A magistrate in Spain (the same one who issued the arrest warrant for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998) handed prosecutors there a 98-page report and ordered them to investigate former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and five other Bush officials in connection with U.S. actions at Guantanamo. The prosecutors are expected to decide this week whether charges should be filed in Spain against the officials who gave legal advice to the administration. The report was assembled by the Association for the Rights of Prisoners on the grounds that some of the Guantanamo prisoners have Spanish citizenship.
This action raises several quesstions. Gonzales, who was Bush's legal counsel when the detention center was opened, and the other five were not policymakers -- they were legal advisers. Is trying to force them into Spanish court the first step at getting Bush himself into an international court? In this country, attorney-client discussion is privileged (it can't be divulged) -- as is the decisionmaking process in the White House. Is the Spanish action a way to sidestep the constitutional protections we have in place in this country?
Regardless of what anyone thinks of Bush, this action should set off alarms across the country -- and in other nations. If leaders worldwide are afraid to act because some judge in some court in some other country could prosecute them, we might as well hand all of our governments over to anarchists.
Meanwhile, in this country, we still have some congressmen pushing for a "truth commission" to pin some crime on Bush. Do we really want to go there? This is basically pay back for the Clinton impeachment, and it would set the stage for another pay back once the tables are reversed and the Republicans are back in control of Congress. Our country has far more important issues to deal with than to continue indulging in this petty schoolyard fight.
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