Obama`s dwindling band of true
believers has taken heart that their man has finally
delivered on one of his many promises—the closing of the

Guantanamo prison. But the prison is not being
closed. It is being moved to Illinois, if the
Republicans permit.

In truth, Obama has handed his
supporters another defeat. Closing Guantanamo meant
ceasing to hold people in violation of our legal
principles of habeas corpus and due process and ceasing
to torture them in violation of US and international
laws.

All Obama would be doing would be
moving 100 people, against whom the US government is
unable to bring a case, from the prison in Guantanamo to
a prison in Thomson, Illinois.

Are the residents of Thomson
despondent that the US government has chosen their town
as the site on which to continue its blatant violation
of US legal principles? No, the residents are happy. It
means jobs.

The hapless prisoners had a better
chance of obtaining release from Guantanamo. Now the
prisoners are up against two US senators, a US
representative, a mayor, and a state governor who have a
vested interest in the prisoners` permanent detention in
order to protect the new prison jobs in the hamlet
devastated by unemployment.

Neither the public nor the media
have ever shown any interest in how the detainees came
to be incarcerated. Most of the detainees were
unprotected people who were captured by Afghan war lords
and sold to the Americans as
“terrorists”
in order to collect a proffered bounty. It was enough
for the public and the media that the Defense Secretary
at the time,

Donald Rumsfeld, declared the Guantanamo detainees
to be the “780 most dangerous people on earth.”

The vast majority have been
released after years of abuse. The 100 who are slated to
be removed to Illinois have apparently been so badly
abused that the US government is afraid to release them
because of the testimony the prisoners could give to
human rights organizations and foreign media about their
mistreatment.

Our British allies are showing more
moral conscience than Americans are able to muster.
Former PM Tony Blair, who provided cover for President
Bush`s illegal invasion of Iraq, is being damned for his
crimes by UK officialdom testifying before the Chilcot
Inquiry.

The
London Times
on December 14 summed up the case against Blair in a
headline:

“Intoxicated by
Power, Blair Tricked Us Into War.” Two days
later the British
First Post declared:
“War Crime Case Against Tony Blair Now Rock-solid.”
In an unguarded moment Blair let it slip that he favored
a conspiracy for war regardless of the validity of the
excuse [weapons of mass destruction] used to justify the
invasion.

The movement to bring Blair to
trial as a war criminal is gathering steam. Writing in
the First Post
Neil Clark reported:
“There is
widespread contempt for a man [Blair]
who has made

millions [his reward
from the Bush regime]
while Iraqis die in their hundreds of thousands due to
the havoc unleashed by the illegal invasion, and who,
with breathtaking arrogance, seems to regard himself as
above the rules of international law.” Clark notes
that the West`s practice of shipping Serbian and African
leaders off to the War Crimes Tribunal, while exempting
itself, is wearing thin.

In the US, of course, there is no
such attempt to hold to account Bush, Cheney, Condi
Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the large number of war
criminals that comprised the Bush Regime. Indeed, Obama,
whom Republicans love to hate, has gone out of his way
to protect the Bush cohort from being held accountable.

Here in Great Moral America we only
hold accountable celebrities and politicians for their
sexual indiscretions. Tiger Woods is paying a bigger
price for his girlfriends than Bush or Cheney will ever
pay for the deaths and ruined lives of millions of
people. The consulting company,

Accenture Plc, which based its marketing program on
Tiger Woods, has removed Woods from its Web site.
Gillette announced that the company is dropping Woods
from its print and broadcast ads. AT&T says it is
re-evaluating the company`s relationship with Woods.

Apparently, Americans regard sexual
infidelity as far more serious than invading countries
on the basis of false charges and deception, invasions
that have caused the deaths and displacement of millions
of innocent people. Remember, the House impeached
President Clinton not for

his war crimes in Serbia, but for lying about his
affair with Monica Lewinsky.

Americans are more upset by Tiger
Woods` sexual affairs than they are by the Bush and
Obama administrations` destruction of US civil liberty.
Americans don`t seem to mind that
“their”
government for the last 8 years has resorted to the
detention practices of 1,000 years ago—simply grab a
person and throw him into a dungeon forever without
bringing charges and obtaining a conviction.

According to polls, Americans
support torture, a violation of both US and
international law, and Americans don`t mind that their
government violates the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act and spies on them without obtaining
warrants from a court. Apparently, the brave citizens of
the “sole remaining superpower” are so afraid of terrorists that they
are content to give up liberty for safety, an impossible
feat.

With stunning insouciance,
Americans have given up the rule of law that protected
their liberty. The silence of law schools and bar
associations indicates that the age of liberty has
passed. In short, the American people support tyranny.
And that`s where they are headed.

Paul Craig Roberts [email
him] was Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan`s
first term.  He was Associate Editor of the Wall
Street Journal.  He has held numerous academic
appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair,
Center for Strategic and International Studies,
Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow,
Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded
the Legion of Honor by French President Francois
Mitterrand. He is the author of

Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider`s Account of
Policymaking in Washington;
 Alienation
and the Soviet Economy and

Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy,
and is the co-author
with Lawrence M. Stratton of

The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and
Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name
of Justice. Click

here for Peter
Brimelow`s Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts
about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.