Mayer on Rahm
By: emptywheel Friday February 5, 2010 5:13 pm
I first teased out Rahm Emanuel’s role in reversing Obama’s early efforts to reclaim our country from torture last July. In August, my comments at Netroots Nation focused on Rahm’s role in preventing accountability for torture. I kept tracking Rahm’s campaign to prevent accountability here, here, and here.
Today, Jane Mayer has an extended profile of Eric Holder that fleshes out what we’ve all known: Rahm’s the guy who killed accountability for torture.
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All along Rahm’s campaign against Greg Craig and Holder he left complaint after complaint that they had ruined the relationship with Congress. This, I suppose, is what Rahm means: doing anything-even those actions dictated by international law-that offend poor Lindsey’s sensibilities is a mistake, tantamount to ruining the President’s relationship with Congress. And I guess Rahm is okay with that-ceding the President’s authority on national security and legal issues to Lindsey Graham.
And look what you get out of that: Lindsey in a snit, pouting that the Attorney General of the United States determined to try criminals in a civilian court. And in response, refusing to close Gitmo.
In other words, we can’t close Gitmo because Obama’s “crack” Chief of Staff has willingly ceded the authority of the Attorney General of the United States to one Senator from the opposing party, and that single Senator is pouting because the Attorney General might choose law over Kangaroo Courts.
These people are War Criminals.
They are Torturers.
They are Murderers.
All the way up the Chain of Command.
Yes, that includes George W. Bush and Barack Hussein Obama.
Just as guilty as the grunts who at their command raped children with chemical lightsticks in front of their family and sliced up Binyam Mohamed’s penis.
And anyone who doesn’t support their prosecution to the full extent of the law is no better than a Good German.
“If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.” Robert H. Jackson