Maybe I’m ungrateful, but this trial balloon spelling out Eric Holder’s maybe plans to prosecute torture strikes me as something close to the worst of both worlds. On the one hand Holder looks likely to appoint a federal prosecutor to find out why so many of our prisoners died of organ failure, blunt trauma or drowned in their own blood.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is leaning toward appointing a criminal prosecutor to investigate whether CIA personnel tortured terrorism suspects after Sept. 11, 2001, setting the stage for a conflict with administration officials who would prefer the issues remain in the past, according to three sources familiar with his thinking.
We can probably agree that as far as Republicans are concerned it doesn’t matter how Holder finesses this. Any decision that brings accountability to the torture regime will explode the wingularity into a Congress-paralyzing Big Bang of hysteria, obstruction and exotic particles that the universe has not seen since Joe McCarthy held the floor. The decision is so nuclear that details will almost certainly get lost in the noise.
Given the inevitability of epic mayhem from the GOP, I fail to see what Holder gains by enacting his probe in the least useful manner imaginable.
[S]ources said an inquiry would apply only to activities by interrogators, working in bad faith, that fell outside the “four corners” of the legal memos.
Hard to believe as it may seem, Holder’s probe will take John Yoo’s work, the famous memos that would make your ass dumber if you wiped with them, and treat them as the settled law of the time. Already clear and public evidence that DOJ lawyers drafted those memos entirely in bad faith, on orders from Bush officials who literally dictated what they wanted the memos to say, will be similarly ignored.
The actions of higher-level Bush policymakers are not under consideration for possible investigation.
To put it bluntly, this strategy is a goddamn disgrace. We called it whitewashing when the Bush administration made a few grunts pay for the orders they followed at Abu Ghraib. We called it a disgrace because that’s what it was. What do you think we should call it now? I don’t feel much sympathy for the sadistic creeps who will pay for their superiors’ sins this time any more than than I feel for Chuck Graner and Lynndie Englund. Interrogators who took it on themselves to surpass even the sick boundaries of Yoo’s torture memos deserve to answer in court. Nonetheless, to stop there and call it justice makes me physically ill.
Holder’s likely decision makes no more sense from a purely utilitarian perspective. The kind of investigations that are worth a major prosecutor’s time start at the grunt level so they can build a case against bigger fish. Handling it like this looks almost exactly the same as asking a mafia prosecutor to focus exclusively on the goons who got a little too enthusiastic when they beat up card players behind on their debts. Ordinary citizens would have a hard time seeing that as a terribly serious effort to bring down organized crime.
I will close with props to the eerily psychic feature writers at The Onion. Read this from May 2009.
WASHINGTON—In its first major hearing on the use of abusive interrogation tactics at Guantánamo Bay, a blue-ribbon panel found detainee Omar Khadr mentally unfit to testify about his years of psychological torture. “Because of Mr. Khadr’s fragile state due to unknown hours spent under the most brutal, mentally straining conditions, he cannot be trusted to speak competently on his own behalf,” said Rep. Kit Bond (R-MO), the panel’s chairman. “It is unfortunate that someone with such intimate knowledge of the horrors of waterboarding, stress positions, and induced hypothermia is so emotionally unstable. He bursts into tears at even the mention of mock torture.” Bond added that Khadr’s confession of planning 9/11, the London train bombings, and the Iranian hostage crisis would be kept on the record.
Ha ha. The Washington Post, today.
Other challenges an inquiry into alleged torture might face could include the difficulty of gathering evidence of improper conduct in war zones and questions about the reliability of witnesses who may have been held by the U.S. government for years, legal analysts said yesterday.
It almost makes you want to step back and admire the Bush crowd. For a team who couldn’t policy their way out of a paper bag made of warm air, they had a remarkable knack for putting well-intentioned officials in an impossible bind.
r€nato
I think you’re being ungrateful. Once this ball starts rolling (provided it actually does start rolling), no telling where it might end up.
