I agree with your analysis; of course, we both could be full of it, but that makes the most sense to me. I think he’s holding off prosecuting the higher ranking slimeballs for political reasons, but I still harbor hopes that he’ll come through eventually; we may get to see a Bush/Cheney perp walk eventually.

It is my belief that we should start the investigation and prosecution at the top, where the illegal orders, and the lie that they were legal, first came from. As we work our way down the food chain, we can sort out relative culpability

I’ll support that.

(and I follow your thinking, your theory…)

I think the lack of willingness to prosecute may stem from two wellsprings:

- Polls still show that a majority of Americans don’t want him to prosecute, and this admin is all about the polls. While most mainstream polling shows that a slight plurality of Americans want shrub to be investigated (about 50%+ versus 45% or so no), they do not want Obama or Congress to do the prosecuting (so investigate, not prosecute, in other words), at least not if war crimes are involved (usually around 28% yes, 60% no). If this changes (in anything other than polls administered by us lefties), then expect Obama to come around. Anyone remember the ’80s British TV series Max Headroom? Politicians made decisions solely based on instapolling. This kind of feels like how the present administration works.

- it’ll provoke a rethug feeding frenzy of obstructionism. although how this can get worse, I have no idea.

looseheadprop, please tell me the envirnment grows more ripe to disbar yoo

please tell me they are considering this, then please tell me how the university he has tenure has reacted to these new memos

i don’t think obama has taken prosecution off the table – not unless he’s issued pardons. has he done that?

I don’t think he will pardon anyone.. not unless the polls tell him to do so. And no, I’m not counting polling on Air America (which favors investigation by 90%) as a poll for this purpose.

Excellent post, lhp. You make a lot of sense.

This morning on Diane Rehm, one of the panelist (forget who) also postulated that prosecutions of CIA line agents would likely not be successful. The assumption being they would all use the “I was only following orders” defense thus guaranteeing reasonable doubt regarding the agents’ intent.

“Further, nothing in his statement yesterday suggests that the brass at CIA, DOJ or WH are exempt from prosecution.”

“It is my belief that we should start the investigation and prosecution at the top, where the illegal orders, and the lie that they were legal, first came from. As we work our way down the food chain, we can sort out relative culpability.”

By exempting the line officers, Obama seems to be positioning himself to go after the top brass-if the political pressure from the House (and the public) is intense enough.

@looseheadprop …

Please indulge me. For some reason (that I don’t know) I stopped in your first sentence and kept looking at the part of the sentence that contains the words “rank speculation”.

I’m reasonably good with the English language (no expert, though) and I’d like to know more about the use of the word “rank” as a qualifier to “speculation” … as in I am not sure what it means.

I know that the word “rank” is used from time to time in that manner, but I’d like to know from someone who has used it what is the difference between:

“in some rank speculation”

and

“in some speculation”

Does it mean something akin to “raw” (as in unedited, unfiltered, etc.) ?

I think we also need to increase the pressure to get Jay Bybee to resign from the federal bench, or alternatively to get Congress to impeach him.

I don’t care how much pressure he was under — authorizing atrocities is a war crime, period. I don’t want ANY war criminals sitting on the federal bench — do you?

The lawyers and the physicians need to be investigated and prosecuted first and foremost — they should have been the gatekeepers saying No, and they failed at that job.

Then let Obama prosecute the lawyers that wrote the memos.

The analysis is certainly plausible up to a point.

But it doesn’t change anything that I can see. CIA agents still had to face the Nuremburg standard. SS and Gestapo torturers had the explicit sanction of the courts for what they were ordered to do. But they still had a legal and moral duty to refuse orders, regardless of the personal consequences.

By refusing to prosecute, Mr. Obama has basically implicated every CIA employee in crimes against humanity. The message is that there are not just a few bad apples involved–everyone’s hands are bloody. So being a CIA employee is now equivalent to being a member of the SS: the mere association has to be presumed to be criminal. Any decent people that still work there will have to resign now, even if they had nothing to do with “enhanced interrogation”. Only thugs will work there in the future.

At some point, I expect that an American president will have to disband the CIA as a result of this. It will have finally become too notorious to be effective. International criminal sanctions will be too much for the country to bear. And the Agency will have become a danger to the presidency itself.

But this president won’t be doing anything. He has made himself a hostge to a Cheyney-scripted past and, barring some spectacular recantation in the near future, sacrificed his good name forever.

..

Jindal Rebukes Cheney: “Don’t … Question Obama’s Patriotism”

these idiots don’t know whether to shit or go blind.

OT, but I was glad to hear that Obama has given the green light to develop a high speed rail system in the U.S. that will travel at 110 mph. WOW! Just WOW! Europeans have high speed rail that travels up to 200 mph. Once again the U.S. is willing to accept mediocrity in the name of expedience.

I’m sure it’s just a subtle tactic, Obama is probably attempting to lure the bad guys into a false sense of security, or maybe he’s giving them enough rope.

please

By exempting the line officers, Obama seems to be positioning himself to go after the top brass-if the political pressure from the House (and the public) is intense enough.

Are you then a believer that he’s following the FDR model of “I know what the right thing to do is – now MAKE me do it” to give himself and others some cover when the criticism would begin?

The only problem with starting at the top is that you can’t get evidence that way. Start at the bottom. Show the minor perpetrators the evidence against them. Remind them of Nuremburg. Rule out any chance of leniency … unless they are prepared to testify. Then work up the food chain until the people at the top have no hope of getting clear.

Crazy people at the White House got sane people in the agencies to do all kinds of things by isolating them from competent advice, depriving them of necessary and pertinent information, and just plain lying to them. Perhaps that is what happened to the line officers at CIA?

if this is what happened, then i wouldn’t have a problem with obama pardoning them – after a fair trial (with the gov. picking up defense costs).

that way the public gets to know what happened AND mercy is shown to those who need it. i’d call that justice, but i’m not a lawyer.

refusing to prosecute the way obama has done seems, to me, to be designed to take truth off the table. ie a cover up..

In an effort to rationalize the use of dietary manipulation on detainees, Bush administration officials turned to Slim Fast and Jenny Craig.

In a footnote to a May 10, 2005, memorandum from the Office of Legal Council, the Bush attorney general’s office argued that restricting the caloric intake of terrorist suspects to 1000 calories a day was medically safe because people in the United States were dieting along those lines voluntarily.

