Thank You Naomi Wolfe -Go for the Top

[malaise]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/dont-prosecute----and-sca_b_190177.html
<snip>

As citizens' outrage over the torture memos heats up, and Congress is barraged with calls to appoint a special prosecutor, we may be about to commit an egregious error.

Today Republicans accused Democrats in Congress of having "blood on your hands too" in relation to the escalating calls to investigate. I would like to say that this is exactly right.

I will go further: not only do Congressional Democrats have "blood on their hands" -- but so do we, the American people. And CIA agents may be about to be sacrificed to assuage their, and our, guilt.

So we should call for former chief judge of the army General James Cullen's solution. He has been at the forefront of calling for accountability -- but the right kind of accountability: Cullen urges us to indemnify those lower down the chain of command to get their testimonies. So they implicate the ringleaders, and then the only people who should be prosecuted are, as at Nuremberg, those who directed otherwise honorable men and women to commit crimes: the lawyers, and those who are on record having given the orders: Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush himself. The psychiatrist who reverse-engineered the SERE tactics should be prosecuted as well.

[Schema Thing]

1. Yes to all of that.

[Democracyinkind]

2. Except that the majority of people tried at Nuremberg were exactly the little fish.

The suggestion to do as then - roll some top notch heads, import the useful fuckers like Gehlen, Strughold, Von Braun and worse - doesn't seem right to me. And the notion that the only people tried in Nuremberg were Goering et al. is ridiculous. Just because the world stopped caring after that first trial doesn't mean that there wasn't an honest attempt by uncompromised US personnel to prosecute all who committed severe crimes against humanity. There were trials for Prison Guards, for mobile killing personnel, for the Doctors involved in the T-programs.

My take on this is that if anyone should be punished all should be punished. It wasn't that hard just to say no, I'd rather give up my career than writing a legal excuse for torture. It wasn't that hard just to say no, I have made an oath on the constitution and I cannot follow an order that completely contradicts the spirit of that oath.
The whole dimension of having a choice is somehow lacking in this debate. I think the only lawyers, soldiers and presidents worth their salt are the ones that don't cross that line. Those who know that no matter how hard the choice, there alway is one.
That's why such positions shouldn't have to be given to people willing to go any length. Only to people who think for themselves, feel for themselves, and weigh every order they are given against who they are and what they stand for (and what has brought them to this job in the first place ideally).

I wonder how Naomi could have gotten that one wrong. I found her books rather accurate for the most part and I really liked them. No ill will against her here.

[mmonk]

3. The key is TO GET THEIR TESTIMONIES.

So far, I see nothing that leads me to think we are seeking that from a legal standpoint. We might have publicly threw away the bargaining chip (which means in exchange for their testimony, we will not prosecute) because you don't typically do that through public declaration before you do it. The fact is I'm one of Naomi's greatest fans, a signee to the My America Project, and a member of the American Freedom Campaign and I hope this is what we do but I need further clarification from the DOJ on what they mean.

[malaise]

4. We're all waiting for details

Justice is coming