As I wrote yesterday, one of the nice things about the post-Cold War era is that the leaders of military coups can no longer count on U.S. or Soviet support purely on the basis of ideology, and therefore, even in the rare instance that they do still succeed, have less of a chance of establishing dictatorships. Evidently, however, however, coup-plotters can still count on Charles Krauthammer's support.

The Washington Post columnist and Fox News commentator attacks the Obama administration in the above clip for taking the side of ousted leftist leader Manuel Zelaya and reccomends the following bizarre rule of thumb for U.S. Latin America policy:

Whenever you find yourself on the side of Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega and the Castro twins, you ought to reexamine your assumptions.

Well, ok. But what if you also find yourself on the side of reliably pro-American conservatives like Colombia's Alvaro Uribe and Mexico's Felipe Calderon as well as influential moderate leftist leaders like Brazil's Lula Inacio da Silva, Argentina's Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Chile's Michelle Bachelet? Perhaps then you might come to the conclusion that the U.S. position on the events in Honduras should be decided not on where the players involved fall in the zero-sum, dialectical struggle for Latin America's soul, but whether this is really the best way to protect the country's democracy and the stability of the region.

Brooking Institution scholar and former Costa Rican minister of planning Kevin Casas Zamora, no fan of Zelaya, came to this conclusion in a piece for FP yesterday:

An illegal referendum has met an illegal military intervention, with the avowed intention of protecting the Constitution. Zelaya's civilian opponents, meanwhile, are celebrating. For the past week, the Honduran Congress has waxed lyrical about the armed forces as the guarantors of the Constitution, a disturbing notion for Latin Americans. At the very least, we are witnessing in Honduras the return of the unfortunate role of the military as the ultimate referee in political conflicts among civilian leaders, a huge step back in the region's consolidation of democracy.

That's why Zelaya, though he bears by far the greater responsibility for this crisis, must be reinstated in his position as the legitimate president of Honduras. The Organization of American States, the neighboring countries, and the U.S. government (which is still enormously influential in Honduras) should demand no less. They should also call upon all political actors in Honduras to take a deep breath and do what mature democracies do: allow the law to deal with those who try to step outside it. If Zelaya must be prosecuted for his harebrained attempt to subvert the Honduran Constitution, then let the courts proceed as rigorously as possible. And the same applies to the coup perpetrators. If Honduras is to have a decent future, its politicians and soldiers, in equal measure, must learn that the road to democracy and development runs through the rule of law.

Or you could just keep pretending that the Soviets are on the verge of taking over Latin America.

Despite budget cutbacks at the foreign affairs ministry, Israel has announced that it will open an embassy in Turkmenistan following a round of secret talks. In addition to being a major source of natural gas, Turkmenistan shares a border with Iran.

Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has shown an interest in expanding Israel's footprint in Central Asia before, leading delegations to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan while he was interior minister. Israel is keen to promote security ties with Central Asian states to limit Iran's regional influence.

The U.S. has been making moves in the 'stans this week as well. As mentioned in yesterday's morning brief, the U.S. will once again be supplying troops Afghanistan through Uzbekistan, with an assist from South Korea. Josh Kucera also reports that the new State Department budget includes major aid increases for Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, with an eye on keeping supply lines to Afghanistan open.

The Washington Post mothership has put up a very interesting piece from CFR's Julia Sweig scheduled for this Sunday's Outlook section which proposes a novel idea for breaking the U.S. stalemate with Cuba, giving them back Guantanamo Bay:

Whatever Guantanamo's minor strategic value to the United States for processing refugees or as a counter-narcotics outpost, the costs of staying permanently -- with the stain of the prisons, the base's imperial legacy and the animosity of the host government -- outweigh the benefits.

The time to begin this transition is now. By transforming Guantanamo as part of a broader remaking of Washington's relationship with Cuba, the Obama administration can begin fixing what the president himself has decried as a "failed" policy. It can upend a U.S.-Cuban stalemate that has barely budged for 50 years and can put to the test Raul Castro's stated willingness to entertain meaningful changes.

