Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Ramsey to the rescue

Friday, Jan. 25, 2002 | 9:19 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

THIS WEEK THE COMMITTEE of Clergy, Lawyers and Professors went to federal court in Los Angeles to demand that the prisoners from Afghanistan held in Cuba be identified, be given reasons for their detention and allowed a court hearing. One professor told the Associated Press that, "Someone should be asserting their rights under international law." The committee expressed a great deal of concern about the treatment of the detainees.

A prominent member of the Los Angeles committee seeking justice for the Taliban and al-Qaida members is former Attorney General Ramsey Clark. Is this the same Ramsey Clark who traveled to Hanoi during the Vietnam War and after a two-hour visit with 10 U.S. POWs reported they were in good health and being treated humanely? Yes, this must prove he has always had concern about the treatment of prisoners. It's obvious he didn't interview the skeletons and men with broken bodies, like John McCain, who lived to return home.

Several years later attorney Stephen B. Young interviewed Bui Tin, a former North Vietnamese colonel who served on the general staff of the army. The colonel said the bloody Tet offensive was a staggering loss, but because of the visits by Jane Fonda, Ramsey Clark and many ministers, they were determined they could hang on and eventually win. He told Young, "We had the impression that American commanders had their hands tied by political factors. Your generals could never deploy a maximum force for greatest military effect."

This is the same Ramsey Clark who went to Iran in 1980 and was filmed waving to thousands of people in Khomeini Square. This went on while our embassy staff members were being held hostage in that country. Clark announced that the U.S. owed Iran an apology for supporting the shah before the revolution. Six years later he sided with Libya's Gadhafi and later sued President Ronald Reagan and Great Britain's Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher for bombing Libya. Three years later a three-judge federal panel in the District of Columbia ruled that Clark had filed a frivolous lawsuit and ordered a federal judge to fine him. The judges ordered Clark to pay the fees for lawyers representing the British interests in the case.

It was also in 1986 that Clark sided with Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega and made a personal attack on another former attorney general, Griffin Bell. Bell was representing American Eugene Hasenfus, who had been shot down on a mission over Nicaragua. For this, Clark called Bell an "imperialist lawyer."

Even young Americans can recall Clark's comforting visits to Saddam Hussein during Desert Storm. At that time, in 1991, he was whining about the destruction our missiles were doing in Baghdad.

For more than 30 years Clark has berated actions of our government. It should be noted that when he was President Lyndon Johnson's top law enforcement officer he didn't complain about the Vietnam War. It has been reported that he even attempted to get Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to join him in his silence. The war only became bad and he went to Hanoi after Richard Nixon entered the White House.

With Ramsey Clark on their side, the prisoners being held in Cuba shouldn't be rejoicing. They have already lost at least one battle and now they have another loser taking up their cause. Is this called double jeopardy?