Scott Horton on Democracy Now! today:

There’s a very strange factual issue here. President Obama says that we shouldn’t prosecute them because they relied on these memos. But a factual review is going to show that the CIA was using these techniques from April 2002, and these memos were commissioned and written, the first of them, in August of 2002. So it’s quite clear in fact that CIA agents were out in the field doing these things, not relying on these memos, with the memos not even being in contemplation.”

lhp! We’re thinking alike!

I just posted this at ew’s:

Imvho, this fish is hooked! It’s only a question of reeling it in. If it’s done poorly, we’ll lose the fish. If it’s done skillfully, we’ll be satisfied with the results.

The Honor of Our Entire United States is on the line now. Everything Obama says he, and We, stand for has been pushed into the betting pool in a bold attempt to get back what Bush Stupidly, Hatefully, Recklessly threw away for US.

These Torture Memos are Not Legal Documents At All – they are Political Propaganda written After The Fact to Cover-Up War Crimes ordered by Bush and given The Sophist’s Veneer of ‘legality’ by Yoo, Bybee, Bradbury and Rizzo.

The more the Legal Community, Constitutional Scholars, Judges and Lawyers look at these Monsterous Constructions – that Green-Light Cruel and Unusual, Depraved and Indifferent, Sadistic and Pathological Treatment of other Human Beings under Bush’s Complete Control – the Clearer it will become that the White House was occupied for eight years by a Severely Flawed but Calculatingly Evil Tyrant.

For the Innocent who got rounded-up and tagged as ‘Enemy Combatants’ – there was No Way Out – they were ‘Enemy Combatants’ because Bush said they were – ‘deserving’ of being put into the ’system’ and kept there – because he said so. There doesn’t appear to have been an appeal process.

That Bush was Out of Control explains Goldsmith’s comment that ‘everyone was concerned about personal liability’ when he began reviewing Yoo’s work. Everyone knew Bush was the problem, but Bush and his Policy-makers had the Power.

This wasn’t a Rogue Interrogation Program discovered after its establishment. This was a consciously desired systematic course of brutality – Built By Bush – step by step.

Bush designed-in the Plausible Deniability so that the combination of his Power as the President of the United States, acting as the Above the Law UE, with the Rigged Stamps of Approval from Yoo, Bybee, Bradbury and Rizzo proved to be enough to cloud even the judgement of People with good consciences – exactly as he intended.

It would be wrong to include the rank-and-file members of the CIA, even those who were ‘in the system’ itself, in the same category as Bush and his Policy Henchpeople. Time and investigations, imvho, will show that the CIA is actually Full of People just like you and I – good people with good consciences, who were duped into doing Bush’s bidding.

Will it turn out that there were ‘bad apples’ going way over the line? Absolutely, but they will be the exception and not the rule. Imvho, their peers will correct any issues within their ranks.

The same cannot be said for Bush and his Torture Policy Team, including his boot-licking enablement ‘lawyers’ – they are Clearly All Bad Apples of the Most Heinous Kind. We’re talking about Consciously Gaming the Rule of Law to the point of making a mockery of Law itself – where Unrestrained Power is the ‘Law’ for the powerless.

So, I say let the rank-and-file sort themselves out, while We focus on skillfully pulling-in the Big Fish.

You describe perfectly the typical Cheney relationship with the bureaucracy – “Go fuck yourself”. In an untypical unguarded moment, he told a sitting US Senator to do the same on the Senate floor.

In how much less respect did he hold bureaucrats, whose chief hold on their jobs was not wealth or connections, but doing them properly — which worked against a Vice President who had usurped his boss’ power and was doing his job for him, and wasn’t as remotely competent as he imagined himself to be?

I agree with where much of this rot came from. But oughtn’t we do the usual thing and start rolling up the wiseguys from the bottom? Or does the fear of Cheney still compel them to STFU until the boss tumbles or meets his maker according to the plan that God, in her infinite wisdom, has made for him?

LHP, I’ve been re-reading parts of Bart Gelman’s Angler book on Cheney and Jane Mayer’s The Dark Side, and I think your speculation is spot-on.

Both books recount episode after episode of Cheney/Addington deciding on a course of action they want to pursure, then crafting the mechanism that will allow them to do it. Give a bit of the picture to one office, a bit to another, and still more to a third, then put together the blind pieces into a complete justification for the whole policy that you want.

I agree. I think it’s spreading oil to calm the political waters and I don’t agree with that.

I left ya a rambler at swim earlier.

LHP, it is my conviction that you have read this aright.

Your suggestion regarding starting at the ‘top’, should those who do it not blink, will result in truth and an understanding of how, “why”, and what was done in the name of the people, far more quickly and “reasonably” than any calculation or strategy which begins at the ‘bottom’.

My only hope is that “those” who would do what must be done, will do so with the legal wisdom and psychological insight into the human (or in-human) ‘condition’ of this despicable ‘episode’, which you so clearly possess.

I should be far more sanguine with that hope were I to imagine that your words will be read by those who could, at this time, most benefit from them.

Bravo! LHP!

…1) resign at a moment in history when Our country desperately needed all the intel it could get, thereby depriving our country of the years of training and experience the American people had invested in this agent, or 2) do something the agent found to be personally repugnant and hope against all reason that the end would somehow justify the means…

This is where it all breaks apart. While I can’t speak for the mindset of people in the CIA, the premise that we needed intel at that time is and was an utterly false premise. The great Islamic terrorist threat was a big lie from the Bush government that wanted to go to war and kill and torture people.

The correct response would be to have resigned instead of participating in monstrous acts. Even if a CIA operative’s intentions were good, they gave up their humanity by going along with it even if for misguided reasons. I know it’s easier to write than to do, but that doesn’t change what should have happened.

The bottom line is these people have to live with the choices they made, and our country has to come to terms with what we let happen in our name. And criminals are criminals, they should pay for their actions.

