Comment by HP
Posted in response to Glen Greenwald’s article on Salon. The article is about the positions the Obama admin has been maintaining over the Gitmo detainees.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/08/obama/index.html
The arguments made in this article and other articles by Glen are to the point and brilliant. However, there is another side to the whole story. The Vietnam War, as we now know and many knew around that time, was also built upon lies after lies. There were no Gitmos and the enemy combatant detainees in that war but there were plenty of minor and bigger Mai Lai type incidents. The Republican admin that took over after the Johnson admin continued the war. Neither the Nixon Admin nor the Ford Admin brought any cases against anyone in the Johnson admin for the bald face lies about the progress of the war and obviously the invented reason of the invasion.
There were many in the Johnson admin that deserved punishment, there were many in the intelligence and the defense set up during the Johnson Admin, that should have been punished but barring a few hand slaps and a few years of detention to lower level staffers, no big fish was ever brought to justice.
The Obama admin practically has no choice in this matter. It will have to protect the previous admin not just because a democrat admin was protected by the Republicans in past but we don’t know what might happen in the future and this admin might also need the same protection from the next admin which might be a Republican admin.
The only way this I-scratch-your-back-and-you-scratch-mine would end, would be the public pressure and I think people like Glen are doing an incredible job here by keeping the story alive. This will keep the Obama Admin under pressure and at some point in future these efforts might bear fruit.
The Obama admin would be in a major conflict with the security establishment of the country which just a few months ago, was in complete agreement with the Bush Admin. The Obama admin and the democrats are not prepared to fight that battle.
In the meantime, I seriously doubt that the Obama admin will budge more than what it has already over the illegal detentions, gitmo prisoners, and many other issues that are in the courts.
