Posted on 12/02/2010 5:37:15 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
As if Interpol didn’t have its hands full with the global search for Wikileaks leader Julian Assange, the agency will soon be tasked with transmitting a Nigerian arrest warrant for former vice president Dick Cheney.
This seemingly fanciful international incident could quite easily become a serious domestic headache for the Obama administration.
Officials in the African nation want to try Cheney for his alleged role in a bribe scandal in which Halliburton-owned company KBR gave $180 million to Nigerian officials between 1994 and 2004 in exchange for lucrative natural gas contracts.
Cheney was KBR’s CEO between 1995 and 2000, when he stepped down to run with George W. Bush. KBR and Halliburton pled guilty to the charges last year, and paid a whopping $579 million fine, but this latest development calls Cheney’s direct actions into question, and the Nigerians are dead set on getting justice.
We are filing charges against Cheney,” insisted Femi Babafemi, spokesman for Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission.
The idea Cheney being arrested sounds absurd, and the Nigerian news has been received by many with an amused shrug, and no small amount of dismissal. ‘Washington Post’ reporter Al Kamen, for example, wrote, “It’s not as if Cheney, now suffering from some very serious heart problems, was planning to take the family on a cruise up the Niger Delta any time soon. The odds of his showing up in Africa – except maybe for a hunting trip – are zero.” I doubt the Obama administration’s taking this as lightly.
Despite what you may think about Interpol, the group does not command an international army of coppers and flatfoots. Its more of an information-sharing agency, one that helps coordinate information and efforts among its 188 member countries, whose own governments are meant to enforce potential warrants. It’s not Interpol‘s responsibility to arrest Cheney. That honor goes to the associated government, which puts Obama’s Department of Justice in a compromising position.
Political implications of arresting a former vice president aside, Obama and company are presented with two choices.
First, it can ignore the warrant, thereby straining relations with resource-rich Nigeria, and also undercut its current leadership role in Interpol, which is currently headed by American Ronald Noble, who worked for the Treasury Department during Bill Clinton’s presidential tenure.
The second option: move forward and nab Cheney. This would only inflame the right wing, though, and not simply because of revered Cheney’s elevated status among the conservative set.
Obama inflamed Republicans last year by extending certain diplomatic immunities to Interpol agents in the U.S., leading conservatives to claim the President was eroding the Constitution.
‘The Washington Examiner’ suggested the move “may be the most destructive blow ever struck against American constitutional civil liberties,” while Andrew C. McCarthy from ‘The National Review’ claimed an “international police force” would be working “unrestrained by the U.S. Constitution and American law.”
While their message was grossly misguided — again, Interpol doesn’t arrest — it echoes the current conservative claims that the President’s chipping away at our liberties, and could prove catchy enough to complicate Obama’s standing among the GOP and their allies.
When the Nigerian government issues their warrant, which could come this week, the White House will be forced to defend any action or inaction, and this apparently frivolous case will become a bigger political brouhaha than anyone imagines.
He says, "The second option: move forward and nab Cheney. This would only inflame the right wing, though..."
Is that supposed to mean that only "the right wing" would be upset over a President of one party, one with a track record of hyper-partisanship, handing a former Vice President of the other party over to a corrupt third world country for trial?
I'm sure a lot more than just "right wing" Americans would be outraged by that. Even some Democrats might be.
Bribes are paid in a lot of countries. But its illegal, so companies have learned to pay them in a legal manner. I wouldn't be surprised to know that a company paid bribes in Nigeria. I would be surprised if they hadn't crossed the t's and dotted the i's legally.
Did he do it by email?
Dear esteemed friend.
I am high-ranking official who has come in to possession of US$180,000,0000 and most desperately need to exchange it for lucrative natural gas contracts. Discretion is most necessary.
Dick Cheney
I’m curious as to who is behind this. Who put the Nigerian authorities up to this? Soros? oscumbag? Ahmanutjob? Khaddafi?
I no longer wonder what the heck that was all about.
“to complicate Obama’s standing among the GOP and their allies. “
I’m sure he’s really worried about that!
“I’m curious as to who is behind this.”
How about all of the above— what gets me, is there
is one person who SHOULD be arrested- John Kerry!
He has admitted in his book and to Congress -
INTERNATIONAL WAR crimes!
My take is that Obama is behind this.
18 posted on Thursday, December 02, 2010 9:06:44 PM by PA Engineer
No doubt and BO was probably involved with all the nutjobs who tried to make Citizens Arrests of President Bush and Vice President Cheney as well.
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