Here’s my problem: regardless of the actions of the underlings who actually performed the abusive and torturous techniques, my country has committed war crimes based on bad laws promulgated, not by the congress, but strictly at the request of some cabal within the executive branch. The lawyers knew, or should have known that these techniques were illegal, and that they infringed on international treaties that have been in place for generations. These techniques were done in my name. Someone has to be held accountable to the laws, and the likeliest suspects would be the legal staff that promulgated them knowingly. We broke the Geneva Conventions, and if we don’t fix it, who will? Who has the authority?

not very OT – i asked this yesterday at EW, hoping someone here has an answer:

p. 8 of olc_05102005_bradbury46pg.pdf

Medical and psychological professionals from the CIA’s Office of Medical Services (”OMS”) carefully evaluate detainees before any enhanced technique is authorized in order to ensure that the detainee “is not likely to suffer any severe physical or mental pain or suffering as a result of interrogation.” Techniques at 4; see OMS Guidelines on Medical and Psychological Support to Detainee Rendition, Interrogation and Detention at 9 (Dec. 2004) (”OMS Guidelines“)

anyone know what these OMS Guidelines are? i want to read them.

looseheadprop…I think your analysis is very compelling. The CIA operatives have had a highly developed sensitivity on legal issues ever since the 1970’s. In addition to their institutional tendency to cover themselves legally, there’s also the fact that they had no reason to trust or like Cheney and Rumsfeld’s crowd. It has been standard operating procedure for the neo-cons to blame CIA for perceived failures and weaknesses in US policy. Once in the drivers seat, the Bush administration made a habit of blaming bad decisions on the supposed poverty of the intelligence provided by CIA ‘bureaucrats’. Thus the Office of Special Plans, the ‘b team’, the ‘missing’ Iraqi nukes, et cetera.

I think it’s clear that the White House forced these methods onto the CIA and that the price extracted was the memo’s we are now seeing.

Have to disagree with you here, lhp. I think you put too fine a point on a fundamental matter, which is that (as I posted the other day over at Spencer’s),

Any human being is responsible for knowing what is a crime against humanity. And capable of refusing to commit those crimes, whatever the personal consequence.

Having said this, let me also say that I appreciate the value of being practical and considering the realpolitik of all this, and am not saying that others who are considering our moral strategies and tactics should stop and adopt an absolute position. We all have our parts to play. I see mine as a steward for the core, humane, values.

Thank you, looseheadprop, thank you. Finally, lucidity.

Actually, Big Dan’s collection today of links and facts serves to explain everything you need to know about why individuals and entire governments are silenced, by whom, and by what means:

http://bigdanblogger.blogspot……1-are.html

Andrew Sullivan posts this comment from Jeff Emmanuel at Redstate:

Co-opting the word “torture” to include methods far less offensive than the majority of interrogation techniques I underwent in military SERE training isn’t a victory for moralists and humanitarians in any form; rather, it’s an Orwellian perversion of a word that once had meaning by those who have spent the last eight years on constant lookout for some greviance to hold against a president whose mere existence they resented.

Nice piece of Orwellian newspeak: perverting “torture” while claiming to save it from perverts. I seriously doubt that Mr. Emmanuel’s experiece of SERE techniques, assuming he had any, mirrored the application of these techniques – as opposed to the sterilized Eichmannesque description of them given in these memos.

“Wall banging” may have been authorized so long as the wall was “flexible” and the shoulder blades, not the head, hit it. But you know, in the heat of interrogation, shit happens. Same with those delicate “face grabs” and “face slaps”. Special Forces don’t do delicate. Inflicting pain and the fear of death was the point of the exercise. Nor is it likely that the “waterboarding” described in these memos, where no water enters the lungs, is remotely close to the way in which it was performed on these “worst of the worst”.

These techniques were authorized by the DoJ and ordered by the OVP. Mr. Cheney told our most lethally trained warriors that their gloves were off. Even three-year olds know how to interpret mixed messages. They go with what works for them, and restraint was penalized under Mr. Cheney, not rewarded.

The guest on Diane Rehm this morning also made the point that eventually the full story will come out-but that time is needed to allow more people (whistleblowers ) to come forward.

And, yes, Obama is going to need political cover if/when investigations and, hopefully, prosecutions begin.

President Obama’s position regarding those line officers, while I disagree with it, may be a reflection that he believes that they were manipulated and lied to by those they had a right to trust. Further, nothing in his statement yesterday suggests that the brass at CIA, DOJ or WH are exempt from prosecution.

Not only has Obama immunized the torturers, he has tenured them. So far as I can tell, none have been fired, demoted, or even reprimanded for complying with an obviously illegal order.

What I’d like to know is whether there were any in the CIA who refused these orders and, if so, what happened to them.

lhp, I was asking a couple of times in threads down if BO was leaving the door open to prosecute the Yoo Can Clan, even though at Nuremberg, “following orders” was no excuse.

So I am happy to see that you think it is possible. If BO needs us to help push this, I am happy to do whatever I can.

Seems like John Dean and some others might be able to get some talking head time on these matters. I hope we see them on MSM for some time to come.

I also think we need some grass roots strategerie as CHS was requesting below. Some kind of ad campaign with graphics that will help to drive home the point that for those years the CIA is equal to the Gestapo/Stazi/KGB or something similar.

thanks

It would be wrong to include the rank-and-file members of the CIA, even those who were ‘in the system’ itself, in the same category as Bush and his Policy Henchpeople. Time and investigations, imvho, will show that the CIA is actually Full of People just like you and I – good people with good consciences, who were duped into doing Bush’s bidding.

The Eichmann defense has long since been accepted as providing no excuse.

It’s become clear that torture was going on before the all the memo nonsense started, so you can decide not to prosecute, but you can’t say these guys are innocent dupes.

In a moment of reflection, Andrew Sullivan asks us to remember the terror of 9/11 and the awesome responsibility Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush were under. Not to excuse their behavior, but to explain it. He goes on to excoriate their later behavior.

But pause a moment to remember what the first year or two after 9/11 was like. Bush and Cheney were the anti-FDR’s. They maximized our fears, ignored their co-equal branches of government, terrorized the bureaucracy to shake off its innate respect for the law and albeit limited respect for human rights. They demanded this kind of response, they didn’t succumb to it or accept it hesitatingly. They wanted and chose it, which does not merit respect or hesitancy in condemning their actions and the steps they’ve taken to make them appear lawful or necessary.

The site for the Andrew Sullivan comments is here.

Plus, if they are not “on the table” for prosecution, maybe someone(s) who was a “refusnik” will come forward.

just for fun

Hayden and Mukasey, who both served during Bush’s second term, said the release “assures that terrorists are now aware of the absolute limit of what the US government could do to extract information from them, and can supplement their training accordingly and thus diminish the effectiveness of these techniques.”

They also argued that the disclosure meant that Obama was making permanent the suspension of the interrogation techniques.

“By allowing this disclosure, President Obama has tied not only his own hands but also the hands of any future administration faced with the prospect of attack,” Hayden and Mukasey wrote.

