The case came at a delicate time for Spain, whose Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero is hoping to improve relations with Washington after eight years of strained ties during Bush's term.

The government has insisted the court is independent and that the executive branch has no sway over its decisions.

OBAMA: I’m a strong believer that it’s important to look forward and not backwards, and to remind ourselves that we do have very real security threats out there. So I have not had direct conversations with the Spanish government about these issues. My team has been in communications with them.

I wouldn't hold my breath.

What Mr. Obama conveniently ignores concerning the Bush crimes matter is that looking backward IS in fact looking forward. Failure to look back at these horrible crimes in order to apply justice is asking for the same criminal acts to occur again at some point in our future. There's simply no deterrent.

In my honest opinion, the real reason Obama will do nothing, (aside from the fact that he is a part of the workings of the empire), is because IF this is brought to trial, there is the very real possibility that many, many, many more dirty secrets would come to light exposing the whole corrupt system to the light of truth, visible for all to see.

Hon. Eric Holder
Attorney General of the United States

Dear Mr. Attorney General:

On June 6, 2008, 56 members of Congress wrote to then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey. The letter read as follows:

Previous letter:
We are writing to request that you appoint a special counsel to investigate whether the Bush Administration's policies regarding the interrogation of detainees have violated federal criminal laws. There is mounting evidence that the Bush Administration has sanctioned enhanced interrogation techniques against detainees under the control of the United States that warrant an investigation.

Congress is already aware of a pattern of abuse against detainees under the control of the United States and the Bush Administration. In 2004, prisoners being held at Abu Ghraib prison were subjected to abuse, sexual exploitation and torture. At the Guantanamo Bay Detention facility, prisoners have been held indefinitely, subjected to sleep deprivation, and drugged against their will. An independent investigation by the International Committee of the Red Cross documented several instances of acts of torture against detainees, including soaking a prisoner's hand in alcohol and lighting it on fire, subjecting a prisoner to sexual abuse, and forcing a prisoner to eat a baseball. In October 2005, the New York Times reported that three detainees were killed during interrogations in Afghanistan and Iraq by CIA agents or CIA contractors.

We believe that these events alone warrant action, but within the last month additional information has surfaced that suggests the fact that not only did top Administration officials meet in the White House and approve the use of enhanced techniques including waterboarding against detainees, but that President Bush was aware of, and approved of the meetings taking place. This information indicates that the Bush Administration may have systematically implemented, from the top down, detainee interrogation policies that constitute torture or otherwise violate the law. We believe that these serious and significant revelations warrant an immediate investigation to determine whether actions taken by the President, his Cabinet, and other Administration officials are in violation of the War Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. 2441), the Anti-Torture Act, (18 U.S.C. 2340-2340A), and other U.S. and international laws.

Despite the seriousness of the evidence, the Justice Department has brought prosecution against only one civilian for an interrogation-related crime. Given that record, we believe that it is necessary to appoint a special counsel in order to ensure that a thorough and impartial investigation occurs, and that the prosecution of anyone who violated federal criminal statutes prohibiting torture and abuse is pursued if warranted by the facts.

Again, we strongly urge that you act in a timely manner to appoint a special counsel. We look forward to hearing from you in response to our request.

Current letter:
The Justice Department, prior to your confirmation as Attorney General, did not in fact take any steps we are aware of to pursue this matter.

Since that letter was sent, new evidence has emerged, including an extensive report by the International Committee of the Red Cross documenting the torture of prisoners. On December 15, 2008, Richard Cheney, and on January 11, 2009 (as well as April 11, 2008), George W. Bush, made statements in televised interviews that appeared to admit to the authorization of torture. Also in January 2009 Susan J. Crawford, the convening authority for the Guantanamo military commissions, said that the United States had engaged in torture.

Reports from alleged victims, as well as from their jailers and torturers, continue to multiply. Memos documenting the systematic policy of torture have been released by your department. The Senate Armed Services Committee has released a report detailing the authorization of torture by former President George W. Bush and his subordinates. We have learned that the CIA destroyed 92 "interrogation" tapes, and we have a good idea from the Red Cross report what was on them.

Our failure thus far to prosecute torture, as required by the Convention Against Torture, is hurting our relationships with and our ability to influence other nations that we hope to dissuade from engaging in similar crimes.

Italy is trying U.S. officials in absentia for kidnapping a man in their country and having him tortured. Britain has begun a criminal investigation of its own complicity in U.S. torture. And Spain is pursuing criminal indictments against six former high ranking officials in the Bush administration.

We would benefit in numerous ways from obeying the requirements of the law and appointing a special counsel to enforce our own laws without delay. Please take this critical step.