She continues:

Returning Guantanamo Bay to full Cuban sovereignty and control is a win for the United States: Aside from the boon to America's credibility with the Cuban people and throughout Latin America, these first steps would probe the Cuban government's apparent disposition to use the base as a point of contact with the United States -- and gauge the regime's willingness to move the ball forward even more.

"As a president, I say the U.S. should go. As a military man, I say let them stay," Raul Castro quipped last year. It's hard to know exactly what he means. Floating these proposals would be a good way to find out.

I don't completely understand Sweig's desire to "test" or "guage" Raul Castro's intentions. The Obama administration's recent moves to lift some restrictions on Cuba could be viewed as a test as well, and Raul Castro has dismissed them as minimal and indicated no intention of reciprocating with political reforms. Following up minor concessions on travel and money transfers with something as big as closing Guantanamo would be a bit like handing a teenager the keys to a Porsche after he crashes the family station wagon.

The best case for engagement with Cuba is not that it will turn the island into a democarcy (it most likely won't) it's that after five decades we can fairly safely say that not engaging them isn't accomplishing a whole lot. Likewise, if, as Sweig argues, the U.S. presence in Guantanamo has outlived its strategic usefulness and serves only as a diplomatic and public relations liability, that alone seems reason enough to close it.

In any event, I'd be interested to see the military's case for why the base remains necessary.

Brennan Linsley-Pool/Getty Images

Hamas, in the eyes of the United States government, is a terrorist organization. It is illegal for the Palestinian Islamist party to receive American aid because it fails to meet three criteria established by U.S. law: it refuses to acknowledge Israel, renounce violence, or abide by previous Israeli-Palestinian agreements. In the event of the formation of a coalition government between Fatah and Hamas in the Palestinian Authority, this fact would prevent American aid from being delivered to the PA. To sidestep this problem, Secretary of State Clinton pressed Congress last week to amend a law, in order to keep money flowing to the PA should there be a reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas.

The Obama administration’s plan would allow the PA to receive American aid as long as the Hamas members of the coalition government met America’s three criteria, even if Hamas as an organization did not. Clinton noted that the United States continues to provide aid to the Lebanese government, despite the fact that Hezbollah is a member. She argued that cutting all of America’s financial strings to the PA would deprive it of the ability to affect a gradual change in Hamas’s behavior.

In addition to an ethical dilemma, this scheme also presents a bevy of political ones. Opinions of Democratic and Republican members of Congress have ranged from skeptical to hostile, with one Republican Congressmen describing it as similar to supporting a government “that only has a few Nazis in it.” An anonymous Israeli political source stated that the proposal was “painful and worrying.”

Obama deserves credit for bravery in putting forth a plan which will inevitably be portrayed as benefiting Hamas, an organization easily and deservedly vilified. However, the widening rift between the rival Palestinian factions makes the question of a unity government purely hypothetical, and suggests that Obama’s plan will have a greater impact in Washington and Jerusalem than it ever will in Ramallah.

Earlier today, I spoke with veteran Washington Post reporter Dana Priest. My question was simple: At what point did it become clear that the United States' treatment of detainees in overseas prisons was harsh, and possibly illegal? (For more FP torture coverage, see here.)

Allegations of detainee abuse first started trickling out in January 2002 -- in essence, as soon as detainees came into U.S. custody. But it wasn't until eleven months later that Priest and fellow Post reporter Barton Gellman wrote the first definitive account of such abuse. On the day after Christmas, 2002, the Post described "stress and duress" tactics, extraordinary rendition to countries like Syria, and the harsh treatment of al Qaeda operative Abu Zubayda. The article used the word torture -- saying that the United States harshly interrogated prisoners, and sent them to foreign prisons to gain the "fruits" of torture without having to do it themselves.

According to one official who has been directly involved in rendering captives into foreign hands, the understanding is, "We don't kick the [expletive] out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of them."