Polls still show that a majority of Americans don’t want him to prosecute,

Could you provide a link to the evidence for this claim? It contradicts other polls I’ve seen.

I think these “polls” are mostly hogwash, or have not been reported accurately.

Bob in HI

Not only has Obama immunized the torturers, he has tenured them.

Tenure for Torture!

Excellent frame! Well done!

This is rubbish. You can’t expect someone who is asked to engaged in what seems on the face to be illegal activity to do so based on a legal decision that they can’t see which would make the activity legal.

Anyone who was asked to do this is not someone who has a shred of ethics.

We’ve gotten into this mess because there is too much secrecy. It’s enough that the “evidence” gathered is secret, who is held, where they are held.. everything is state secrets including the so called “legal memos” which permit all this.

There has been no oversight and we have see how an entire structure of lies has led us into a very costly war of blood and treasure… and Obama doesn’t want to have an accounting?:

And there is not even a “truth commission” where the bad guys come forward and tell all, who did what, how it happened and are pardoned?

We have to live with the knowledge that this unethical monsters are still roaming the halls of Langley and the world and will easily do it again, as they did with their assassinations and so forth.

These are sadists who lust for the opportunity to justify their sadism.

Obama is a coward in this matter and he is letting the people and the law down.

We have been living with all sorts of made up monster threats for 6 decades. ENOUGH. This country barely resembles the democracy described in the founding documents. Our founding fathers are rolling in the graves over what we have become.

A jolly pair, that.

Just for fun, could you make more clear whether you agree with Hayden and Mukasey?

Excellent point! Prosecute them!

Bob in HI

With as much jockeying and parsed statements from the people currently running the CIA and the Executive, the assumptions may conflict wildly. There is no sign that anyone has stopped what the last regime did to prisoners. There is no indication that they have differentiated combatants and civilians. Because the pool of facts is small, speculation is considerable.
Agree with the statement above about the torturer knowing it is a war crime. There isn’t any other option with an agent trained to work with the detainees of a sovereign nation. If that agent crossed the line, they knew it.
This may not be the best time to absolve anyone in advance.

Whatever utilitarian excuses Obama may purport to find are irrelvant to the binding international treaties that obligate the United States to prosecute certain human rights crimes, including torutre.

Obama’s choice not to prosecute America’s official torturers ensures we remain a rogue nation. He’s also pissing on the Nuremberg principles: too bad he values a bunch of official torturers more than the principles of international law resulting from the sacrifices my father’s generation made to defeat fascism.

“Just following orders” is no excuse. Didn’t they teach Obama anything at Harvard Law?

Here’s the takehome message: nothing our police state apparatchniks may purportedly do for “national security” exempt them, Obama, or the US from binding international law. Nothing.

In an ideal world (the one where my pony’s waiting), I’d love to see
the Nuremberg principles upheld. I’m fully willing to believe the CIA
guy asked for the memos knew they were torture, and I commend him for
doing so. My definition of decency doesn’t extend to human rights
criminals: if the CIA guy who requested Bybee’s memo resigned (for all I know he has), I’d sure believe in his decency. If he stayed, I don’t accept his (or her) decency.

For CIA officers, as for US Armed Services members, they are ALL responsible for their criminal acts, even if they get a nice shiny memo from OLC that wishes away international law and the international treaties the US has duly ratified. If they’ve been too focused on their careers to understand Nuremberg or be cognizant of the legal basis for universal human rights, that’s their negligence. If throwing a whole generation of CIA/DIA little Eichmanns in the slam is the result, hey – that’s what happens to street level gang members who maim and kill to keep their jobs.

Going back to Kermit Rooselvelt’s splendid little coup in Iran, our
nation’s granted effective immunity to murderers around the globe, so
long as they killed in our name. Orlando Bosch is one fruit of this
posionous tree; the death squads Chiquita paid Holder to scheme away
are another. Criminal prosecution of every CIA employee aware of the
torture who did not resign is the best way I know to fell the impunity
tree.

Of course, prosecuting the White House / DOJ / DOD higher ups
complicit in torture also must happen if America’s long campaign of
covert official criminal violence is ever to end. That’s where I
really long to see the professionals (law and medicine) who abused
public trust with their complicity face criminal prosecution as well
as loss of licensure. Those prosecutions are exactly what
our treaty obligations already require.

Do I think the low-level or the high-level ops will really be
prosecuted? Nope, even if the majority of our people supported it,
our ruling oligarchy won’t: illegal State violence is all that stands
between them and prison, or worse.

One would have thought that the Nueremburg trials and Geneva convention would have tied the Bush cabals hands.

Say what?

President Obama’s position regarding those line officers, while I disagree with it, may be a reflection that he believes that they were manipulated and lied to by those they had a right to trust. Further, nothing in his statement yesterday suggests that the brass at CIA, DOJ or WH are exempt from prosecution.

Those line officers weren’t interested in legalities. They were worried about liability. It wasn’t a matter of rule of law for them. It was CYA.

Obama is protecting them because he doesn’t think they did anything wrong. In other words, he is condoning their torture. The OLC memos are transparent ad hoc legitimations of torture. Bybee and Bradbury could just as persuasively argued that the pixies told them torture was OK. Their content was never the issue because everyone knew from the beginning that their was no possible legal rationale for torture. They wanted only the imprimatur that the OLC could give them to torture and get away with it.

Obama knows this as well as anyone. What does it say about him that he is more sympathetic to the torturers than he is to their victims, our reputation as a nation, our laws, and above all our Constitution? He is sending a message also to future torturers that if he or another President say torture is OK, then they can torture again. Obama is defending yeserday’s torturers because he wants to keep the option to torture for himself and future Presidents. Change indeed.

I’m relieved the memos were declassified. http://www.governmentalityblog…..rture.html

I am losing my patience with Obama’s sweet talk and triagulation.

We need accountability.

Every where there is a problem the back story is held from the people and when a crack appears they quickly scare us and say that if we don’t keep the status quo as is the whole ball of wax will go bye bye.

Total and complete BS.

We need change alright and prosecuting law breakers is one change we need.

CIA has been engaged in torture long before these memos. The problem was that the GWOT was not fought on the battlefield but largely fought in the prisons and black sites and so the techniques of that war would eventually come out – TORTURE. They don’t have a single other tool in the kit to use against these “subversives”.

And with Obama’s bait and switch it’s going on now in Bagram. Same deal different zip code.

