I am still in disbelief that the United States Attorney General would dismiss even the thought of prosecuting CIA interrogators for torture by stating, “It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department.”  How would prosecution be unfair again?  After all, this is what was done to detainees in our name.  And this.

Eric Holder, the Attorney General, is basically saying because George W. Bush’s Justice Department wrote legal memorandum justifying the CIA’s conduct anyone following what the memos said should not be prosecuted. 

I have an extreme problem with this line of reasoning.  This is only a memo.  It is not legislation or any other document with authoritative power.  To use it as the justification for war crimes boggles my mind.  And even if it had the effect of legislation, which it does not, it would be unconstitutional.  I fully understand that the Office of Legal Counsel has a very important advisory role and that weight must be attached to anything they write.  But somewhere common sense must enter the picture of whether to follow orders or not. 

What happened here is that Jay S. Bybee(now a Federal Judge who should be impeached) wrote a memo which contained some of the most ridiculous mental gymnastics I have ever seen to arrive at a preordained position, no matter what the law required.  That position being- the CIA interrogators were not torturing US detainees.  It really is impressive, in a most dark and cynical way, how Bybee is able to ignore legal standards and even reality to claim that what was happening was not torture.

I have this funny little mental picture of Bybee sitting at some cubicle in a dark corner feverishly writing away, completely ignoring law and treaty obligations.  This same image could easily be substituted for some of the most heinous crimes perpetrated on mankind.  The bureaucrat trying to please the higher ups by abandoning principle and along with it any moral authority.  Following and going along with this type of legal rationale should not protect anyone.  The interrogators should be fully prosecuted.

Of course the prosecutions should not stop there.  Any member of the Bush administration who helped formulate this policy or helped implement it should fry.  How in the world can the US be taken seriously the next time some foreign regime tortures and we demand them to stop?  The answer is simple.  We will not be.