Tom
Tim these are Washington Post anonymous sources so I wouldn’t put so much stock in what they are spinning. They are probably attempting to set the parameters publicly to box any effort to expand the supposed probe. I actually think that patience is a virtue and let the drip drip drip of further allegations come to fruition. Scott Shane is doing yeomans work and he isn’t done with it yet. It doesn’t HAVE to be done this month, or this summer. It has to be done in the fullness of time. Rushing into an ill-advised, limited investigation isn’t the way to go, I think.
JK
Tim,
As usual, another bullseye of a post. Horrible or depressing news seems to bring out the best in you, Doug, and John.
I think epic mayhem is a major understatement. I’m deeply concerned about the seething, foaming at the mouth, villagers marching to Frankenstein’s castle atmosphere that can be created by Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Mark Levin, and Michael Savage. Many of their listeners are already teetering perilously close to full fledged insanity. I hope I’m wrong, but I can envision several wingnuts committing violent acts after hearing some delusional, incendiary diatribes from one of these scumbag radio talk show hosts denouncing Holder’s decision to launch an investigation.
Optional
It’s possible this is just a prelude to the real thing. If they actually do real investigative work, they’re going to find that the interrogators were following orders and SOP … and the people that gave those orders and wrote the SOP were likewise following orders and SOP.
It seems likely to me that nobody in the entire system, top to bottom, was working in “good faith”, within the “four corners” of the memos… Which would tend to call into question the actual good or bad faith of the memos themselves. And the memo writers.
Seems likely this is something the admin wants to happen sometime AFTER the health care reform legislation works itself out one way or the other … so, this is just the kick-off, not the game.
Or, I could be entirely wrong and Holder is just an idiot.
-me
arguingwithsignposts
My question is what’s the over/under on Glennzilla’s brain exploding from all the constant outrage at Obama?
Viva BrisVegas
If someone leaves a huge steaming pile of shit on your front lawn, you don’t cover it with a plastic sheet and hope it goes away.
You get out there with a shovel and a wheelbarrow and cart it away.
It might be hard work, it might stink and the buzzing flies may give you a hard time, but it’s the only way you are going to get rid of it.
Comrade Kevin
Unless you’re the Democratic Party. Then, you shrug your shoulders, say something like “mistakes were made”, or “nobody could have foreseen this”; you suggest that we need to “put this shameful incident behind us, and move forward”, and 10 or 20 years later, it comes back and happens again.
mclaren
Honestly, the fact that anyone is even talking about investigating all the torture and brutality and lawlessness that went on in the last 8 years represents a major step forward.
Right now, all of America seems to be in denial. The U.S. of A. is acting exactly like a battered wife — “Oh, it wasn’t so bad. He didn’t mean it. It wasn’t really intentional. I’m sure it won’t happen again. Maybe it was all my fault…”
The moment all the denial stops, that’s a positive sign.
stibbert
well, kudos to Holder for the mooting the possibility, mebbe it’ll move John Yoo off the NewsHour’s commentariat guest-list.
moe99
Count me in with the folks who take this as a positive sign, given Jeh Johnson’s roosting with the those in the military who don’t want to let the terrorists go, nohow, notime, nowhere. Maybe as the outrage at the torture raises the temperature, the GC at DoD might worry about getting burned.
Silver
@mclaren:
I’m still not sure that is a huge step forward. Every US President that has been elected since the Nuremberg trials is a war criminal by those criteria.
It’s part of the price of empire. You have to be willing to fuck up brown people. Lots of them. Repeatedly.
Batocchio
The timeline alone completely destroys any “good faith” defense. Of course Holder knows that.
Tom may be right about these sources being unreliable, and trying to shape any inquiry – but while I’ll keep pushing for a full investigation, I’m not hopeful.
Xel
Anything short of Obama walking up on stage and taking the blame for every illegal act committed by any republican president ever will be seen as a partisan vendetta.
