Obama has painted himself into a lose-lose scenario for himself on this one. When (if) he does clean house, he will look very very weak because the initiative was taken by a non-dominant European country. If he stays the course every day he looks more and more like a sellout.

How ironic it is that the home of the Inquisition would instigate this.

I still think within three months they will find some way to reverse themselves on this and attempt to explain it all away as transition lag or some other lame excuse. It isn't pretty or honorable, but if that does happen we should be grateful for the honest and hard work all the lefty blogs and media sources have done.

First, Horton points out that Spain has informed the US that their proceedings will stop if investigations are started in the US:

The Spanish prosecutors advised the Americans that they would suspend their investigation if at any point the United States were to undertake an investigation of its own into these matters. They pressed to know whether any such investigation was pending. These inquiries met with no answer from the U.S. side.

That is the way international law is supposed to function on this issue. Foreign governments can only pursue charges if the host governments refuse to do so. The ball is clearly in Obama's "court" here.

Second, one of the memos most sought in the Thursday deadline is the Jay Bybee August 1, 2002 memo outlining specific torture methods. It will be hard for Obama to release only a heavily redacted version because Bush already did that in July, 2008.

ACLU summary here:
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/36104res20080724.html

Redacted memo here:
http://www.aclu.org/pdfs/safefree/cia_3686_001.pdf

That Dianne Feinstein and Jay Rockefeller were primarily concerned that Stephen Kappes be in a senior position (preferably THE senior position) to prevent exposure of, and punishment for their own complicity in the crimes.

When Bush was acquiring dictatorial powers and refusing to bear any personal responsibility for his crimes, the Democrats warned that they shoe might be on the other foot. As usual, they were right and the Republicans are now whining.

The far right is blind. They actually believed that Rove et al were delivering a Permanent Republican Majority. Morons.

Not to let Obama off the hook. Democrats are at their worst when they behave like Republicans. Obama has done so much right in three months that we can't let him stop at the 5 yard line. He needs to go in for the touchdown.

... the US is a rogue nation, and while the criminals will probably be brought to justice eventually, it may take a long,long time and it will be a surprise to no one if the biggest dogs of all get away with it altogether.

One would surely be remiss to speculate that the behavior of Dianne Feinstein and Jay Rockefeller was in any way, even remotely associated with attempts to cover there own backsides, wouldn't one? It really only looks bad. There's obviously nothing there to see. Clearly there's no there, there. I'll just keep repeating that to myself. I'm sure I can come to believe it. Eventually.

In the meantime, blessings on Spain for keeping our collective feet to the fire.

If Spain cracks under the burden of the Euro during their decent into crippling deflation, their government may not be around long enough to pursue these prosecutions.

You've got to suppose that in this case Obama figures the crime is worse than the cover-up. Someone as smart as Obama must know that this is the way to ownership of Bush's biggest failure.

I have nothing left to say about Feinstein or Rockefeller.

This line brought to mind something from Sy Hersh when he broke the Abu Ghraib torture story. If Obama wanted to slap down the military, releasing the pictures and videos of US soldiers raping children would be a start.

http://boingboing.net/2004/07/15/hersh-children-raped.html

" Some of the worst things that happened you don't know about, okay? Videos, um, there are women there. Some of you may have read that they were passing letters out, communications out to their men. This is at Abu Ghraib ... The women were passing messages out saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened' and basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys, children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. And the worst above all of that is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror. It's going to come out."

It would be difficult to shut down an investigation of that, even the evangelical Christianists would be hard put to support this- and as it comes uncomfortably close to many of their own practises they would probably keep fairly quiet.

Inquisition? Hell, the Spanish are just getting around to prosecuting war crimes from the Spanish Civil War. Good that they got it in under the 75 year mark. Funny how they [just like us] move a lot quicker when they get to point the dirty end of the stick at someone else.

Not that this excuses torture conducted under the Bush administration. It does, however, highlight the political difficulty in such prosecutions when political tension exists.

Obama wants accountability from the 'pirates'. Obama does not want accountability from the torturers and murderers. This is not America. This is no democracy. This is a corporate sponsored dictatorship brought to you by Halliburton, KBR, Bank of America, and CitiCorp. This nation will NEVER EVER recover from Bush and Obama. And as long as Obama reserves the right to kidnapp, imprison, torture, and kill anyone on Earth at any time for any reason, he is a tyrant and we are living under tyranny. Ah, well, what can't be cured must be endured. I'm half expecting the Criminal-in-Chief to nuke Iran just to show the Republicans he's a tough guy. Obama, like Bush, is just another sad, pathetic little man trying to impress the bullies on the playground. How tragic for all of us.