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July 12, 2009
By: Looking Backwards From the Washington Post:
This is good. CIA officials who exceeded the unbelievably expansive rules laid down in the torture memos should be prosecuted. That said, I'd give up all hope of any prosecutions of CIA officials for prosecution of the people who set policy -- people like Cheney and Addington. They created the Bush administration's interrogation policy. They decided to set aside law, morality, and basic humanity. They should bear the consequences. Moreover, the idea of prosecuting lower-level people while the people with real power get off scot-free sticks in my craw. The laws should apply to everyone, and people like Cheney and Addington, who did not have to worry about losing their jobs if they stood up for basic human decency, have less excuse than anyone for violating it. This will, undoubtedly, set off another round of wailing from the CIA, about being asked to do the dirty work that keeps us free and then being prosecuted for their troubles. I have very little sympathy for this, especially in the present case: by all accounts, if Holder does appoint a prosecutor, that prosecutor will be looking into the possibility that some interrogators exceeded the rules that the DoJ laid down. Those rules were -- how to put it? -- hardly confining. Moreover, much as I dislike the actual interpretation of the law given in the DoJ memos, it was quite specific. CIA interrogators knew the rules. If they broke them, that's too bad. It's especially hard to feel too sorry for CIA officials when we've just learned that they kept Leon Panetta in the dark about one of their programs until June 23. Keeping the director of an organization in the dark about one of its programs for nearly six months is unconscionable. The people who had that clever idea should be fired, since they apparently do not believe in accountable government. The rest of the CIA ought to ask itself serious questions about its relation to the rest of the government and its responsibilities, and fix what's wrong with its culture before complaining about being held accountable for violating the law. (They might also try getting something right for a change. Those teensy little mistakes like failing to predict the collapse of the USSR or the fall of the Shah, or, well, any major event I can think of offhand, not to mention saying that the case that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction was a slam dunk, make me much less sympathetic to the idea that if I only knew of all their great successes, I'd realize how much it matters to let them go on working outside the law. And that's without even getting into all those covert actions that worked out so well, like toppling Mossadegh, or the exploding conch shells. I'm sure some great people work there, and do genuine good. But if they want more sympathy from the rest of us, they need to confront their own shortcomings and change their organization.) —Hilzoy 1:45 AM Permalink | Trackbacks | Comments (12)Comments
Makes sense to me, politically. Regardless of the actual merits, as Obama is heading into rough waters on both cap n trade and healthcare, and especially as voter dissatisfaction is reaching into uncharted water on the economy/stimulus etc, he NEEDS a heat shield to protect his agenda. A sturdy distraction, whether ginned up or genuine, will allow him more desperately needed political space to marshal strength behind those projects he's bet his presidency on. Posted by: Matt on July 12, 2009 at 2:04 AM | PERMALINKBut we will only consider prosecuting individual torturers who violated the torturer's code of etiquette. Posted by: Ross Best on July 12, 2009 at 2:47 AM | PERMALINK"That said, I'd give up all hope of any prosecutions of CIA officials for [sic] prosecution of the people who set policy -- people like Cheney and Addington." Hope springs eternal. Posted by: Ross Best on July 12, 2009 at 2:50 AM | PERMALINKI'm sorry, but this is a horrible idea. By only investigating and potentially prosecuting the torturers who exceeded the limits set in the Justice Department memos, the Holder Justice Department is implicitly endorsing those limits and certifying everything done within those limits as legal. And those limits were NOT legal, not by any stretch of the imagination. And frankly, setting up this pseudo-'legal' system of torture in the first place was the real problem - of COURSE individual interrogators would go outside those limits! Once you tell them, well, you can hit, just don't hit too hard... come ON! If I remember correctly, Watergate began with the prosecution of a simple break and enter of the Democratic office. It was only later that the trail led to the Oval Office. Most agree that Cheyney et al deserve to be investigated, indicted, and imprisoned for abuse of the