No matter how many of their considerations are met, they’ll never stop whining about life being unfair.
Xenos
This may be weirdly passive-aggressive, but is really the only way to do it. Obama has to be seen as resisting the torture probe, or he becomes the target of those forces trying to stop it. Those forces are not beneath assassination=not when that is their business and they are at risk of being put in jail for decades.
The logic of the law, and the depth of the depravity involved will eventually tilt public opinion. This sort of trial balloon is how you get that done. Pacing is everything – note how this comes out after the GOP implosion of the last ten days.
burnspbesq
I’m trying to cheer myself up by reminding myself that this is the way prosecutors have always gone after organized crime: target little fish first and get them to roll over on bigger fish. The idea of the guys who did the actual work getting sweet plea bargains or immunity and witness protection is distateful – but the idea of Yoo and Addington still walking around with their law licenses intact is disgusting. And the idea that Cheney and Rumsfeld might never do time is unacceptable.
Gentlemen, start your engines.
El Cid
Not to detract from the main subject of the post, but the Onion‘s video pundit roundtable (“New Live Poll Allows Pundits to Pander To Viewers In Real Time”) is sheer genius.
The joke is that it’s the typical pundit roundtable, but there’s a live poll running underneath the screen, prompting the pundits to respond instantly to the flow of the online line chart, fearfully avoiding anything getting negative instant results, getting dumber and dumber and more Fox News and descending into the territory of the fill-in hosts for your local right wing AM radio dumbathon.
One guy starts responding to the actual question, which is that the fall of the dollar may be indicating that the economy will get worse before it gets better”, which gets plummeting numbers, a reaction which he begins to notice after a couple of sentences — prompting a series of poll-pandering by the follow-ups and then he himself later on.
Next up, the first woman pundit quickly jumps in to respond with vapid anti-gubmit populism (“I believe that the future is VERY BRIGHT…pull up your bootstraps…I don’t believe in this GLOOM & DOOM stuff,” “HARD WORKING AMERICANS”), the next woman emphasizes “Who’s going to pay for these GOVERNMENT BAILOUTS” and “OUR POOR, POOR CHILDREN”, while the next guy quickly responds to his plummeting number discussing bills in the post office box by noticing that the phrase “post office box” itself seems to get a positive response, so everyone ends up saying “POST OFFICE BOX” a bunch of times.
There is actually a moment in which all of the pundits are simultaneously competing to be heard saying “POST OFFICE BOX“.
It perfectly reminds me of David Brooks, George Stephanopoulos, Mara Liasson, and so many others. And a lot of the 2008 primary and general campaign season.
Bony Baloney
I’m at the fifth stage of grief: acceptance. 43’s War has indelibly stained our national honor, demolished our moral standing, and made “never surrender to Americans” part of Basic Training for at least a generation, all over the world.
And worst of all, there will be no punishment. I should say, no hangings, no lifelong imprisonment in Spandau (or reconstructive labor at Yucca Mountain). There won’t. No shame, no public shunning, no expulsion from polite society. (Christ, even LBJ went loony toward the end behind the shit he did. Ford didn’t agonize, he just snivelled and feared hell. Lyndon had real character, and privately blew away like Ozymandias’ statue.)
Everyone in the Cheney Administration will die of old age, healthy and content, in bed, surrounded by palace guards. There it is. It’s horribly wrong, deliberately evil on a world-altering scale, and it’s ancient history — like the indictment against the WTC destruction organizers — like the anthrax letters sent to carefully chosen lawmakers — et cetera, ad infinitum. They got away clean.
Never forget, never forgive, and never trust again, but don’t burn yourselves up. Accept it and regather your strength. There’s worse to come.
calipygian
Unfortunately, with headlines like
Bush On North Korea: ‘We Must Invade Iraq’ (Jan 2003)
Bush Won’t Stop Asking Cheney If We Can Invade Yet (Sep 2002)
Bush Visits U.S.S. Truman For Dramatic Veterans’-Benefits-Cutting Ceremony (June 2003)
The Onion will be seen by future historians as the paper of record of the Bush Administration.