Normally I would agree with you. However, incredible pressure put on people higher up the food chain usually makes someone crack sooner, someone with more knowledge of the whole scene. Not to mention, should people high in the food chain start to have health issues, even fatal health issues, we’ll notice those individuals.

I rely on Peter’s Principle here.

The Huckabee link above clearly lays out the criminals’ talking points.

I have a dairy

now we know why cheney went on the offensive a few weeks ago, he knew these memos were comming out

I am led to believe there are a few team b members acting as cheney moles

Jane has a spanking new post ready: “Yes, the Teabaggers Did Achieve Their Objectives”

I second that point.

You do realize that looseheadprop has both experience in prosecution and in the military, yes?

Given this kind of background and expertise, I would hardly call it speculation even if labeled as such in the diary. There’s more knowledge behind this conjecture than most of us could scrape together.

KJM nails it.

The CIA and the national security state must be taken down. They are not helping america but hurting her, her people, her image, and people around the world.

The CIA should not be carrying out operations, but conducting passive “spying” and intelligence gathering. Any interrogation outside of the Geneva convention is unlawful PERIOD, END OF STORY and they know it.

Don’t be screwin with people’s agenda like that.

I’m with you, Watt4Bob!

I’m not advocating that any Eichmann’s get off, and, imvho, neither is Obama – he said yesterday that anyone acting outside ‘the legal system’ would not be protected from prosecution. And, for that matter, imho, nobody in the CIA is advocating for any Eichmann’s to escape Justice, either.

Also, I’ve said in the past that the Chain-of-Command from Bush to the Waterboards is personally liable for War Crimes. I wouldn’t be surprised in the least, however, if investigations reveal that the Chain-of-Command turns out to be Bush—>A Very Few People Under Bush’s Separate Control—>The Torturers, by-passing all other Chains-of-Command.

However, all the ‘infrastructure’ people – pilots, guards, support staff, admin staff, etc, etc – these folks, faced with Legal Memoranda from CIA and OLC Lawyers, their own Patriotism to fight for America, and Bush’s position as the President, likely were confused enough not to have a clear basis to object to their own participation. These are the rank-and-file people I’m talking about.

This, imvho, is why we need an investigation. I strongly suspect Bush compartmentalized the Actual Commission of Torture to himself and a few others Almost Directly to the Torturers.

By design, everyone else was kept ignorant and functioning.

Obama is a coward in this matter and he is letting the people and the law down.

I’m hoping that Obama has seen some evidence that our nation will soon come to it’s senses at least to the point where they understand the possibility that we let BushCo manipulate our moral compass.

At the moment I think it’s clear that we’re so far off course that the public is not ready to accept the prosecution of people for actions that Bush and Cheney have convinced the masses are heroic.

With so much to do, it’s hard to know where to start, and it’s entirely possible to envision nothing getting accomplished at all if this administration misjudges what can be done immediately.

Now that’s the first laugh I’ve had all day!

What did the President mean by ’sovereign immunity’?

I don’t know anything other than the conjecture of LHP.

I do know that there was law breaking and there is enormous SPIN coming out of the mouth of Obama on this topic.

Why should those who committed crimes be prosecuted. Let them make the case that they did it under some sort of legal framework and see if that washes with a jury of their peers.

The jury is out on this because the jury won’t be called, or so it seems.

The problem with this analysis is that the actual practice of torture far exceeded what was allowable based on the memos and started months before the first memo was written (and the first oral advice given). If you really want to give Obama some credit (and this will completely depend on his future actions), the only people who just got a get out of jail free card are the CIA bureaucrats who failed to prevent the torture regime, didn’t report the torture, or enabled torture without direct knowledge of the actual activities. The decisionmakers in the WH, DOJ, and CIA are not out of the woods at all (that includes you, Stephen Kappes). The creeps who actually committed the torture are still vulnerable to the extent they exceeded the bounds of the OLC memos. Go read the ICRC report and you’ll see what I mean.

By the way, there was no torture or quit ultimatum. CIA employees could and did opt out of the torture regime. Maybe it hurt their career, but most of them are well-educated, knowledge of the agency’s past history, and familiar enough with the Geneva Conventions to know that the torture and detention regime was legally suspect and morally untenable.

Missed my Groucho quotes earlier huh?

Good logic Loose.

Here’s my problem with what Obama’s doing:

The way to really go after the top dogs is to prosecute the little dogs and walk/work your way up the food chain. You better believe the CIA guy who killed the guy in Bagram would flip on his superiors or Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc., so fast if he could get out of it with his skin.

He flips and gives them his Captain. Captain flips and gives up a Major or Colonel. Flip the Colonel and you got a General. Flip him and you got Rummy, Cheney, etc. Repeat often. Tom Hartmann points out it’s just like a mob prosecution. Or any criminal gang.

I just don’t see why Obama just doesn’t wash his hands of all of it by appointing a special prosecutor and saying it’s in his or her hands.

Unless, as my wife thinks: the CIA has so much dirt on every pol (ala Hoover) that no one who ever gets elected can even consider going against them.

Shoot, even Stephanie Miller, who’s dad was a Nueremburg prosecutor, pointed out that the “following orders” defense didn’t work for the Nazis.

You might say I’m trying to get a grip on your style.

Clear enough now, thanks.

Ockham, I think the first part of your post gets at exactly what is going on here when you say:

The decisionmakers in the WH, DOJ, and CIA are not out of the woods at all (that includes you, Stephen Kappes). The creeps who actually committed the torture are still vulnerable to the extent they exceeded the bounds of the OLC memos. Go read the ICRC report and you’ll see what I mean.

Yesterday’s disclosure puts the issue on the front burner, does nothing to protect those most responsible for the policy (quite the opposite) and at the same time creates more political room for hearings and investigations.

That makes perfect sense.

If you aren’t owned before your get elected, you are after you get there. You simply don’t rock the boat too much.

Obama got the public support going in because the people wanted a BIG CHANGE in business as usual and what they are getting is more of the same. Geez Louis. Ain’t that obvious?

We got no class
we got no principles!

That’s Louise

Americans are exceptional. As exceptional beings we are above the law.

Please sign this petition for a blanket pardon of all convicted criminals as long as they promise not to do it again.

http://www.petitiononline.com/…..ition.html

It’s some of the same and some big differences.

yea her too. and her brother louie

No need to go after the little guy since we have evidence that it came from the top. However, these aren’t little guys. They’re educated elites who also need to be taken down.

that’s what I like to see, a little humor in all the doom and gloom

Look, not all of this is up to Obama. It’s not about one man.