Back then, the CIA was Priest's beat. She says her tip-off on the "stress and duress" story came when she noticed a separate, unmarked compound near the main Bagram holding facility. "It wasn't in the military compound," she says. "But it was surrounded with triple concertina wire," the type used in high-security prisons. "I thought -- they have a separate facility, so are they working under separate rules? I knew the CIA and military were working in teams together, but at what?"

She and a team of Post reporters, among them Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Barton Gellman, working in parallel and in competition to New York Times writers like Tim Golden and Carlotta Gall, started piecing the stories together. "Really, there were just a handful of reporters who could make inroads on the subject," she says.

The reporting was painstaking. "It was a very decentralized thing. You weren't even sure what the questions were," she says. "We couldn't connect it up. We couldn't see the big picture. And there was no past reporting to go on. Everyone was making it up. We'd follow these little reports from Afghanistan, about people disappearing. That was it."

Crucial to the success of the early reporting were the teams of lawyers at organizations like the Center for Constitutional Rights struggling to glean information on detainees. "We were all getting little teeny scraps and putting it together painstakingly," she says. "Nobody told you the whole story, or even a quarter of a story." One Post article on an extraordinary rendition came together because a someone happened to write down the number on the tail of an airplane. "You needed to keep those little scraps in your head," Priest notes.

Another big break -- for which she won a Pulitzer Prize -- came when she completed a story about the black sites, secret overseas prisons. The story took more than two years to report, and, she says, reporting on the subject still didn't get much easier -- it took years for Congress to devote as much attention to it as reporters and defense lawyers were.

"Congress did nothing," she says, "until political winds had changed, and the Democrats were feeling a little more at ease in the world. It's a new feeling for them. Because, before, there were Democrats in those meetings saying, ‘Do what you've got to do.'"

Alex Wong/Getty Images

Torture: it's a byzantine tale that unraveled over the course of eight years, and is only reaching its denouement this week. There are two strands, both vitally important, to follow. One's the story of what happened and when (for that, see FP's torture timeline). The other is the story of when we knew it.

Indeed, this week, it seems like the torture story's just breaking through. But, allegations of abuse and even prisoner death started emerging as soon as the United States had prisoners in custody. And reporters have doggedly covered it since then.

One of the first Washington Post stories on the treatment of detainees from the War on Terror arrived in January 2002, just months after 9/11 and the subsequent U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Already, there were 158 detainees from 25 different countries held in Guantanamo Bay, and two congressional delegations had traveled there to review conditions. The detainees were getting 2,400 calories a day, the Post story reported. "Some of them are getting medical attention for the first time in their lives," Senator Bill Nelson proudly noted.

There were also already allegations of prisoner abuse. Photos showing bound, blindfolded, and shackled detainees on their knees appeared as soon as prisoners arrived in Gitmo -- the International Committee of the Red Cross censured the U.S. for the photos, which violated the Geneva Conventions.

The following month, in February, President George W. Bush issued an executive order denying detainees the privileges and protections of the Geneva Conventions. The United States started down the road that culminated in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram, and the black sites -- secret overseas prisons, in countries like Egypt, where prisoners were sent via "extraordinary rendition" and the worst detainee abuse may have happened.

Reports of U.S. soldiers abusing persons they detained in Afghanistan emerged that winter as well -- kicking and beating them after they'd already been shackled. The military went on the defensive. "I don't believe that any of the detainees...were subject to beatings or rough treatment after they were taken into custody," General  Richard B. Myers told the New York Times. "All 27 detainees were medically screened upon arrival in Kandahar, and there were no issues of beatings or kickings or anything of that sort."

Over the next year, the trickle became a stream. The military admitted using harsh techniques on Abu Zubayda and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, high-ranking al Qaeda operatives we now know were repeatedly waterboarded.

At the time, officials told the New York Times "physical torture would not be used against Mr. Mohammed...They said his interrogation would rely on what they consider acceptable techniques like sleep and light deprivation and the temporary withholding of food, water, access to sunlight and medical attention."