But my personal favorite makes me weep every time I read it:
Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over’ (Jan 2001)
Those are some smart motherfuckers at the Onion.
Svensker
@arguingwithsignposts:
He survived Bush.
Violet
@burnspbesq:
Yes, exactly. Holder et al would be stupid to go after the big guns right now, without all having an airtight case. Go after the little fish, get them to talk, and the drip-drip of info will eventually destroy the foundation of the house of lies in which the big guys are living.
Also agree that Obama needs to be seen as somewhat opposing and slightly separate from all of this. It shouldn’t be his fight. This is The Law’s fight, however it’s actually carried out.
kay
Eric Holder can’t tell an independent prosecutor what to do, or there would be no point in hiring an an independent prosecutor.
He can’t. He can tell him or her where to begin an inquiry, but after that he’s done. He can’t tell them to limit the inquiry. That person has doesn’t report to Holder. If that were true, and an independent prosecutor were investigating Obama Holder could limit the investigation.
Independent means independent. if Holder is directing the investigation the whole premise of hiring someone outside the executive branch to investigate the executive branch is destroyed.
kay
Here’s what I’m asking for, and it might be naive even to ask. I want this discussion to begin with general principles that govern investigations and prosecutions, and then go to the specific individuals, after the investigation.
I get wary when we start every discussion with ” how to get Bush and Cheney for war crimes”. That’s a problem.
Is that the framework we claim to espouse? I don’t think it is.
kay
I want to back it up to the beginning, and start there.
Is that even possible? It better be, because that’s how the process works, or is supposed to work, although it certainly fails sometimes.
joe from Lowell
I agree with Renato up top. It’s a process, Tim. In case you haven’t noticed, roughly half the country is against these prosecutions.
Your MO seems to be to greet every step in the right direction by bitching that it doesn’t bring us all the way. It comes across as much closer to self-indulgent attention seeking than a genuine desire to move the ball down the field.
zhak
Does it bother anyone that the double standard between the two parties is now this: war crimes, no malfeasance at the top; lying under oath, drum that sucker out of office yesterday?
It’s little wonder we’re not exactly seen as world leaders any longer.
SGEW
My cynical nickel bet on how this could plausibly go down:
1) Holder, et. al. (special and/or independent prosecutors, Congressional sub-committees, civil suit attorneys), grope around the edges: a few small fry are indicted, new evidence is attained, the web’s outlines are defined. Deals are cut behind the scene. Years pass.
2) Dick Cheney adopts the Pinochet defense, and dies of natural causes. He is buried in an undisclosed location, to avoid protesters.
3) The boom drops, and Addington, Yoo, Rumsfeld, Gonzalez, etc. are indicted.
4) A very private conversation occurs between President Obama and ex-President Bush.
5) George W. Bush spills
all[most], gets a presidential pardon, and retires from public life entirely.6) A majority of the defendants get off on technicalities, but several important personages go to jail for a long, long time.
I don’t see how anything will really start happening until after #2 occurs. Nor do I see how things will be resolved without #4 being effective and #5 happening, somehow, against all expectations.
The Executive branch will not imprison the former President and Vice President. I just can’t see it happening.
Lee
Remember that the Clinton scandal was brought about during questioning about a land deal.
Once this thing is started, no telling where it will end.
kay
@joe from Lowell:
We can’t write the indictment and then direct the prosecutor to find the evidence, down to setting the boundaries of the inquiry, or we’re doing exactly what we’re accusing Holder of doing.
We’re not finding these people innocent of crimes we decided they committed. That’s backwards. It’s also going to destroy any pretense of independence, or, well, justice.