Sincerely,

Jan Schakowsky
John Conyers
Jerrold Nadler
Barney Frank
Jim Oberstar
Sheila Jackson Lee
Carolyn Maloney
Peter DeFazio
Ed Markey
Maurice Hinchey
Jim McGovern
Lynn Woolsey
Jim McDermott
Bob Filner
Tammy Baldwin
Keith Ellison
Steve Cohen
John Olver
Betty McCollum
Sam Farr
Jim Moran
Betty Sutton
Bobby Scott
Dennis Kucinich
Lois Capps
Jose Serrano
William Jefferson
Michael Capuano
Pete Stark
Lucille Roybal-Allard
John Tierney
George Miller
Luis Gutierrez
Steven Rothman
Rush Holt
David Wu
Paul Hodes
Andre Carson
Robert Wexler
Lloyd Doggett
Diana DeGette
Raul Grijalva
John Larson
Rick Boucher
Hilda Solis
Linda Sanchez
Danny Davis
Rosa DeLauro
Mike Honda
Eleanor Holmes Norton
Peter Welch
Tim Ryan
Barbara Lee
Zoe Lofgren
Chaka Fattah
David Price

This exceptionalist perspective is all the vogue these days. If you’re in debt and can’t pay the bills, you must cut down on expenses and save every penny – unless you’re the American government, in which case it’s spend, spend, spend! If country A attacks country B in violation of every international precedent and code of conduct, then it is called aggression – unless country A is the United States of America, in which case it’s called "liberation." If torture is plain evil, it must therefore be punished when the perpetrators become known – unless you’re an American government official, in which case you get an automatic Get Out of Jail Free card, and a federal judgeship, to boot!

American exceptionalism – ain’t it grand? It’s the perfect expression of 21st-century Americanism in that it embodies the national zeitgeist of entitlement, the idea that we are a specially privileged lot, given a special mission in the world. This gives us a pass to commit acts that, when done by others, are crimes, but in our hands are magically transmuted into acts of virtue, even heroism.

The Bush administration took this exceptionalist principle to unprecedented lengths, yet it is incorrect to claim, as the Obamaites are doing, that this administration is abjuring torture. CIA chief Leon Panetta has testified that they will not rule out "renditioning" prisoners to countries where torture is routine. So instead of torturing our own prisoners, we’re going to farm it out to overseas contractors – behavior that would normally be considered ignoble in the extreme, except when engaged in by the U.S. government.

"Ending torture will make America safer because what makes America special is the fact that we are willing to uphold our values and our ideals even when it's hard, not just when it's easy; even when we are afraid and under threat, not just when it's expedient to do so. Acknowledging potential mistakes is how we learn."

Three Bush administration lawyers who signed memos, John C. Yoo, Jay S. Bybee and Steven G. Bradbury, are the subjects of a coming report by the Justice Department’s ethics office that officials say is sharply critical of their work. The ethics office has the power to recommend disbarment or other professional penalties or, less likely, to refer cases for criminal prosecution.

The administration has also not ruled out prosecuting anyone who exceeded the legal guidelines, and officials have discussed appointing a special prosecutor. One option might be giving the job to John H. Durham, a federal prosecutor who has spent 15 months investigating the C.I.A.’s destruction of videotapes of harsh interrogations.

As the debate escalated, Mr. Cheney weighed in, saying that if the country is to judge the methods used in the interrogations, it should have information about what was obtained from the tough tactics.

“I find it a little bit disturbing” that “they didn’t put out the memos that showed the success of the effort,” Mr. Cheney said on Fox News. “There are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity.”

Other investigations promise to keep the issue alive. The Senate Armed Services Committee plans to release its own report after two years of looking at the military’s use of harsh interrogation methods. And the Democratic chairmen of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees are pushing for a commission to look into the matter. At the same time, the administration faces pressure from abroad. Manfred Nowak, the United Nations’ chief official on torture, told an Austrian newspaper that as a party to the international Convention against Torture, the United States was required to investigate credible accusations of torture.

Others pushing for more investigation included Philip D. Zelikow, the former State Department counselor in the Bush administration. On his blog for Foreign Policy magazine and in an interview, Mr. Zelikow said it was not up to a president to rule out an inquiry into possible criminal activity. “If a Republican president tried to do this, people would be apoplectic,” he said.

Frederick A. O. Schwarz Jr., who was chief counsel to the Church Committee, the Senate panel that investigated C.I.A. abuses in the 1970s, said Mr. Obama was “courageous” to rule out prosecutions for those who followed legal advice. But he said “it’s absolutely necessary” to investigate further, “not for the purpose of setting blame but to understand how it happened.”