If the DoJ won't go after the CIA Agents, it needs to go after those who Authorized Torture

[berni_mccoy]

I hope that the DoJ's decision not to prosecute CIA agents means that they are going after those who ordered it. Support for the DoJ's decision has been given by senior Democratic lawmakers (Feingold, Leahy) as well as the ACLU because the agents were deceived by the previous Administration's DoJ that the acts they were being asked to perform were legal.

It was Gonzales, Yoo, Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush who decided that torture was perfectly acceptable.

I hope that the CIA Agents who were told these acts were legal will be willing to come forward and testify against those who told them it was.

I hope that Holder is in the midst of building a case against those who did order and command these acts to be carried out, going so far as to deceive those into believing they were legal.

The law was broken. Justice needs to be administered. Someone needs to pay the penalty for disgracing our Country and violating our Constitution.

[lisa58]

1. Absolutely!

[lamp_shade]

2. I assume that's the plan. I'll be patient.

[Supersedeas]

3. Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey anticipated this...here's what he said:

However, in a May 23 speech last year, Mukasey—who was then still attorney general—defended the Justice Department lawyers:

“Today, many of the senior government lawyers who provided legal advice supporting the nation’s most important counterterrorism policies have been subjected to relentless public criticism. In some corners, one even hears suggestions—suggestions that are made in a manner that is almost breathtakingly casual—that some of these lawyers should be subject to civil or criminal liability for the advice they gave. The rhetoric of these discussions is hostile and unforgiving.

“The difficulty and novelty of the legal questions these lawyers confronted is scarcely mentioned; indeed, the vast majority of the criticism is unaccompanied by any serious legal analysis. In addition, it is rarely acknowledged that those public servants were often working in an atmosphere of almost unimaginable pressure, without the academic luxury of endless time for debate. Equally ignored is the fact that, by all accounts I have seen or heard, including but not limited to Jack Goldsmith’s book , those lawyers reached their conclusions in good faith based upon their best judgments of what the law required.”

See:
http://www.newsreview.com/reno/content?oid=925298

[Hippo_Tron]

4. It certainly is something we need to look into

Obviously the Bush people are going to argue that they acted with the best of intentions to protect the country in a "dangerous" time. We need to find out how high up the chain this went.

[Fleshdancer]

5. Were the memos released in order to drum up public support for prosecution?

If he has no intention of ever prosecuting those responsible for authorizing the torture, then why would he release the memos in the first place?

I think Obama wants to do the right thing and he's great at using populism to get his way. I wonder if releasing the memos serves the purpose of drumming up enough support on both the left and the right to go ahead with prosecution without having the rest of his ambitious agenda destroyed by partisan politics in the process.

I would be spitting fire over this situation right now if the memos weren't released. Maybe I'm wrong, but this makes it seem like he has something up his sleeve. I hope I'm right. If he releases the memos and does absolutely nothing, then he's going to be a huge disappointment for me.

[Supersedeas]

6. here is a legal discussion regarding sanctions for the legal opinions:

http://www.legalethicsforum.com/blog/2009/03/sanctions-for-former-olc-lawyers.html

The forum discussion at this site is good as well. Take note of some of the links.

[Peacetrain]

7. My hopes are that is the case...because we need to

take it out at the root.. Otherwise it will come back again and again. There is a establish cabal in DC, and this is where the evil stems from.

[mmonk]

8. The DOJ invoked the state secrets privilege

in the cases of torture victims in court. If they have such intentions, they are proceeding backwards.

[Egnever]

9. I think that by releasing these memos

Obama is building the political will to do just that.