The Spanish Prisoner

A few days ago, it was reported that six former Bush administration officials may be indicted by a Spanish court for having allegedly provided legal advice to justify the supposed "torture" of detainees at Guantánamo Bay.

Who is behind this move? None other than Baltasar Garzón, the same Spanish judge who ordered the arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet back in 1998. The soon-to-be indicted American officials include John Yoo, formerly of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, who advised President George W. Bush had the authority to circumvent the Geneva Conventions; Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy; William Haynes II, former general counsel for the Department of Defense; Jay Bybee, currently a federal judge and formerly of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel; David Addington, chief of staff and legal adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney; and finally former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

According to a Spanish advocacy group called the Association for the Dignity of Inmates, which filed the complaint upon which Garzon is acting, the six former officials:

...participated actively and decisively in the creation, approval and execution of a judicial framework that allowed for the deprivation of fundamental rights of a large number of prisoners, the implementation of new interrogation techniques including torture, the legal cover for the treatment of those prisoners, the protection of the people who participated in illegal tortures and, above all, the establishment of impunity for all the government workers, military personnel, doctors and others who participated in the detention center at Guantánamo.

As far as I know, the Obama administration has yet to issue any kind of response to this news. But if they do, I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that it won't be a statement telling those busybody Tranzi (short for Transnational Progressive) Spaniards to go shove it. One could never reasonably expect such a statement from Obama or anyone else associated with him, considering the president's penchant for issuing apologies to foreign countries for supposed American misdeeds of the past and president.

Being a liberal means ALWAYS having to say you're sorry...for being an American.

There is one thing that Mr. Garzón and his fellow Spaniards might want to keep in mind, especially in light of the fact that Spanish officials have previously talked about indicting American troops for "war crimes." I'll let Tom Kratman explain it:

Did you know that the United States has what amounts to a conditional declaration of war in place should anyone have the gall to grab one of our soldiers to turn over to the ICC [the International Criminal Court] or some other Tranzi court? It’s called the American Servicemembers Protection Act and it passed unanimously in the Senate. (Sometimes your country just makes you proud.) We should look for an opportunity to exercise that law…and sometime soon. Spain might be a good place to start.

And if anyone reading this has doubts about that bit of legal fact, you should know that Kratman was once a lawyer as well as an Army Ranger.

There is something else to consider as well. Now while I may just be a poor ol' country boy who never had one of them there fancy Ivy League edumacations that so many holier-than-thou liberals and "responsible" conservatives claim to possess, I do believe we've been down a similar road with Spain before. It was called the Spanish-American War.

So what say you, Mr. Garzón? Care for a rematch?