Obama empowers U.N. tyrants to prosecute Bush

One of the most irritating features of the Obama presidency is his penchant for apologizing for his country while twisting its history.

Bowing repeatedly to foreign leaders (the emperor of Japan seemed mildly amused, the king of Saudi Arabia looked like he expected Obama's deference), denying the U.S. is a Christian nation in a speech in Turkey, denouncing "American exceptionalism" in Greece – Obama has too often acted like a leftist foreign critic of America rather than its president.

Now Obama's bowing to a gaggle of tyrannical governments gathered at the U.N. under the Orwellian title "U.N. Human Rights Council." The council was formed at the U.N. in March 2007 as a vehicle to attack President Bush based on allegations of "torture" of terrorists.

Forty-seven countries are members of this council, including such human-rights champions as Cuba, China, Nigeria, Uganda, Saudi Arabia and Libya.

Bush ignored the council; Obama bows to it. The U.N. council had targeted the U.S. as the first nation to receive an "assessment" of its human-rights record. Bush wouldn't cooperate. Now, an American administration will allow the council to "assess the U.S. record on human rights."

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To defend the U.S. record on human rights at the U.N. council meeting in Geneva last week, Obama sent the State Department's chief legal adviser, and longtime critic of U.S. human rights policy, Harold Hongju Koh.

In 2004, Koh wrote an article for the Berkeley Journal of International Law in which he equated the U.S. and our "disregard for international law" after the attacks of 9/11 with international outlaw North Korea.

Koh is the former dean of the Yale Law School where, in 2007, he was quoted speaking approvingly of the concept of using international law (including Shariah law) to settle disputes in U.S. courts.

Koh was an outspoken critic of the Bush administration on detention, interrogation and surveillance of terrorists. In testimony before a Senate subcommittee in 2008 he detailed his opposition to terrorist detention at Guantanamo Bay, the Patriot Act and other Bush wartime policies, concluding that Bush had caused "unnecessary, self-inflicted wounds, which gravely diminished our global standing and damaged our reputation for respecting the rule of law."

Koh's criticisms echo anti-American propaganda which is now the foundation of the U.N. council's "assessment."

"The U.S. Human Rights Network" submitted a 421-page report "spotlighting the gross shortcomings in (the U.S.) human rights protections." The report could have been written by Koh, based on his past statements and writings.

The first two speakers at the council meeting were representatives of the governments of Cuba and Venezuela who demanded the closure of Guantanamo Bay and the U.S. embargo of trade with Cuba. Koh has agreed in the past with both criticisms.

The council's meeting had some bizarre moments. Iran denounced the CIA. European speakers (although not the Saudis) decried the use of the death penalty in the U.S. Mexico criticized "racial profiling" (also known as S.B.1070 in Arizona).

Koh responded by saying that Obama had "turned the page" on the practices of the Bush administration, leaving the door open for the U.N. council to focus on Bush.

Koh said that Obama was committed to closing the prison at Guantanamo, calling on other countries to cooperate in resettling the remaining hard-core 174 terrorists still held there.

Koh told the council, "Let there be no doubt, the U.S. does not torture and it will not torture." Great news for the terrorists. Not so great for George Bush.

Reporters asked Koh whether "torture" includes waterboarding. He replied "[T]he Obama administration defines waterboarding as torture as a matter of law … it's not a policy choice."

Asked about federal prosecution of officials who ordered waterboarding in the past, Koh said Special Prosecutor John Durham was conducting an investigation to consider such prosecution.

In a preview from the new Bush book "Decision Points," the Washington Post reports that the CIA asked Bush for authority to waterboard Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Bush recalls saying "damn right" and reportedly states in the book that he would make the same decision again to save American lives.

The radical left is setting up George Bush for prosecution under international law. Obama and Koh laid the groundwork for it last week.