to show causality except the embassy’s desire to claim they caused this decision. And as Corn himself writes, the matter didn’t end there:
It would still be up to investigating Judge Baltasar Garzón—a world-renowned jurist who had initiated previous prosecutions of war crimes and had publicly said that former President George W. Bush ought to be tried for war crimes—to decide whether to pursue the case against the six former Bush officials. That June—coincidentally or not—the Spanish Parliament passed legislation narrowing the use of “universal jurisdiction.” Still, in September 2009, Judge Garzón pushed ahead with the case.
The case eventually came to be overseen by another judge who last spring asked the parties behind the complaint to explain why the investigation should continue. Several human rights groups filed a brief urging this judge to keep the case alive, citing the Obama administration’s failure to prosecute the Bush officials. Since then, there’s been no action. The Obama administration essentially got what it wanted. The case of the Bush Six went away. (Emphasis mine)
So Spain changed its laws, the case changed judges, but the Obama White House is somehow the sole reason why there has been no action. It’s possible Corn is right, that the Madrid embassy manipulated the Spanish court system — but he sure hasn’t proven it. Where are the cables taking credit for suborning the judge? Answer: they don’t exist. But let’s do go on:
Back when it seemed that this case could become a major international issue, during an April 14, 2009, White House briefing, I asked press secretary Robert Gibbs if the Obama administration would cooperate with any request from the Spaniards for information and documents related to the Bush Six. He said, “I don’t want to get involved in hypotheticals.” What he didn’t disclose was that the Obama administration, working with Republicans, was actively pressuring the Spaniards to drop the investigation.
Either he was covering for the Obama White House’s sinister plan to maintain sovereign jurisdiction over the judicial fate of former politicos, or Gibbs doesn’t read every single diplomatic cable out of Spain. Which do you think is more likely to be true?
I reiterate: the diplomatic cables are mostly chaff. Corn has dug through the haystack, found a couple of pins, and built a straw man. Judicial sovereignty has always been bipartisan; it is practically a universal of nation-states. Pinochet is the exception that proves this rule: he never spent a day in prison for ordering the torture of tens of thousands.