It took the prisoner abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, broken by veteran reporter Seymour Hersh and CBS News, to blow the door open -- that happened in April 2004.

It spawned a glut of media attention, as well as congressional hearings and a series of governmental reports: the Taguba report (on the Abu Ghraib scandal), the Schlesinger report (which described how harsh techniques from Afghanistan crept into Iraq), the Fay Jones report (on the Army personnel responsible for prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib), the Church report (71 cases of abuse, six deaths). Over the next years came the Schmidt report (which said treatment at Guantanamo was humane, in 2005, after the waterboarding of Abu Zubayda and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed), as well as the Senate Armed Services Committee Report released this week. 

So, most of the foundational reporting on torture happened in late 2003, 2004, and 2005 -- by reporters like Dana Priest of the Washington Post and Jane Mayer of the New Yorker, describing extraordinary rendition and the black site prisons.

But it's crucial to remember that a small group of reporters -- at the New York Times, McClatchy, the Washington Post, Time magazine, Newsweek magazine, and the New Yorker -- had the story before it was a story. They worked with a slight and growing handful of congressional, White House, military, Justice Department, legal, and other sources. They used a list-serv started by lawyers working on detainee cases to learn information. And they opened the door for Abu Ghraib to open the door further.  

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

I asked Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch and a former Clinton administration official, to work through some of the foreign policy implications of the newly released torture memos with me.

We discussed whether the Bush administration memos encouraged other countries to torture, or led to any global uptick in "enhanced interrogation" practices. "I've always tried to be careful not to suggest that countries like Egypt or China or Uzbekistan would be torturing more because the United States was setting a bad example. Obviously, dictatorships torture for their own reasons, and they didn't need [former U.S. President] George W. Bush to show them how," he says.

But, the Bush administration torture of detainees and disavowal of the Geneva Conventions did preclude diplomacy on many occasions, Malinowski says. He testified before the Helsinki Commission in 2007 to make the point:

A couple of years ago, Human Rights Watch was meeting with the Prime Minister of Egypt, and we raised a case in which hundreds of prisoners rounded up after a terrorist bombing were tortured by Egyptian security forces.   The Prime Minister didn't deny the charge.  He answered, "We're just doing what the United States does."  We've had Guantanamo and the administration's interrogation policies thrown back in our face in meetings with officials from many other countries, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan and Lebanon.  U.S. diplomats have told us they face the same problem.  A U.S. ambassador to a leading Middle Eastern country, for example, has told us that he can no longer raise the issue of torture in that country as a result. 

Malinowski says the detainee abuse made it difficult for the White House to negotiate any human rights provisions or issues, broadly. "Issues beyond torture were effected, because it enabled authoritarian governments to say, ‘You have no right to lecture us,'" he says. "They were delighted to tweak the United States on it."

The biggest offender? Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who Malinowski described as a "world champion" of chiding the United States via its own policies.

Nevertheless, Malinowski thinks that, despite the horrible details revealed by the Bush administration and International Committee of the Red Cross memos, ultimately their release is a very good thing for the Obama administration.

[Obama] can go to a country like Turkey or Indonesia or Egypt and say, "Look, I know what it's like to face real security threats, and we as Americans understand the temptation to give up some of our liberties and principles to defend ourselves against those threats. But what we've learned the hard way in the last eight years is that those liberties and principles actually make us stronger. You could learn from our example."

That's a much more effective way of arguing the point than going to those same countries and saying, look at our perfect system and our glorious morality, and maybe someday you can be as good as we are. So I think if he uses the experience as a cautionary tale, it will actually make our country a more effective and compelling champion of human rights around the world, ironically.

Here's to hoping so.

Photo: Entrance to Bagram Air Base by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Your must-read of the day is David Ignatius's column on how U.S. officials helped defuse last month's political crisis in Pakistan. According to Ignatius and his anonymous sources, "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, joined by [Af-Pak envoy Richard] Holbrooke and [Joint Chiefs chairman Adm. Mike] Mullen, helped coax the Pakistani officials back from the brink."

