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The "rule of law" - Spanish and US style!

Glenn Greenwald, lawyer and commentator, who writes on Salon, in "The differing views of the "rule of law" in Spain and the U.S." questions why the US Administration has effectively outsourced what it should be doing in pursuing people like former US Attorney-General Gonzales for their sanctioning torture in breach of international law.

"Scott Horton reports this morning that, in Spain, "prosecutors have decided to press forward with a criminal investigation targeting former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and five top associates [John Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, Doug Feith and William Haynes] over their role in the torture of five Spanish citizens held at Guantánamo." Spain not only has the right under the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture to prosecute foreign officials for torturing its citizens, but it -- like the U.S. -- has the affirmative obligation to do so. (Indeed, the Bush administration itself insisted just last year that the U.S. the right to criminally prosecute foreign officials for ordering acts of torture even in the absence of an accusation that any of the victims were American).

As Hilzoy argues, however, the primary obligation for these prosecutions lies with the country whose officials authorized the war crimes -- the United States:

"It is a requirement of law, the law that the Constitution requires Obama, as President, to faithfully execute. He should not outsource his Constitutional obligations to Spain."

That the U.S. has the legal obligation under the U.S. Constitution, our own laws and international treaties to commence criminal investigations is simply undeniable. That is just a fact. Yet it's hard to overstate how far away we are from fulfilling our legal obligations to impose accountability on our own torturers and war criminals."

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