And, hard as it is to believe, the worst was yet to come.
In its first months in office, the Obama administration sought to protect Bush administration officials facing criminal investigation overseas for their involvement in establishing policies that governed interrogations of detained terrorist suspects. A "confidential" April 17, 2009, cable sent from the US embassy in Madrid to the State Department -- one of the 251,287 cables obtained by WikiLeaks -- details how the Obama administration, working with Republicans, leaned on Spain to derail this potential prosecution.
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Back when it seemed that this case could become a major international issue, during an April 14, 2009, White House briefing, I asked press secretary Robert Gibbs if the Obama administration would cooperate with any request from the Spaniards for information and documents related to the Bush Six. He said, "I don't want to get involved in hypotheticals." What he didn't disclose was that the Obama administration, working with Republicans, was actively pressuring the Spaniards to drop the investigation. Those efforts apparently paid off, and, as this WikiLeaks-released cable shows, Gonzales, Haynes, Feith, Bybee, Addington, and Yoo owed Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton thank-you notes.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus...and with any luck, he will put some courage in Mr. Obama's stocking this year, right next to the lump of coal the president's dismal, disappointing, demoralizing performance has earned him. In one week, the man certified the viability of Republican economic policy in the face of overwhelming evidence that Republicans have no economic policy beyond "We Like Rich People." He took responsibility for the crappy tone in Washington while being called a Nazi terrorist Marxist socialist non-citizen. He appeared all too ready to capitulate on the Bush tax cuts, even as an overwhelming majority of Americans want them done away with.
And to cap it all off, the Wikileaks document dump exposed the fact that Mr. Obama and his people went out of their way to derail even the most outside chance that some form of justice might be done after eight years of rampant Bush-era criminality. Mr. Obama waxed positively lyrical about the need to seek that justice during his presidential campaign. From the look of things, that promise -- like so many others he made on the trail -- turned to dust the moment he entered the Oval Office.
I quit smoking this week. The President quit on me
this week. I know a whole lot of people who are about to quit on him,
if they haven't already.
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