I wonder, though, if Ignatius is making too much of the U.S. role and too little of that of Gen. Ashfaq Kiyani, Pakistan's Army chief of staff. Consider this bit:

The lawyers' movement began its march on March 12, pledging to occupy Islamabad until the government restored [ousted Chief Justice Iftikhar] Chaudhry to his post. [Pakistani President Asif Ali] Zardari sent a police force known as the Rangers into the streets of Lahore, apparently hoping to intimidate [former Prime Minister Nawaz] Sharif and the marchers. But Sharif evaded the police and joined the protesters as they headed north toward Islamabad.

Kiyani then faced the moment of decision. According to U.S. and Pakistani sources, Zardari asked the army chief to stop the march and protect Islamabad. Kiyani refused, after discussing the dilemma with his friend Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Meanwhile, Kiyani called Sharif and told him to return home to Lahore, according to one source. And he called the leader of the lawyers' movement, Aitzaz Ahsan, and told him to halt in the city of Gujranwala and wait for a government announcement.

On the one hand, Kiyani appears to have handled the crisis with wisdom and aplomb. On the other, I think the incident makes it clear once and for all just who the real power broker in Pakistan really is.

If the country continues to deteriorate, it's not too hard to imagine a scenario in which Kiyani pulls a Musharraf and seizes formal power -- but not before calling "his friend Mullen" to explain how he has the situation under control and will be working to restore democracy as soon as possible, etc. Many in Washington would probably welcome this development.

Scott Horton reports that Spanish prosecutors will indict high-ranking members of the Bush administration over allegations of detainee abuse and torture.

The six are: former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; former head of the Office of Legal Counsel Jay Bybee; former OLC lawyer John Yoo; former Defense Department lawyer William J. Haynes II; David Addington, a former adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney; and former Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith.

Horton explains the context of the case:

The case arises in the context of a pending proceeding before the court involving terrorism charges against five Spaniards formerly held at Guantánamo. A group of human-rights lawyers originally filed a criminal complaint asking the court to look at the possibility of charges against the six American lawyers. Baltasar Garzón Real, the investigating judge, accepted the complaint and referred it to Spanish prosecutors for a view as to whether they would accept the case and press it forward. [They found sufficient evidence.]

The case won't come before Judge Real, though; he also was involved in a terrorism case against the five Spaniards held in Guantanamo. 

What does it all mean?

Well, John Yoo won't be vacationing on the Costa del Sol this summer. Were any of the Bush Six to step foot in Spain, they would be arrested. 

More importantly: Spain has said that it would drop the cases if the United States would investigate the claim. Thus far, the U.S. Department of Justice and the White House haven't responded. But the indictment may force the administration's hand, spurring a response to the allegations.

For, ultimately, the issue may have more political potency than judicial importance. It's up to U.S. President Barack Obama to dictate whether and how the strong allegations of legal abuses in the Bush administration will be resolved. 

In a widely publicized move, the Obama administration is due to finally and officially announce its easing of restrictions to Cuba. U.S. citizens will now be able to travel and send money to the country more easily. (See FP's photo essay on Cuba for more details; and this FP article by Nestor Carbonell for a convincing argument against rushing into engagement.)

The Miami Herald says the announcement, to be made this afternoon, is meant to coincide with the Summit of the Americas, which starts on Friday in Trinidad and is attended by heads-of-state from North and South American countries.

Thankfully -- apparently the pet-poisoning revelation hasn't hurt relations.

The Hill reports that in 2007 Cuba poisoned the pet animals of U.S. diplomats working in the country:

The 64-page report written in 2007 states that the life of U.S. diplomats serving in the U.S. Interest Section (USINT) - which issues visas and performs other diplomatic services in Havana - was laden with poor morale "in part because USINT life in Havana is life with a government that ‘let's [sic] you know it's hostile'"....

