Italy's Courage, cont.

Greenwald weighs in, mostly railing against the media's coverage of the Italian court's actions. Here he comments on an exchange between Jeffrey Toobin and Wolf Blitzer on CNN:

Toobin added that "one of the things you do when you are a CIA agent, at least in part, is break the law of other countries" -- Toobin says that as though they have the right to do that without accountability, and without mentioning that causing people to be tortured is also a violation of U.S. law (after Nasr's kidnapping, the chief of the CIA's Milan office traveled to Egypt for three weeks to participate in his "interrogation").

Now, of course, if a CIA agent were caught in Russia or North Korea or China conducting espionage, he would of course be arrested, jailed, and -- I would bet -- tortured. But if a CIA agent is caught in another country breaking that country's laws -- let's say the agent is caught in London, where police arrest him after he shoots someone he thought was a radical Muslim cleric who was targeted for assassination but who turned out to be a devoutly religious retired insurance broker -- he ought to get a Get Out of Jail Free card? Insane!

So these 23 CIA agents -- who kidnapped a man in Italy and had him whisked off to a rendition site in Egypt where he was tortured, when there was no evidence whatsoever to support their contention that he was a terrorist -- these guys are just doing their jobs for the greater good of the nation and should not face any consequences?

Now that they've been convicted, these 23 agents are pretty much restricted from travelling anywhere Interpol has jurisdiction, because if anyone is caught he'll be sent to Italy to begin serving an eight-year prison sentence.

One can only hope that there is a court like this that will prosecute Bush or Cheney for war crimes...