Keep hope alive!
Via Hot Air (and I love the name Ed came up with for this one), the AP does everything it can to keep the dream from dying, but they’re up against some tough objective reality, here:
Spanish AG says no torture probe of US officials
MADRID – Spanish prosecutors will recommend against opening an investigation into whether six Bush administration officials sanctioned torture against terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, the country’s attorney-general said Thursday.
Candido Conde-Pumpido said the case against the high-ranking U.S. officials — including former U.S. Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales — was without merit because the men were not present when the alleged torture took place.
“If one is dealing with a crime of mistreatment of prisoners of war, the complaint should go against those who physically carried it out,” Conde-Pumpido said in a breakfast meeting with journalists. He said a trial of the men would have turned Spain’s National Court “into a plaything” to be used for political ends.
Prosecutors at Spain’s National Court have not formally announced their decision in the case, but Conde-Pumpido is the country’s top law-enforcement official and has the ultimate say.
As both I and others noted – including apparently Spain’s Attorney General – this was a nonsensical case all along, given that it’s based on the concept that you can prosecute someone for offering a legal opinion. That’s assuming that you respect the right of Spain to try our people in their courts for alleged crimes… which is a notion that I’m pretty sure that the Obama administration is privately pushing back hard on with the Spanish. That’s because the Obama administration is actually vulnerable to anything that gets successfully directed against members of the previous administration – and they don’t want to have to deal with the domestic headaches, either. Trying to explain to military veterans that the government didn’t mean to equate them all with dirty, dirty racists (H/T Glenn Reynolds) is quite enough to deal with right now, thank you very much. So… this gets squashed, most likely; and for those of you out there in the Online Left who aren’t going to be happy about that, well, I suggest that you take it up with the Spanish authorities.
Just take off the gimp mask first, OK? It’s embarrassing.
Well, more embarrassing.
Moe Lane
Crossposted to RedState.
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