Because this administration became completely unmoored from any legal basis for anything is not a reason for us to respond in kind.
joe from Lowell
I think you misunderstand me, kay. I think Holder’s measured, legalistic, step-by-step approach is the right one.
Like the Iraq withdrawal and public diplomacy regarding the Iran crisis, it’s far more important that the administration act effectively and strategically than run around like Bruce Willis in Die Hard and give hardliners a reasons to pump their fists and yell “Woo-hoo!”
joe from Lowell
This reminds me the GOPers who’ve been writing, “Given that the Iranian government is calling the protesters American stooges anyway, I fail to see what we gained by using careful and restrained language.”
Or when they write “Given that al Qaeda members hate us anyway, I fail to see what Obama gains by saying nice things about Muslims in the Cairo speech.”
It isn’t about what the radicals – the Iranian government, al Qaeda, Republicans, people like that – think and say. It’s about whether their words and political stances are going to appear attractive and plausible to the general public.
RAM
calipygian@18:
That Onion piece is shear genius. Along with everything else they’ve destroyed, the GOP has also killed irony. There is absolutely no possible way to exaggerate how stupid and destructive they can be without it actually becoming truth in a very short time.
And I’m leaning toward thinking this Holder considering investigation thing is less trial balloon than a sop to us current lefties (who used to be righties, apparently, back in the ’60s when we also believed laws against things like bombing buildings and trashing college campuses should have been enforced) to take the pressure off during the health care and supreme court debates.
inkadu
Why does everyone think we need to lean on the small fry?
My understanding is that the memos were illegal and that Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Bush were all talking about torturing people early on. Why can’t the case start there? If this were done in secret, I could understand needing to move you way up through the chain of responsibility. But this was a crime committed in plain view complete with fully authorized documentation.
It would be like if a Don write a paper saying, “We need to start killing our enemies. Acceptable ways to kill them include garroting and multiple small caliber gunshot wounds to the head.” The FBI has that document, and they are talking about prosecuting the hitmen.
I don’t get it.
eastriver
(Tim, thank for you for the ass wiping line. I will use it and treasure it, though never give you credit. Sorry, dude. But as partial payment I give you this: I could eat typewriter ribbon and paper and shit a better legal opinion. Enjoy.)
Tim F.
You fail to ‘process’ how these investigations should work. Use the organized crime example. The only reason to go after grunt-level targets is because the threat of jail time will flip them into valuable information sources. If we make it clear in advance that we don’t care about their bosses then the people we question will have no incentive to be helpful in any way. That is why any inquiry with no brief to move up the food chain is commonly known as a ‘whitewash’.
You also miss how the Obama administration has operated until now. Can you name even one decision on their part to indicate that they will accept legally binding limits on Bush’s unitary executive? Let me answer for you. You cannot because it has not happened yet. Executive orders do not count. In court, where these things make a difference, the Obama administration has emphatically defended every Bush claim of Executive Privilege that has come up so far. They even invented some new principles that the Bushies didn’t think of.
In case you have not noticed by now, Obama often does not do the right thing under his own power. Recall for example the fight over his CIA administrator. Or his national security advisor. Did Obama’s better judgment stop him from nominating incredibly destructive people to those posts? No. They only stepped aside after a noisy stink made by people like Glenn Greenwald and Markos Moulitsas.
The good news with Obama is that he responds to the right kind of people raising holy hell. The bad news is that if we don’t, like you keep arguing, then you get half-baked bread every time. Learn.
Finally.
Eric Holder’s job is to enforce the law. If Obama has some other compelling political motivation, he already has each cabinet officer’s resignation letter in his desk.
inkadu
@eastriver: I did like the ass wipe line. Google seems to confirm it’s originality. My favorite along your lines would be, “I could eat a bowl of alphabet soup and crap out a better legal opinion.”
Tim F.
@eastriver: Equally good. I might steal that one right back from you.