Many are complaining about the lack of any prosecution — and there isn’t even a confirmed nominee to lead the OLC yet.

Every one of us who is angry about torture has a civic duty here; we need to put pressure on the Senate to confirm Dawn Johnsen, so that the administration has someone leading the department who can say with authority that the OLC was acting improperly and that further action is needed.

Why do you think the right-wing has been so adamant she not be confirmed?

It’s also up to us to demand the U.S. Attorney General appoint a special prosecutor to investigate torture. You can begin right here.

Yesterday’s disclosure puts the issue on the front burner, does nothing to protect those most responsible for the policy (quite the opposite) and at the same time creates more political room for hearings and investigations.

Except it doesn’t. If Obama had wished to make the point you are making, he could have. He didn’t. We have already heard the Cass Sunstein argument that these were all just policy differences and that they should not be criminalized. Assuming that Obama has some clever secret plan is, I must admit, getting old. We need to put the whole 11 dimensional chess metaphor to rest. Obama is a conservative pursuing a conservative agenda.

I am realistic and if the prez says something people jump.

If he wanted a truth commission there would legislation in the hopper already.

If he wanted to prosecute these “crimes” he could call for a special prosecutor.

He’s just dancing around so he doesn’t piss off people in the middle and the right. He certainly hasn’t done a thing to please the progressives which supported him.

What Hugh said but I would say a conservative who looks like a liberal. How kewl is that!

OLC could raise the issue but it would most likely be the OPR (Office of Professional Responsibility) or the DOJ Inspector General who would pursue an investigation.

That was my thought too. It seems that LHP is speculating based upon a view that the interrogators want to follow the law, but that some other force ( i.e. administration) wants them suspects to “feel it.”
I fear that the whole supposition may collapse when examined through a time line.

Ding!

Dude! This is some serious shit we’re talk talk talking about.
(Rayne, are you smiling?)

perris, I have no clue about what’s currently going on in California legal cirlces. I’m on the East Coast and haven’t seen any recent media reports.

We do know tha Yoo is on loan from Berkely to some other school I never heard before he went to teach in it. Sorry, if I have offended anyone from the new Yoo nesting place.

So, I’m guessing Berkley was embarassed to have him walking around their campus and thought it would be better for him hide out elswhere till the furor died down. Good luck with that.

California Bar Association, I have n new news on.

if this is what happened, then i wouldn’t have a problem with obama pardoning them – after a fair trial (with the gov. picking up defense costs).

that way the public gets to know what happened AND mercy is shown to those who need it. i’d call that justice, but i’m not a lawyer.

refusing to prosecute the way obama has done seems, to me, to be designed to take truth off the table. ie a cover up..

I agree with Selise.

Prosecute everyone tainted by this torture (including underlings), which may help get to the truth as underlings rat out their overlings, and show mercy (if necessary) after the truth has determined culpability. If it is good enough for wrapping up crime syndicates, the same playbook should be just right for this situation, too.

Rank meaning low level, not smelling too good. Yeah, raw.

I wanted to make clear that I was not laundering soemthing that someone had told me, and that I have absolutely NO FACTS to base my suppositions upon.

Other than my generalized experience of intra mural infighting works in gov’t. and the kinds of examples I mentioned i the post

This is what Christy said earlier:
Elections have consequences, but it’s up to the rest of us to make them stick. It takes time to move anything through government. Impatience is for young children — perseverence is for adults, and we have to all suck it up, realize that we aren’t going to get everything we want immediately unless and until we create a political climate that forces these people to do the right thing.

They are politicians, not saints. The sooner everyone gets that through their heads and stops expecting miracles, the better we’ll all be. No offense, but honestly, anyone who has been reading here for the past few years ought to know better than to expect immediate and awesome action from government. That’s incredibly naive. These people are politicians — and they work in a political milieu. To get them to do anything, you have to force that atmosphere to make it unpalatable for them NOT to do the needed work. That’s our job.

We’d all be better served trying to come up with a way to make that happen — some action steps to make them turn this toward doing the right thing. If anyone has that sort of idea, I’m all ears.

Rayne:

I have no military experience, zero zilch. I am admitted to practice in the Court of Military Justice (the JAG court) , but am now and always was a civilian.

I did referee a couple of rugby games as West Point though. *g*

And no, it really, truly is specuation. I am not laundering soemthing I heard through the grapevine. I swear.

DUGG!
I don’t see why BO thinks these CIA people only did what they were assured “Was” legal. As has been said “Following orders” is no defense for war crimes! These people are well educated and would know that such actions were War Crimes no matter what Bush/Cheney said. Anyone with a sixth grade education would know right from wrong and thus these actions ARE torture plain and simple!!

Nice post.

While I think there is a lot to be vigilant about concerning how Obama deals with Bush sins, I think your speculation on this issue goes to the heart of the matter as it concerns the complications involved in unravelling the Bush/Cheney Reign of Terror within our government.

Soveriegn immunity is a legal principle that says you cannot sue the king/state unless he consents. The US consents to be sued for a viriety of subject amtters whihch are covered by the Federal Court of Claims. For all other types of suits against the federal gove’t , you sue in regular federal district court and the gov’t can assert various types of privleges depending on the facts and circumstances.

There are various types of sovereign immunity, such as Qualified Immunity under a SCOTUS case called Bivens wherein an gov’t empoyee has immunity form suit so long as they were acting within the confines of their gov’t duties and not outside the scope of their job.

It is Biven type immunity that Obama seemed to be referring to when describing how CIA line officers would be defended by the gov’t so long as they did not act outside the scope of their orders.

Obam’s not making this stuff up out of whole clothe

Well what we have here is another excuse for Obama decision. From what I read in the memos they were in response to REQUESTS from the interrogaters asking if they could legally subject there victims to these methods. I don’t think putting a bug in a box with a man terrified of Bugs was dreamt up by the OLC. If I was a CIA interrogator and felt pressured I certainly wouldn’t come up with specific ideas such as bugs. “I have an idea that I think is illegal like keeping somebody awake for eleven days” can you confirm that I can use it?” doesn’t work for me. These were people who wanted to do these things and needed cover and were promised they wouldn’t be punished. That’s what Obama was confronted with. He split the baby here, giving us the memos and giving the torturers a free pass. That the deal he mde with the devil.

In no way shape or form, should anything I wrote in that post suggest that I CONDONE the actions of anyone who did the “enhanced interrogation techniques” . I emphatically do not condone it.