Constitution. But it must be done with care. The Masses are easily confused by platitudes like "kept us safe" and "support the troops" and "mushroom cloud". I'm sure the Right will fight back with every dirty trick known to man. And a few known only to Cheyney. . . Posted by: DAY on July 12, 2009 at 5:58 AM | PERMALINKGod damn Dick Cheney's shit-filled soul to hell. (caps for the odd anal progressives out there...) Posted by: neill on July 12, 2009 at 8:46 AM | PERMALINKAgain and again and again...... I think this is the way it should be done, and I'm not interested in wringing my hands and wailing every time it seems like it's not going as fast as it should (Chicken Little-ism, as Al Giordano rightly puts it). I don't want Obama personally to shout from the rooftops from day one, "We're indicting Bush and Cheney or else." Who is prosecuted isn't supposed to be his decision anyway. By leaving it to the Justice Department, he's removing the politics from it. By doing so, not only does it avoid the potential for an out-of-control witchhunt, but it also avoids the appearance of such. You're right, Hilzoy, that the CIA has always had problems with corruption and secrecy. There's a lot of inertia over there from careerists, and fixing it will take a lot of effort. If Obama were putting all his effort on prosecuting CIA and military officials who'd committed torture, he'd be fighting with the CIA and the military non-stop. This way, he has political cover: "I'll protect you if I can, but if the prosecutor says you broke the law, I can't stop him from filing charges." By keeping the rank-and-file on his side, he's able to effect more substantive change. Already, we're seeing improvements. If the administration was seen at Langley as an enemy, they would not cooperate. As it is, it took five months for the director to find out about Project X, and when he did, he immediately took steps towards correcting its secrecy. Imagine if Panetta were seen as a tool of a hostile politician who wanted to dismantle them- would he ever have found out what was going on right under his nose? Now, maybe we can still find out what Project X is and deal with it, too (my guess is it's Cheney's rumored assassination ring, but the fact that I can think of it suggests it's not sufficiently "stunning"). There is the concern that, focusing on individual interrogators, we punish the monkey but let the organ grinder go. But, as DAY points out, many prosecutions of conspiracies start at the bottom. Then they can roll on the higher-ups. I'd originally hoped that'd happen with Scooter, but now there's not a president willing to use his pardon authority to cover it up. Also, letting the AG handle investigations keeps him from using all his political capital up and leaves him free to pursue health care, cap-and-trade, etc. This may not be popular, but I'm going to say it: Universal health care is more important to me than prosecuting individual lawbreakers. Posted by: Jurgan on July 12, 2009 at 12:27 PM | PERMALINKBut wait, wait, wait,...won't prosecuting the torturers be "counterproductive"? Does anyone really think the Dems are going to bust top Bush officials for ANYTHING? The two-party system is dead people. It simply does not work. It allows America to break it's own laws and international agreements w/o prosecution, more or less conviction. It's time to rethink the Nader positions. Positions a true liberal/Dem should be for. Nader would be kicking *ss and taking names. The current crop of Dems? Hardly. The village has already moved on concerning this issue. Hilzoy is either just pretending they haven't or is being played for a fool by Holder and the Dems. Sincerely, XtoG Posted by: XtoG on July 12, 2009 at 1:08 PM | PERMALINKI certainly agree that the democrats aren't left enough. And for that matter, it is a safe bet that a lot of them are complicit in the Bush/Cheney torture regime. I'm not about to trust Nader either, though. He's a good talker with a lot of excellent ideas that I agree 100% with. He's also a pretty horrid politician. He's not very well organized, and he shoots himself in the foot far too often, particularly with that "democrats and republicans are all the same" talk. Sounding that condescending toward the voters' political parties alienates them. The real problem is that just establishing a political party out of thin air and jumping straight into nation-wide politics is a pretty unworkable scenario. Starting from the bottom (town/county elections) and working up to the state and then national stage is more likely to work. The problem is, that takes years or even decades, and most people don't have that much patience. Posted by: Shade Tail on July 12, 2009 at 4:22 PM | PERMALINK ..."They (the CIA) might also try getting something right for a change." Post a comment
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