Colombia Refuses to “Look Forward”
In Colombia, apparently, you get arrested when you oversee illegal domestic wiretapping.
Colombia’s Prosecutor General ordered the arrest of Jorge Noguera, a former director of Colombia’s state intelligence agency DAS, for the his alleged involvement in the illegal spying on government opponents.
Noguera, who was director of the DAS between 2002 and 2006, is suspected of having set up the illegal activities of the DAS that included wiretapping supreme court magistrates, journalists, human rights organizations and opposition politicians.
Imagine if Michael Hayden (who oversaw the NSA when Cheney set up his illegal wiretap program) or John Brennan (who was in charge of the departments that chose whom to target with the system) got arrested for their role in the program?
Hell, imagine if Cheney himself were arrested (President Alvaro Uribe’s Chief of Staff is reportedly one target of this investigation)?
Pretty crazy, isn’t it, imagining what it would be like to live in a country with a functioning rule of law … like Colombia?
I just saw this quote today (abbrev)
It pretty much encompasses what I’ve felt for so long now, about the Bush and Obama administrations and about their “intelligence” and “justice” employees and leaders.
On some very basic levels, as much grey as there is in the world, there is also black and white and there are choices between good and evil.
The saddest part is that those who chose evil have also chosen to remake a nation in their own mold, in order to save themselves from any consequence, even the meaningless consequence of disapproval.
Where good men know that evil will always be with us and plan systems and institutions to check it, there are plots that planning can’t derail. The insidious plot – the one that reframes the evil choice as the “good faith” and “patriotic” one and that uses the very systems and institutions which were planned to exist as a check and instead corrupts them into being the propagator, that’s the plot that has been successful. Equally so under the plots of the Obama admin as under the plots of the Bush admin.
How do you plan for a loss of all good men in government? How do you plan for a Department of Justice that has become a support service for extrajudicial torture, kidnap, human trafficking, assassination, etc?
How do you plan for a nation that can still be shocked by a Tuscon, and yet never even shrugged over the Khataba raid? A crazed maniac kills a Congresswoman and a Judge and a 9 yo girl. But it’s “Patriots” who kill a Chief of police, prosecutor and pregnant women, carving the bullets from their bodies.
The “good men” like Harold Koh and John Bellinger and “good women” like Fran Townsend and Condi Rice – they get to own that word because almost no one in the Bush and Obama administrations has ever sat down and committed to a real order of justice. Just politically convenient trappings.
You wonder if John H. Brown is enrolled somewhere as the last good man in either admin.
Good conscience changed over the last few years – now it means keeping a White House’s evil secrets secret. How do you plan for that – for a national conscience to become sated by legal memoranda and flag waving and for blind eyed prosecutors who somehow still see a buck and a rung for career advancement very clearly to become the nation’s educators and for diplomats to casually lead the nation into commissions of crimes and then smirk as they mark them “classified” and feed a nation paranoia so that it become more afraid of the truth than of the crimes?
How do you plan for so many, who were given so much, to choose evil simply because they can?
How do you plan against evil that is rebranded: by media, by diplomats, by legislators and even by a Department supposed exists for Justice – as good?
Mary,
Dr. King provides answers.
….to build and to bind.
….to bring into being a real order of justice.
Marcy does a great job of exposing the plots and the aftermath of plots. One could only wish for a 100 or 1000 more of her or her like.
We need to break the strangle hold that the moneyed and powerful have over our elected representatives or tear down the system that perpetuates the unjust status quo and re-build it with something more democratic.
So that only leaves the question of working within the system or working without the system. With all the wars we have going on, I’m not sure which one leads to the lesser amount of human carnage.
Great, thoughtful comment. thank you
Uribe became president in 2002 and was a close ally of Bush. During Uribe’s two terms, the U.S. provided a lot of military assistance to Colombia.
Anybody else wonder whether this eavesdropping was the result of American advice?
Outstanding work, Marcy.
Yeah, it’s pretty sad when we run second to a narco-state on civil liberties issues.
The United States is rapidly becoming the biggest banana republic in the world evah… Venerating crooks and criminal behavior wherever possible.
Thanks for the info. Great post, as always.
Marcy, I am unable to imagine any more that my country will do the right and/or legal thing about any situation. We are dominated by criminals.
included wiretapping supreme court magistrates, journalists, human rights organizations and opposition politicians.
No suspected terrorists? Doesn’t sound like he was in it for the greater good.
Yeah, because we can be sure Cheney “was in it for the greater good”, and only wiretapped terrorists. He never wiretapped journalists or human rights organizations.
Well this will get nipped in the bud as soon as the U.S. jerks Colombia’s chain.
Yes, Columbia is under the auspices of the World Bank and the IMF. Ergo, they must comply with the Wolfowitz.
Suppose the former Columbian director of intelligence could ask for political asylum in the Corporate States of Merica. Obama would meet him at the airport along with GWB and Big Dawg at his side to demonstrate they’re all on the same page.
Banana Republic
Apparently, Colombia is a country where they actually respect the rule of law. Of course, that’s clearly beyond the US. I guess we have to respect cultural differences, and not expect too much of countries that have less developed political cultures, like the US.
As a corporate attorney, Eric Holder represented Chiquita Banana aka United Fruit Company against its workers whom were poisoned and murdered by their bosses. Holder won.
Good People all around.
Almost all our Govt officials are employees of the Corporations.
Remember reading that about Holder. Tried to ignore it. Tried to ignore Obama’s FISA vote which was the canary in his soul’s coalmine. But it’s madness to ignore what they are. And what they are aren’t men of law and men of the constitution.
My first and last predictor of Obama was John Brennan. Creepy little fuck is a “national security adviser.” In a decent country, jail time.
Wow. Columbia has a better rule of law than the USA. I am speechless. We are a banana republic and we have truly lost our way.
I understand that our government is urging Lebanon to look back at the assassination of their public figure, Rafiq Hariri. Seems as if the desiralility of looking back is….relative? Situational? Or subject to cynical manipulation?
I think the key words here are “supreme court magistrates” and “opposition politicians.”
If Noguera had limited his activities to the little people, no one in the Columbian government would probably have bothered to go after him. If forced to respond in some fashion to the brouhaha, they might have retroactively changed the laws to make the spying legal, like a certain American Congress I could name…
Think back to Watergate. What turned Nixon’s activities into a major scandal that brought him down? He was spying on the Democrats. We’d had years of his administration spying on ordinary citizens protesting the war, but it was the revelation of the break in at DNC headquarters that blew it all up.
If Bush had wiretapped the DNC, or if Obama is caught spying on Republican leaders, you can bet there will be action to address the lawbreaking. But, spying on the little people? Not so much.
Nailed it.
Obviously Jane Harman was dirty.