Not only for the moral reasons–which are paramount–but also because, anyone who has been trained in interrogations knows for a fact that these methods always always always backfire, as the did here.

So it was illegal, morally reprehensible and utterly pointless

the death squads Chiquita paid Holder to scheme away

Good reminder of how Holder’s hands were bloody long before this.

Not really, you are assuming that CIA refused to follow orders UNTIL they got the memos. I don’t think so. I think they got the orders, implemented them and did pushback at the same time.

I don’t know where people get the idea that folks in gov’t confuse an “order” with a quaint suggestion

I could go for that

Here is another petition from the ACLU:

Dear ACLU Supporter,
In response to an ACLU lawsuit, the Justice Department just released four memos that provided the basis for the Bush administration’s illegal torture program.

We’ll have more to say about the horrific content of these memos in the days ahead, but in the meantime we commend the Obama administration for making good on its commitment to transparency. We also commend concerned citizens like you who have supported and fought alongside the ACLU’s legal team in the long struggle to get these crucial memos released.

But exposing the truth is only the first step. It’s now imperative that the Justice Department investigate issues of criminal responsibility for the crimes that took place in the CIA’s secret prisons.

Join ACLU supporters across the country in calling on Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate detainee abuse and torture.

The torture memos should never have been written — the actions they justified violated domestic and international law and damaged America’s reputation in the world. They authorized interrogators to use the most barbaric interrogation methods, including methods that the U.S. once prosecuted as war crimes. It’s now the Justice Department’s responsibility to make sure that the architects of the torture program are held accountable. Senior officials who authorized torture should not be shielded from investigation.

Join us in demanding a criminal investigation by an independent prosecutor.

We are hopeful that by releasing these memos, the Obama administration has begun to turn the page on an era in which the Justice Department became complicit in some of the most egregious crimes.

Sincerely,

Jameel Jaffer
Director, National Security Project
ACLU

We as citizens must stand up and be counted demanding that these criminals be held for their crimes!

What about contractors like Triple Canopy, Blackwater, et.al.?? Don’t think they are protected by OLC opinion adherence.

I think Obama is playing a lousy hand masterfully, and that we should keep demanding accountability, but have some faith that he is working on it.

I didn’t mean to suggest that you did.

LHP-this just went up over at ThinkProg:

http://thinkprogress.org/2009/…..secutions/

Looks like you’re in good company.

Here is my rank speculation: Our CIA front line operatives responded to a direct request from our admin executives to get information, through “any means necessary,” about present and future terror plans. The CIA, being what it is, could not get the information so they got rough, It could be that they have an institutional issue with following the law anyway, but, they “KNEW” they had stepped over the line, and when it became apparent that this information about the suspects would eventually become public, they requested legal cover. The administration did not like writing these memos, (hence they classified them) but, they wanted to show the good old boys at CIA, that Bush was true to his word and he did say “whatever it took” so, the Bush team would give cover.
Along comes new admin and they too want to be seen supporting the CIA rank and file,operatives. To support the Average-Joe, CIA interrogator, Obama promises to forego prosecution. No questisons asked, about what really happened or anything.
So what do we end up with? An agency with a culture of lawlessness, and a clear message to the ops that they can do as they please, and the US govt will back them.

It is an excellent point.

It also raises the question of just who it was, precisely, who directed the CIA agents in the ‘field’ to employ or make use of “these things”, before Yoo and others miraculously ‘determined’ that such behavior was ‘legal and proper’, that is unless we postulate that the Agency, on their own and with no ‘direction’, decided they they should so behave.

Nefarious as some of the Agency’s ‘tactics’ and behaviors are (and they are indeed, some of them, very ‘wicked’, and I suspect quite illegal and morally and humanly very questionable, in fact completely wrong and very destructive to what our nation claims to be about), they would still, probably, need the ‘cover’ of having been ‘instructed’ to do whatever they, in fact, did.

Ultimately, one imagines, this comes back to the White House and Bush and Cheney.

Which does NOT lessen the culpability of ALL who ‘went along’.

All involved need to be held to account, of some kind or fashion.

But, only by putting the real blame (and consequence) where it truly lies, which is upon those who initiated and ordered the practice of torture and inhumane abuse, may we have any hopes of preventing a re-occurrence of such behavior in the future.

This has nothing to do with ‘retribution’ merely with justice and truth.

Oh, and the ’soul’ of the nation and the essence of its claimed ‘purpose’.

Wire,

Rank as an adjective can mean many things like absolute or total and it carries a pejorative as well. In the pejorative instance, a rank smell is one that implies spoilage or decay for instance. As used by LHP, if he wished to imply some respect for the speculation, he might have said “informed” for instance and a neutral description might be just “uninformed speculation.” Often the use of rank implies something beyond just absolute or complete, it implies that there is an odor associated with decay (might have said it “stinks”). Given the context it was used in, I rather doubt that it was meant to carry that much negative weight, but “rank” here implies an element of self-deprecation with regard to the speculation – something that I do’t think is necessary for LHP. Hmm, I’ve gone on – but I love words – so there you are.

I’m sorry LHP, but your theory is just another attempt to get obama off the hook for what you would have excoriated w. Several other posters have made the same or similar comments. obama has had his opportunity on the torture and has shown exactly where he stands; in the tank with w. I read somewhere that he will deign to read 10 comments/day from emails or blogs (I don’t remember which) that will be given to him. Since someone (=rahm) will cull them, there won’t be any that indicate that the progressive base is fast growing upset with his rightward swing. I can’t capitalize his name anymore, given that he is backing w’s policies and people. As far as he is concerned, apparently, the Nuremburg trials were about something that has no relevance for today. Let’s be “forward looking” so we can guarantee that political criminality will have no consequences for people who were “following orders.”

thanks, plunger. i just watched the two interviews amy did.

What so few people are understanding about all this . . . both the perpetrators and the would-be prosecutors . . . is that a legal prosecution of these criminals would be the best thing for THEM and the country. Now that the names are coming out and being attached to concrete acts, there will be people in this world who will devote their lives to bringing these criminals to justice, and the sort of justice we would bring them would be far more humane that what might happen if others get there first. The people who are responsible for these acts will have to live with bodyguards the rest of their lives, their families will be at risk, and they will never know what direction it might come from. Those who escaped the Nuremberg trials were hunted down even up to today, over 60 years later. Prison is a brighter future for them than they face on the outside.

befehl ist befehl?

