I can't believe that, just a couple of months into his first term, I'm saying this about Obama whom I supported for president and was so hopeful for. But him saying he will not prosecute CIA operatives for torture is outrageous. Michael O'Hare beats me to it and says it much better than I can.
An old story describes a king who offered a fortune and his beautiful daughter in marriage to whoever could do the most amazing thing. Various knights and performers tried, but a handsome young man blew away everyone else with a clockwork made of gold, encrusted with jewels, and covered with beautiful paintings, all his own work. The clock chimed the hours, tracked the moon and planets across the sky, forecast the weather, and played beautiful, ethereal music on bells. He was about to be given the prize when an unshaven bruiser walked in with a sledgehammer and smashed the clock to pieces. Shocked and appalled, everyone present agreed that this destruction was even more amazing then the clock.
Bush's footpads are moral defectives. The torture they organized, abetted, and implemented was amazing but not remarkably inconsistent with their pervasive thuggery. What could be more remarkable than the Bush gang trashing international law, civilized standards of behavior, and the international reputation of their country?
Now we know. ...
...I can't exaggerate the damage this considered, purposeful, mistake has done to an administration I tried to help elect and had a lot of hope for. Torturing people systematically is not just criminal but outrageous, unspeakable. Having orders to do it is no excuse: we need every citizen and every spook to think before obeying orders that may for whatever reason be illegal, especially orders that are cruel, vengeful, and compromise the mission: this principle is so obvious movie plots are built on its universal validity.
Spencer Ackerman is properly exercised about the memos and the policy, but wrong about the guy pouring the water. Soldiers in Iraq are not liable for an illegal war, but a soldier in Iraq ordered to pull the fingernails out of a prisoner by a sergeant or by a general is a criminal if he obeys.
Letting the authors of the most humiliating episode of a uniformly incompetent and vicious administration walk while cravenly mouthing nonsense about "looking ahead not backward" is not actually that far from the crimes themselves. It's illegal to manage prosecutions of corruption and election fraud for political convenience, so how much worse is it to obstruct justice for really heinous offenses on grounds of political comfort, which is precisely what this is.
Here and there in Obama's administration, never mind the next time we make a mistake at the polls, bad guys are going to tell underlings to do bad things. The president just gave them all a pass.
The rest is here>>>
We hear repeated today, feeble protest (for prosecuting those responsible) from some who claim the barbarism of torture is justified because the so-called terrorists are brutal and savage and do far worse things to their captives or because we must torture them to protect ourselves from their attacks.
Saying we can do this because their violence is more revolting than our violence is a stupid and barbaric excuse for immorality. What Bush and his mob did was violate our country's and international law - written, tested and principled laws that protect human life, liberty and justice and are subject to change according to how gruesome and threatening the enemy is only in the mind of cowards and traitors and idiots.
The brave and free always stand up for principles of law even if it threatens to cost their life. Everyone knows that torture does not produce any useful information. Torture is the coward's excuse for violence and an attempt to show how strong they are; not how just they are. What everyone heard the Bushies saying then is that they are so afraid to suffer or die for moral principles that those principles have no meaning or value.
