Swinging the Big Dick & Protecting War Criminals

[The] Obama administration just actually praised Britain for succumbing to pressure and continuing to conceal details of what happened to Binyam Mohamed at the hands of the U.S. Government. The administration issued this self-evidently disturbing statement (h/t Pedinska):

In a statement, the White House said it "thanked the UK government for its continued commitment to protect sensitive national security information".

It added that this would "preserve the long-standing intelligence sharing relationship that enables both countries to protect their citizens".

The British Government is denying the judges' assertion that the U.S. Government threatened to cut off intelligence sharing with Britain if it disclosed these facts, but the Obama administration's statement -- that Britain's willingness to conceal these facts would "preserve the long-standing intelligence sharing relationship that enables both countries to protect their citizens" -- strongly suggests that this is exactly what the U.S. was threatening to do.

The ACLU's Executive Director, Anthony Romero, wrote a letter to Hilary Clinton (.pdf) requesting clarification of the Obama administration's position and, in that letter, he quoted the scathing language from the British court regarding the U.S.'s demand that these facts be kept concealed:

Indeed, we did not consider that a democracy [the United States] governed by the rule of law would expect a court in another democracy to suppress a summary of the evidence contained in reports by its own officials ... relevant to allegations of torture and cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment, politically embarrassing though it might be.

We had no reason ... to anticipate there would be made a threat of the gravity of the kind made by the United States Government that it would reconsider its intelligence-sharing relationship, when all the considerations in relation to open justice pointed to us providing a limited but important summary of the reports.

Romero then issued this statement:

Hope is flickering. The Obama administration's position is not change. It is more of the same. This represents a complete turn-around and undermining of the restoration of the rule of law. The new American administration shouldn't be complicit in hiding the abuses of its predecessors.

I'd like to hear the Obama administration's rationale for this behavior, but it's very difficult to think of anything that could possibly justify it.

  Glenn Greenwald - Salon

BBC Report.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.