I know what you mean, think about the irony of the headlines. On the outside of the paper we have the memo released in all their gory, bloody, buggy, nauseating detail and the words of our A.G. and President that the interrogators (i.e. those following orders?) will not be prosecuted.
A bit further back on page 4, we have an alleged Polish Guard being deported yet again for his actions during WW II. He will clearly spout the I was only following orders defense and lose. He has been playing the “stall” game for nearly 2 decades.

…anyone know what these OMS Guidelines are? i want to read them.

selise, Alfred McCoy, author of A Question of Torture, is a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin. I attended his lecture on the history of torture in the CIA at UC Santa Barbara years ago. I think he’d know the answer to your question.

Obama is a conservative pursuing a conservative agenda.

I’m sorry but that’s just plain silly. He may not be everything you want but to call him conservative makes everyone to the right of Chomsky conservative.

lhp -

commenter billindc - was apparently on the same track as you this am in Christy’s thread:;

The White House has to prepare the political ground for investigations of torture and this is the way to do it. There is still a strong current of the electorate that thinks we tortured in the right way, for the right reasons and that it gained results. There is also a similar constituency that believes that any Obama administration investigation would be purely political. By releasing the memos and declining to prosecute CIA employees (who could have a valid defense that they were given explicit instructions that their actions were legal) the White House destroys the illusion that there was anything right or effective about the torture program and also directs scrutiny where it belongs….at the Executive branch politicians and bureaucrats who navigated around the law and shaped the program.

I have to say that after reading what looseheadprop has to say, I feel a little better. Not 100% better, but a LITTLE better. Considering I was unable to sleep last nite and have been slowly stewing all day about this. I am willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, but not forever. I think what gets my goat the most this week is listening to Cheney spew his crap about Obama, and then of course the republicans and Faux News printing “Obama is a fascist” on tea bags…. and all the while, they are all being protected by the very man they vomit their hatred all over.

This also brought to mind Abu Ghraib.

SO, I know this is not QUITE exactly the same, but there are a few low ranking military personnel serving time for “just following orders” and I notice that their “superiors” were not held accountable… you know the old “a few bad apples” thing… So how do these CIA folks get to walk, and these junior military personnel were tossed in the slammer?
http://www.boston.com/news/nat…..ndal_ends/

I understand that there are qualifiers in the two situations (military vs. civilian CIA, prisoner abuse vs. torture), but come on!

And to start my morning I had to listen to Joe S. on Morning Joe (MSNBC) go on and on about how Obama is targeting vets with the DHS memo…

anyways… thanks looseheadprop for giving me the arm floaties on which to keep my head above water in all this. Any port in a storm and all that rot.

do you have a translation for that?

Thank you for putting kind words to my question. I was going to ask something in a rude way, but decided against it.

By refusing to prosecute, Mr. Obama has basically implicated every CIA employee in crimes against humanity. The message is that there are not just a few bad apples involved–everyone’s hands are bloody…
At some point, I expect that an American president will have to disband the CIA as a result of this. It will have finally become too notorious to be effective. International criminal sanctions will be too much for the country to bear. And the Agency will have become a danger to the presidency itself.

Your point is well taken, and amply supported by the CIA’s well-documented history of criminal abduction and assassination. I would fully support Obama’s pledge to forego retribution against individual agents in exchange for the permanent termination of the organization which harbored them.

How do you figure that I’m trying to get Obama off the hook? I said I disagreed with him.

I’m merely trying to figure out WHY he might think the way he does, not excuse a wrong conclusion

This also brought to mind Abu Ghraib.

SO, I know this is not QUITE exactly the same, but there are a few low ranking military personnel serving time for “just following orders” and I notice that their “superiors” were not held accountable… you know the old “a few bad apples” thing… So how do these CIA folks get to walk, and these junior military personnel were tossed in the slammer?

I think Abu Ghraib is a perfect example of what we want to avoid. Look the normal way you do public corruption cases is you start with the little fish and work you way up the food chain. that’s when you don’t really know what happened.

In this case, we have a pretty good idea what really happened and we may very well end up immunizing the people at the bottom of the food chain in order to secure their testimony for the big fish.

It is the big fish that we want, no? Or do we want a crappy result like Abu Ghraib where the people who bear THE MOST guilt, got off scott free?

Me, I am much more interested in going after teh MOST guilty. And NO, I am not suggesting that everybody else get pass.

I’m sorry that I didn’t make the distinction, but to spend so much time trying to speculate about why such a bad decision would be made after the Presidential campaign is not what you would have done for w. obama has had too many opportunities to do the right thing in these awful carryovers in opening up the torture memos without being forced to do it, working to save the homes of people being foreclosed, replacing w’s people in the government, as well as the votes prior to being elected. Rather than making me feel better, it simply makes me feel that if this was his reasoning, a kindergartner knows right and wrong better than that.

My fault for not clicking the reply button for 125 to reply to looseheadprop

Incidentally, for what violation would they be prosecuted?

They didn’t order the interrogations/torturing.
They didn’t carry out the interrogations/torturing.

They just violated their oath of office to uphold the Constitution. How do you charge them for violating that when they are already out of office.?

[ I feel idiotic asking. I guess it’s something very obvious. ]

What I’d like to know is whether there were any in the CIA who refused these orders and, if so, what happened to them.

Will whistleblower #1 please step forward (carefully, so as to not be in the crosshairs of Bushies)?

Can you imagine being in that kind of position and wondering whether you should speak up or just lay low? It would be a very tough situation.

at Nuremberg, “following orders” was no excuse.

Maybe they got that wrong. Nuremberg, like many courts, is just made up of well-intentioned people. They’re still human and in that situation the emotional tension must have been incredibly high. They would have been prone to reflect the attitudes of that time and not ours of today.

By the way, there was no torture or quit ultimatum. CIA employees could and did opt out of the torture regime. Maybe it hurt their career, but most of them are well-educated, knowledge of the agency’s past history, and familiar enough with the Geneva Conventions to know that the torture and detention regime was legally suspect and morally untenable.

I did not know that. Very interesting. How would we know whether their careers ended or suffered?

As for those acts before the memos were written, did the participants KNOW the memos hadn’t yet been written? Maybe they were told the memos already existed.

What makes him “look like a Liberal”? Is it the dark tan? Maybe it’s the obvious intelligence? Is it maybe because he’s sort of from Chicago?

He is what he is and (it appears to me) it’s a lot non-partisan pragmatism.