Gitmo Indictments - Part Uno

The translation is as delightful as the subjects of the piece deserve any number of books being thrown at them.

Just wanted to mention that Scott Horton has something up about the Spanish indictments,

Something that I hadn't realized previously is that the Spanish are claiming jurisdiction because of five Spaniards who were held at Gitmo.

It's still disappointing that it is the Spanish and not the Obama administration that is pressing forward on this. However, Horton's piece does have this small piece of good news.

Spanish officials are highly conscious of the political context of the case and have measured the Obama administration’s low-key reaction attentively. Although Spain is a NATO ally that initially supported “the war on terror” under Bush with a commitment of troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan, relations with the Bush administration deteriorated after Zapatero became prime minister and acted quickly to withdraw the Spanish contingent in Iraq. In the 2008 presidential campaign, Republican John McCain referred to Spain as a hostile state in comments that mystified Spaniards (it appears that McCain may have confused Spain with Venezuela and Zapatero with Hugo Chávez). Recently, the United States and Spain also wrangled over Spain’s decision to withdraw its troop commitment in Kosovo as well. Both Zapatero and Obama, however, have given a high priority to improving relations between the two long-standing allies. Spanish newspapers hailed the fact that Obama referred to Zapatero three times as “my good friend” during the recent European summit meetings, a sharp contrast with meetings at which former President Bush gave Zapatero a cold shoulder.

Both Washington and Madrid appear determined not to allow the pending criminal investigation to get in the way of improved relations, which both desire, particularly in regard to coordinated economic policy to confront the current financial crisis and a reshaped NATO mandate for action in Afghanistan.

The link is here- worth a read.

time to start a drum beat of posts on the necessity of extradition. This is why we should have held our own war crimes trials, because others would act if we failed to.

I'm pretty sure that's David Addington's home address. I lived in DC for a decade (and am moving back) and that address is in a residential neighborhood in Alexandria.

pretty bad when a law professor gets indicted for war crimes.