Thank You, WikiLeaks

It is understandable that Washington considers the revelation of secret documents about the Iraq war more serious than the illegal war itself. This is because the publications by WikiLeaks take the lid off government hypocrisy and offer a chilling image of imperial muscle. One telling case is that of Jose Couso, a Spanish cameraman who died in Baghdad on April 8, 2003. Couso, along with dozens of journalists, was lodged in the Hotel Palestina when a U.S. army tank opened fire on the 15th floor and killed Couso and a Ukrainian reporter. The family of the Tele5 cameraman brought suit before the Spanish courts, which, based on international law, identified and charged three American soldiers. Since then, the suit has suffered from inexplicable delays. In July it was reactivated for the first time by the Supreme Court, which requested that Interpol arrest the three suspects. Interpol has not lifted a finger.

WikiLeaks now exposes the scam that worked to protect the perpetrators of the savage attack. The documents reveal the arrogance and hypocrisy of the State Department and the lies of government officials, and expose the bureaucrats who fold under pressure from stronger countries. One group of cables tells how certain Spanish authorities – the District Attorney, chief of the National Assembly and various ministers of parliament – dedicated themselves to secretly sabotaging the case, while in public making high-minded declarations in memory of the dead journalist and announcing that justice would be served.

It is nearly impossible for justice to be done in these cases. The U.S. ambassador indicated to his superiors on Oct. 21, 2005, that “the Spanish ministers are working so that the arrest orders will not be carried out,” and gave assurances that the ministry of justice “would make every effort to question the judge’s decision.” The prosecutor went so far as to advise the embassy on some tactics to sabotage the case, and Bush’s ambassador, a Cuban-American banker, dared to send this arrogant message to the Spanish government: “My patience is running out.”

As the Spanish public learns what was going on behind the curtain in the Couso case, they are impressed by the courage of the Spanish judiciary, which continued with the case despite the interference of Washington and local officials, who, to a shocking degree, offered obeisance to the impatient ambassador. We can learn various lessons from this case. First, that the supposed respect for Spanish institutions that the ambassador declared in public was cynically contradicted by his secret machinations. Second, that the much-vaunted independence of the government was mere demagoguery, since in private it was working for the interests of the gringo military (this attitude is also shown with respect to flights over Spanish territory by U.S. planes carrying illegal prisoners). Third, that an independent judiciary is the only guarantee in the face of political pressure (as Colombia has learned in recent years). And fourth, that the true owners of the secrets divulged by the press are neither the government nor the media but the citizens. Everybody is accountable to them, from the president to the doorman at the embassy.

If these things go on in Spain, a country which has traditionally tried to distance itself from the United States, and whose president Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero withdrew from the U.S. coalition, one can only imagine the abuse, pressure and intervention perpetrated by the gringo delegation in the vice-royalty of Colombia.