General Winfield Stuck
One thing for sure. The screamers (aka “right kind of people”) have an air tight game. Obama does the so-called right thing then it’s because of their screaming. If he doesn’t, it’s, well we told him to do the right thing and he didn’t listen to us. Win/win either way.
Inflated sense of importance, much.
JackHughes
Every time Holder has made the slightest peep about investigating Bush administration abuses we have Republicans, most notably flannel-shirted quadrennial GOP presidential candidate Sen. Lamar Alexander, threatening to expand investigations to the Clinton era, when Holder was a Deputy Attorney General.
Shamefully, this explicit intimidation has worked. Holder’s Justice Department has been virtually indistinguishable from that marked by Alberto Gonzales’ tenure as Attorney General. He hasn’t even fired some of the wacko Bush political holdovers who refused to resign.
SGEW
In all seriousness, who do you think are the “right kind of people”?
For instance, just as an example, are you re-thinking your strong disapproval of Greenpeace and their tactics? Or are they the “wrong” kind of people?
eastriver
Tim, steal away. Please. And don’t give me credit.
Inkadu, I like the alphabet soup line. But I would swap in Alphabits: “I could a bowl of Alphabits for breakfast, and be shittin’ a better legal opinion by lunch.”
inkadu
@eastriver: That works too! There was another saying about a three-legged cat and a frozen lake but I can’t remember it. Alas.
Tim F.
Re-read my criticism of Greenpeace. The problem is not that they have the wrong motives. The problem is that they mostly fail to accomplish their goals. In my experience as an activist ideologically inflexible combativeness generally wastes energy and turns swayable groups against environmentalists and environmentalism.
SGEW
@Tim F.: Therefore, you are saying that Glenn Greenwald and Markos Moulitsas. are not “ideologically inflexible” or “combatative,” and that is the essential difference, re: “right people”?
Tsulagi
You got that right. When Obama planned to wrongly follow his transparency thingy releasing detainee photos, he listened to Joe Lieberman, Lindsey Graham and other real Americans who got mad at him for that and started calling him names. Even though he would have been complying with lower and appeals court rulings. Didn’t he know he’s The Decider now?
They spoke, he listened. He reversed then supported the Lieberman-Graham amendment to the recent supplemental. It calls for ignoring the court decisions on the FOIA applications and removing that decision from SCOTUS review. Senate passed the supplemental with that amendment, House didn’t.
But not to worry right people, if the amendment isn’t in the bill that comes out of conference, Obama has your back. When asked at a press conference if an executive order would be issued if that legislation doesn’t make it to Obama’s desk, Gibbs said…
See, you just have to be the right kind of people.
owenz
Have to disagree strongly with Tim here. An investigation into conduct falling outside of the “four corners” of the memos must, by necessity, create a factual record of conduct that was consistent with the memos. That factual record – fully of admissible, usable evidence – would then be available for any number of purposes, including an investigation of the policy itself.
Framing the investigation this way creates clear incentives for individuals who engaged in torture to testify, on the record, about what they did. Indeed, if your goal is to take down the architects of the program, one of the best approaches involves granting some form of immunity or leniency to the agents and individuals on the ground, responsible for carrying the policy out. In exchange for immunity or leniency, they will testify, on the record, about what they did.
While it’s easy to reflexively attack anyone who attempts to use the “just following orders” excuse, it’s not necessarily applicable here, inasmuch as testimony from “small fish” that describes criminal actions they undertook on behalf of “big fish” is routinely used to take down the big fish. When John Martorano testified about performing hits at the request of Whitey Bulger and Steven Flemmi, nobody argued that Martorano’s conduct was not criminal because Martorano was “just following orders”. Martorano’s conduct was highly illegal – but prosecutors granted him immunity/leniency for his crimes in exchange for his testimony.
Picture the “star witness” to the special prosecutor’s torture case. Their identity will be hidden. They will testify to personally engaging in unspeakable conduct – torture and murder! – and they will admit, on the record, to “just following orders” when they engaged in this conduct. This won’t make their conduct any less illegal, but their testimony will allow prosecutors to move up the chain of command.