"Retaliations have ranged from the petty to the poisoning of family pets. The regime has recently gone to great lengths to harass some employees by holding up household goods and consumable shipments. The apparent goal has been to instigate dissension within USINT ranks."  

The report comes just as the Obama administration is attempting to strengthen relations and ease strictures on the Communist country. Which begs the question: who decided it release it now?

Mike Allen of Politico's Playbook fame seconds our idea of renaming the pirates. "Pirates go from curiosity to crisis for 1600 and the Pentagon," his headline screamed, the suggestion of renaming them "maritime terrorists" within.

Matt Yglesias criticizes the letter of the suggestion, if not the spirit, with the rather unimpeachable logic that pirates are...pirates. 

The point I made last week -- that calling pirates "pirates" allows for a certain romanticization and fueled a media frenzy which too often overlooked the realities of the situation and the circumstance of failed-state Somalia -- thankfully seems passe.  

This weekend's rescue, which involved U.S. naval warships, millions of dollars, and pirate and civilian deaths, spurred an examination of the why and how behind the pirates. The sheen's worn off. They're criminals and a security concern. They redouble Somalia's problems.

Or, as someone will inevitably put it somewhere on the internet: pirates totally jumped the shark.

In an interview with the BBC before the G-20 summit last week, Mexican President Felipe Calderon responded to charges that his country is becoming a failed state.

The president cautiously admitted that there is a drug problem, but placed most of the blame on his country's geographic proximity to the world's largest drug market: the United States. More blame falls on the U.S. as well: for allowing weapons to flow across the border. And Calderon theorizes that U.S. corruption is also partly to blame. He theorizes that if corruption allows drugs on the Mexican side of the border, it also must be true that corruption in the U.S. has something to do with the continuing passage of narcotics into that country. Hmm. Does he have a point?

For all those pondering the much-talked-of question of Mexico's stability, it's a must watch.

Indispensible financial blogger Felix Salmon, Liam Halligan for The Telegraph, and the New York Times have been parsing the fine print of the G-20 Communique, which promised $1 trillion in additional funding to help ease the financial crisis and get countries growing again. 

They note that countries, including the United States, are behind on their IMF funding -- the crux of the program -- and require various sorts of congressional approval; therefore, the funding push may be illusory. The NYT concludes: "Some of the money has yet to be pledged, some is double-counted and some would be counted in a 'synthetic currency' that is not actually real money."

In some sense, none of this should come as a surprise; the "$1 trillion" number hardly represented the sum of an ordered and pledged budget. The Communique included massive sums with little fine print. Member-states' contributions to international organizations always become backed-up. And the ink isn't dry on the page yet -- there's been little time to sort out which commitments will come to fruition first. 

The New York Times notices a specific potential problem:

In perhaps the most novel move, the Group of 20 authorized the monetary fund to issue $250 billion in Special Drawing Rights, known as S.D.R.’s — a “virtual currency” whose value is set by a basket of real currencies like the dollar, euro and British pound. The I.M.F. will issue the S.D.R.’s to all 185 of its members, and they in turn can lend them out to poor countries.

Special Drawing Rights are not cash but a form of credit, against which a country can borrow. The Obama administration, which conceived the idea and sold it to the Group of 20, figures it would create between $15 billion and $20 billion in additional credit for the poorest countries.

But there is a caveat here as well. For the program’s benefits to be felt globally, the United States and Europe will need to lend out their Special Drawing Rights. In the United States, that will require Congressional approval.

To say that the SDRs aren't a real currency is both true and false. They are a unit of exchange eventually backed with actual cash; the IMF collects money from the member-states to fund them.

And countries like Russia and China, as well as IMF representatives themselves, have called for massive revisions to the outmoded program, to make it useful for alleviating the recession. How that will work remains to be seen.

Plus, it seems early days to be sounding the death knell for the G-20 spending promises. Will the $1 trillion number prove correct? No. But that isn't to say the IMF won't massively expand to aid ailing countries -- ultimately the point of the summit.