Giving In To Blackmail

by digby

Here’s some good news about a terrible thing. The British High Court decided that it did not believe the threats from both the Bush and Obama admnistrations that the US would refuse to share intelligence with the UK if their government released evidence of the horrible torture of prisoner Binyam Mohammed:

David Miliband, the foreign secretary, acted in a way that was harmful to the rule of law by suppressing evidence about what the government knew of the illegal treatment of Binyam Mohamed, a British resident who was held in a secret prison in Pakistan, the high court has ruled.

In a devastating judgment, two senior judges roundly dismissed the foreign secretary’s claims that disclosing the evidence would harm national security and threaten the UK’s vital intelligence-sharing arrangements with the US.

In what they described as an “unprecedented” and “exceptional” case, to which the Guardian is a party, they ordered the release of a seven-paragraph summary of what the CIA told British officials – and maybe ministers – about Ethiopian-born Mohamed before he was secretly interrogated by an MI5 officer in 2002.

“The suppression of reports of wrongdoing by officials in circumstances which cannot in any way affect national security is inimical to the rule of law,” Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones ruled. “Championing the rule of law, not subordinating it, is the cornerstone of democracy.”

The summary is a CIA account given to British intelligence “whilst [Mohamed] was held in Pakistan … prior to his interview by an officer of the Security Service”, the judges said. The officer, known only as Witness B, is being investigated by the Metropolitan police for “possible criminal wrongdoing”.

What’s most insane about this case (aside from the hideous violence done to this man, of course) is the fact that the two countries blithely colluded to portray the United States as a gangster country that would threaten its oldest ally with a promise to withhold evidence of a terrorist attack in the future.

How in the hell is that supposed to make us safer? The US has spent decades building up an unparalleled intelligence and military behemoth that costs more than all other countries combined. It is the unquestioned leader of the world in spy technology and warmaking. And acting like a mafia thug (or acting in collusion with the “victim” as a pretense) is dangerous as hell.

It seems we always come back to this. The US is the world’s superpower and, by its own design, the world’s policeman. (Not that its people were ever consulted about that, I might add.) And it seems bent upon making the world think it’s a drunken, psychotic, brutal cop. During the Bush years, it was clear that this was intentional — the old Friedmanesque calculation that the world needed to believe that our guy was just as crazy as their guy. But Obama was supposed to change this dangerous formula and convince the world that its self-designated policeman was an evolved, responsible actor that could be counted on to use its power wisely. Somehow, I don’t think that “threatening” our oldest ally with terrorist attacks helps that happen.

The British High Court was skeptical of America’s seriousness and they’ve actually helped American foreign policy greatly by publicly repudiating the threat. The US needs to stop playing these bully games. They are needlessly provocative and if they don’t watch it at some point the rest of the world is going to join with those who already have concluded that we are a malignant force for evil and collectively decide that the US is too dangerous to be tolerated. Trust has already broken down terribly and its only going to get worse unless Obama takes the opportunity we’ve been given to take a different path.

Greenwald has documented the whole Binyam Mohammed saga today for those who haven’t followed it in detail. It’s a stomach churning story. Releasing these documents is absolutely necessary to confront these awful deeds and repudiate them.

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