Tim F.
@SGEW: I’m not going to write you a thesis on this, but I will give you food for thought.
Markos and Glenn frequently accomplish their goals, both in the macro and micro sense. Greenpeace does not. I know the world of environmental activism quite well, thank you. I can tell the difference between success and failure.
Why do some activists succeed and other activists fail? Do you think we are all helpless victims of fate, or do you think our tactics also contribute?
Ponder.
Tim F.
@owenz:
That would only work if the prosecutor has a brief that allows him to move up the chain of command. Otherwise he will prosecute the grunts just to put grunts in jail and nothing else. Once he closes that investigation, we would most likely never hear about torture again.
At least until some other American President decides to do it.
SGEW
@Tim F.: Just wanted to clarify between “message” and “tactics,” I guess (i.e., it’s not the message’s flexibility or combatativeness, but the method in which the message is advocated for). But is it Greenwald’s legal commentary on one hand, and Amnesty International’s hooded protests on the other? Is it a matter of efficacy?
Or maybe it’s just an apples and oranges distinction between the environmental movement (which has had very few successes in the U.S.) and the burgeoning civil liberties/anti-torture movement (which, let’s face it, hasn’t exactly had a litany of triumphs neither).
Actually, whatever, I suppose you’re right that this is a tedious topic (re: do protest tactics “work”? How much influence does punditry have?). Pace.
[And I know that you’ve been heavily involved with environmental activism. That’s why I asked.]
General Winfield Stuck
@Tim F.:
I can’t imagine a special prosecutor not being given leeway to follow where the evidence leads, as long as it is pertinent to the subject of investigation. Such as, if a grunt says he was ordered to do something illegal, I would think the pursuit of justice would mandate the SP follow that allegation as a matter of jurisprudence. Though I’m not a lawyer, so can’t say fer sure.
Tim F.
@SGEW:
Flat wrong. Over a period of time stretching roughly from Rachel Carson’s book until Ed Abbey’s book, environmentalism went from a virtual non-factor to the most dominant cultural force in America after racial equality. We still win victories, but the self-righteousness and insularity of Abbey-influenced groups has shot off more toes than most movements will ever have.
@General Winfield Stuck:
Why can you not imagine that? The Washington Post and most other leading news outlets already reported it.
inkadu
@owenz:
I don’t know how many times I have to say this. The question isn’t whether torture happened, it’s whether torture is LEGAL. That’s why I find this continuing small fry discussion extremely annoying.
General Winfield Stuck
Because I think the Wapo story is shit for one. You can’t mount a prosecution accepting that waterboarding isn’t torture, unless it’s done 10 times instead of 2, or whatever nutty parameters the Bybee et al memos proscribed. Holder is much smarter than to attempt this, imo.
Tim F.
@General Winfield Stuck:
Based on what? The Fitzgerald investigation was similarly limited. The law that allowed Ken Starr to go nuts doesn’t exist any longer.
General Winfield Stuck
Based on Holder’s sworn testimony that waterboarding is in fact torture, not to mention Obama saying publicly the same. So now they are going to court saying, well it actually isn’t torture and accepting the Bushies legal analysis that it isn’t. I don’t think so, and I don’t think you do either, really.
And I disagree with the idea Holder can place strict limitations on a SP, or else it would negate the whole idea of bypassing conflicts of interest. And again I say the Wapo story is shit, and the Newsweek one may be untrue as well, but is rational at least.
Tim F.
@General Winfield Stuck:
No. The argument spelled out above is that everyone above grunt level acted in good faith and honestly mixed up tea time with torture.
Again, the Ken Starr law is gone. It doesn’t exist any longer. Ask Patrick Fitzgerald about boundaries if you don’t believe me. .
