Prosecuting Blackwater guards changes very little

Even if the U.S. government is successful in having murder and other charges reinstated against five Blackwater security guards implicated in the shooting deaths of 14 civilians in a Baghdad intersection in 2007, it may help somewhat in soothing some suspicions among the leaders of Iraqi society but is probably not going to do anything to heal the fundamental damage done to the United States. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said Saturday on a visit to Iraq that Washington would appeal a federal judge's decision tossing out the charges because the guards' constitutional rights had been violated by the government. "The United States is determined, determined to hold accountable anyone who commits crimes against the Iraqi people," Biden said, according to the Reuters international news service. "While we fully respect the independence and integrity of the U.S. judicial system, we were disappointed by the judge's decision to dismiss the indictment, which was based on the way in which some evidence had been acquired." The dismissal reopened long festering wounds among Iraqis disturbed by the massive loss of life in the years that followed the defeat of Saddam Hussein, even though thousands of U.S. serviceman and women also died in the effort to set up a democratic government in Baghdad. The five guards were accused of responsibility in the deaths of the civilians by opening fire in Baghdad's Nisour Square. The guards claimed they began shooting because they thought they were under attack as they were escorting a diplomatic convoy through the city as the height of the insurgency. A sixth guard pleaded guilty to lesser charges in exchange for testimony against the other five. The Nisour Square shooting served to focus attention on the propriety of the military's use of private contractors to fight in Iraq in place of lesser-paid U.S. soldiers. But military adventure undertaken by the Bush administration in Iraq in 2003 also raised serious questions about the constitutional underpinnings of the U.S. government -- questions that will have to be answered if Washington intends to retain any of its traditional moral authority in the new century. The paralysis in the capital in Washington that has prevented any significant legislative progress in the new administration of Barack Obama is symptomatic of this problem -- the train has left the tracks, and the conductor refuses to halt the locomotive. At issue now is the future of the separation of powers doctrine in the U.S. Constitution, the power of the president, the authority of the Congress to declare war and the nation's revered Bill of Rights, which has surely suffered severely. At a time of international challenge, the United States appears leaderless and its citizenry inexcusably uninformed.

Federal judge revives hope for legal system to reverse Bush legacy

Friday's federal court ruling allowing a convicted terrorist who claims he was tortured to sue a former Bush administration lawyer who authorized harsh treatment of detainees offers a genuine opportunity for the U.S. legal system to repair some of the worst constitutional damage done by the executive branch. In a lawsuit brought by the family of Jose Padilla, the Brooklyn man who was held in solitary confinement for more than three years after being accused of trying to set off a radioactive "dirty" bomb explosion in the United States, U.S. Judge Jeffrey White decided that the allegations were sufficient to proceed with the case. White, who was, perhaps ironically, appointed to the Northern District of California bench by George W. Bush, rejected nearly all of the government's claims of immunity in a 42-page ruling issued late Friday, according to the New York Times. White ruled that the suit had adequately alleged that attorney John C. Yoo, who wrote many of the so-called torture memos that authorized the use of invasive interrogation techniques when was a deputy attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel from 2001 to 2003, could have started the "series of events that resulted in the deprivation of Padilla’s constitutional rights,” the Times said. Padilla claimed in his lawsuit that he “suffered gross physical and psychological abuse at the hands of federal officials as part off a systematic program of abusive interrogation intended to break down Mr. Padilla’s humanity and his will to live” while he was held in the U.S. Navy brig in Charleston, S.C. White said in his ruling that the case raised the question of the balance “between the requirements of war and the defense of the very freedoms that war seeks to protect,” the Times said. Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California in Berkeley, did not respond to requests for comment, the Times said. But he did write in the Wall Street Journal column last year that "the legal system should not be used as a bludgeon against individuals targeted by political activists to impose policy preferences they have failed to implement via the ballot box.” A U.S. Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on the decision, the Times said. Padilla eventually was sentenced to 17 years in prison for conspiracy to commit terrorism in an unrelated case.