Get me off this planet, civilization is too sick to continue
By Thoreau
The latest trial balloon being floated by DOJ is that torturers will be prosecuted, but only if they exceed the limits laid down by John Yoo. As Tim at Balloon Juice explains, this means that John Yoo’s memos are to be treated as law.
If they were simply cautious in picking only the strongest cases among those who “just followed orders” I’d get where they’re coming from. However, in order to set a morally defensible principle, you have to (1) also go after those who gave orders and (2) not treat some lawyer’s wet dreams as legally binding. If the new precedent is that something is OK as long as the President finds at least one lawyer willing to contort himself to justify it, then everything is OK. I, for one, am not willing to welcome our new memo-writer overlords.
I realize that the rule of law sometimes requires that fine distinctions need to be drawn, and that not every bad guy will be punished because not every bad deed is fit for prosecution. I get that. I get that sometimes the law will give bad outcomes but we need to go with it because it’s still better than lawlessness. However, I have enough respect for the law that I am not quite ready to believe that anything is OK if you find a clever lawyer to tie himself in a knot and write a memo. The law might not be as simple as going with the plain meaning of words on the page (the way some would say) but it isn’t quite so malleable that every clever memo is a blank check.
Comment by Jim Henley —
July 12, 2009 @ 9:08 pm
Upgrade glitch: An obvious Mona title on a Thoreau post. Will attempt to debug.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
July 12, 2009 @ 9:18 pm
Balloon Juice is reporting an update to the Holder story. A different set of anonymous sources is saying that the investigation will look at Bush-era officials.
Here’s the link to the story: the UO page doesn’t seem to want me to use the embed links feature.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-12/torture-prosecution-turnaround/p/
Either way, this is just the beginning. Prosecuting high-level government officials is something you need to build up to.* There is still a great deal of opposition to holding the people responsible for the torture to justice, and squeamishness about “partisan witch-hunts” and the like. However, every step brings more calls to take the next step.
*Sure, fine, it shouldn’t be that way. Eric Holder should convene a grand jury tomorrow to indict the previous POTUS and VPOTUS, damn the political consequences; and also, there should be no possibility that political consequences could derail the prosecutions, or even bring about a backlash against torture accountability. THere should be no difference between investigating and prosecuting these crimes, and investigating and prosecuting any other crime. That’s how it should be. And also, a pony.
Comment by Jim Henley —
July 12, 2009 @ 9:29 pm
I agree with joe: These things have a momentum, and any investigations and prosecutions keep the ball moving. Just wait until Holder actually indicts an interrogator and the gator’s lawyer brings his requests to discovery.
Also, actually, this should be a post.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
July 12, 2009 @ 10:06 pm
Funny how this story leaks just a few days after Panetta blows the “ZOMG Pelosi slandered the CIA” story out of the water.
That was the line of bull that stopped progress on the torture-investigation front last time. I haven’t seen even the people who glommed onto it last time trot it out in response to today’s stories.
Comment by Barry —
July 13, 2009 @ 11:37 am
Jim Henley —
“I agree with joe: These things have a momentum, and any investigations and prosecutions keep the ball moving. Just wait until Holder actually indicts an interrogator and the gator’s lawyer brings his requests to discovery.”
If they actually mean to prosecute people higher than schmuck-level, that’d be both d*mning and fun to watch, because the prosecution would argue *in favor* of any defense request for witnesses.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
July 13, 2009 @ 1:27 pm
In the non-Newtonian world of politics, one instance of motion doesn’t imply momentum.
I look forward to momentum panning out, but not confidently.
Comment by joe from Lowell —
July 13, 2009 @ 2:52 pm
Heh. Hadn’t thought of that.
The thing about momentum is that it exists independently of intention. The Abu Ghraib investigation was meant to be a total whitewash, but the report and the information that came out were the very first push to get the ball rolling in holding high government officials accountable.
Comment by Eric the .5b —
July 13, 2009 @ 4:39 pm
Here’s me crossing fingers on both hands for that, joe, but if Abu Ghraib was the start, it’s been a long roll already.
(Incidentally, anyone else getting their icon on the preview flashing an unavailable-image thing as they type?)