General Winfield Stuck
@Tim F.:
I don’t know what your talking about here. Fitz had a wide latitude to find out who and how Plames name was leaked. And in that context, he was able to question anyone involved. The problem was that the law he had to work with was almost impossible to break, so what was left were dumbass bushies lying when they didn’t have to. One of them got convicted for perjury and OoJ.
I have no idea what you are saying here. And stand by my earlier common sense argument. You can’t parse torture, if you believe it is torture.
General Winfield Stuck
@General Winfield Stuck:
At least in a court of law, if you expect to win.
Tim F.
@General Winfield Stuck:
Fitz did NOT have unlimited latitude. He did have an unusually broad mandate, as described here, but he still had to stay within the boundary of crimes related to “the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a CIA employee’s identity.” That link makes clear that although Fitzgerald had unusually broad discretion, it was not unlimited and, more importantly, it was within the power of the Attorney General to determine its scope.
Again, you are answering the wrong question. You cannot parse torture, but can you prosecute it? The argument spelled out in the article above stipulates that the government officials who planned the “interrogation” regime, and any grunts who acted within its parameters, acted in good faith and therefore should not be prosecuted.
General Winfield Stuck
@Tim F.:
jaysus, I did not say he did. Nolo strawmen please.
This is all fine and dandy as a matter of general policy that Obama has stated. But when you prosecute someone in an actual court of law, you are going to have to explain it to the nth degree. And you are going to have to go farther and argue the “interrogation regime” was in fact legal and Constitutional. Not going to happen, Not now, not ever.
joe from Lowell
Lol, grow up, little boy!
joe from Lowell
Re-read my criticism of you, Tim. The problem is not that you have the wrong motives. The problem is that you would spectacularly fail to accomplish your goals. In my experience watching activists, procedurally inflexible combativeness generally wastes energy and turns swayable groups against torture investigations.
kay
@joe from Lowell:
Concern troll or not, no one has been able to explain to me how political activists pressure Obama to order his AG to initiate a specific criminal inquiry.
Ordering around your AG in the context of a criminal inquiry is a serious no-no.
Alternately, no one has been able to explain to me how they are going to pressure the AG to adopt specific parameters in a criminal inquiry.
Don’t re-elect Obama because he appointed this AG. Try to remove this AG. Other than that, I’m not seeing how Holder can ethically respond to political pressure, other than on a broad policy basis.
kay
Janet Reno was a lousy AG. She appointed a special prosecutor based on a NYTimes story, as far as I can tell. Political pressure.
Huge failure. Whitewater. That’s what happens to politically driven prosecutors. They fail.
Tim F.
Why is Eric Holder resisting giving his Independent Prosecutor a full brief? He thinks that Obama might face political trouble. Everyone’s “sources” agree on that one point. Does he think that the wrong decision will cause political trouble? Not much.
As we stand today the right decision has a huge political cost. The wrong decision has no cost (other than the nation’s legal credibility; that is why we call it the right decision).
Think about how the equation might change if both decisions had a political cost, rather than just the one.
Tim F.
For the fourth or fifth time tonight, that law doesn’t exist any longer. No more Ken Starrs.
kay
@Tim F.:
I don’t want to bore you, Tim, so I’ll pass.
joe from Lowell
kay,
Again, you misunderstand. I agree with you about the need to keep a “Chinese Wall” between Holder’s prosecutions and political pressure from the administration.
However, Holder doesn’t get to just pretend there are no politics surrounding these investigations. There are, and there is a very good chance those politics could not only derail the effort to bring wrongdoers to justice, but generate a backlash that could end up producing a pro-torture consensus among the public.
I don’t want Holder to do a Charge of the Light Brigade against Dick Cheney tomorrow. I want him to go step-by-step, so that each step make the next inevitable.
Tim F.
Here’s some advice from a pro. If you are having communication problems, blockquote the most important part of what someone said and respond to that. That works like a public speaker repeating a question before answering it to ensure that that question got through correctly.