From the sub-title used with the LATimes story over the weekend about AG Eric Holder’s long-rumored, now reportedly “all but certain” plan to appoint a special prosecutor to examine torture during the Bush Adminstration:
So non-“excessive waterboarding” is now legal?
From the article itself…
(Note for wingnuts: The use of the word “liberally” there is precisely appropriate, as the Bush Adminstration’s legal policies on torture (and most everything else) are the very definition of classic liberalism — just in case any clue-impaired wingnuts out there who have been horn-swaggled into believing they believe in conservatism remain under any remaining delusions about that.)
As to the actual news there, if taken at face value — even as it comes from an anonymous source, in a less-than-credible paper — it would signal the absolutely shameful notion that the Obama/Holder Administration is willing to recognize the entirely illigitimate, entirely illegal patena of “legality” the Bush Administration concocted out of whole clothe in order to carry out its blatant perversion of Constitutional justice, as if it was actually legitimate.
While those who went beyond the confines of the illegal and illegitimate Bush Administration “authorizations” should absolutely be prosecuted as well (page 2 of the LATimes article details several outrageous cases in point), the apparent recognition of any legitimate “authority” of the Bush Administration’s scandalous torture memos is, as mentioned, just shameful and equally scandalous. If true.
One hopeful, if rather ironic note from the Times article: The unnamed DoJ official says that Holder, “as attorney general…has the obligation to follow the law.”
Really? All of them? Or just the ones that affect people nobody has ever heard of? We’ll hope he discovers it to be the former.
Post-script: I actually wrote the above item on Sunday night, but held it back to allow our Sibel Edmonds coverage to stay at the top of the blog. In the meantime, MSNBC’s Countdown took up the story with guest Scott Horton on Monday, and focused on many of the same issues I was struck by above…
- Filed in Categories: Bush LegacyEric HolderTorture
23 Comments on “LATimes: Holder ‘All But Certain’ to Launch ‘Narrow’ Probe into Bush Administration Torture”
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“Narrow”, as in “fake”. Holder to launch FAKE probe.
Another partisan hack AG.
There is no rule of law in the US thanks to apparatchiks like Holder.
My cynical take on this is “what about it needs to be covered up?”
It’s what “official” investigations are all about.
Why do they hide these things anymore? They should have the headline: “Holder to launch FAKE Rove investigation”. No one would say anything, seriously! Just say the truth! That should be the actual headline. I’m serious!
OT: Computer scientists reveal new voting machine hack successfully changed votes
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/08/12/computer-scientists-reveal-new-voting-machine-hack/
– Tom
Just another day for the third term of the Bush administration.
It’s such a relief to know that “egregious” cases of torture will be looked into. We can take solace in that, at least, only “non-egregious” cases of torture will be swept under the carpet. I suggest appointing Ken Starr to investigate. Surely there were enough sexual shenanigans going on at Gitmo etc. to catch his attention. Seriously, though, how on Earth is a special prosecutor worthy of the name going to stop with just the “egregious” cases? It would appear that the fix is, once again, in. Oh well, the world’s supposed to end anyway…
Someone called Obama the 3rd term of Bush…
Actually W Bush was the 4th term of fascist rule. Implemented covertly under Reagan…further entrenched by Bush 41 and Clinton. W Bush was the first Prez to unabashedly use fasicsm as his policy…W Bush wasn’t covert; he was flat out unflinchingly fascist and proud of it.
Now Obama has taken fascism dressed it up in the language of hope and put a million dollar smile on it…whether it’s the velvet glove or the iron fist; it’s fascism.
Unelected corporate lackies are you leaders now.
Show trials are your entertainment and economic slavery is your reality.
Welcome to America…land of the shopper and home of the ignorant.
This may land up being like an onion. Once they start peeling back the layers of crime and corruption they won’t be able to stop. Between this and the Edmonds case the entire government could be brought down. Then what do you do?
Comment #9…Demeur
I offer the Valerie Plame case. An obvious Dick Cheney crime of treason among other things. Cheney offered up his COS Scooter Libby to fall on the sword and that was the end of it. These lawless goons have legal fire walls around them…and their lackies-minions gladly take the heat for the higher ups crimes.
Democracy has been brought down a long time ago (see Reagan)…a Fascist-Oligarchical government has taken it’s place. That’s what the Reagan “revolution” was; a corporate takeover of American democracy.
The Bushies are out of power…so that government can’t be “brought down”. Holder-Obama however could further deceive the masses by holding these show trials to give the illusion of democratic upholding of the law.
I hope I’m wrong…but dammit it doesn’t look like that. If somewhere down the road history shows me to be just a loony conspiracy theorist then so be it. I doubt that…my experience tells me otherwise.
To have accountability or not to have accountability,
That is the question:
Whether tis nobler in the mind to just look forward
And forget the torture and lawlessness of the Bush Administration,
Or, to take up the rule of law, and prosecute them.
And by investigation and prosecution, end them.
Accountability or not—
No more—and by that we say, stop this.
This heartache and thousand felonious shocks
That Bush suffered the country with his legacy.
Tis accountability, devoutly to be wished.
Accountability or not—
Investigation and prosecution. Ay, there’s the rub,
For with that sunshine of facts what crimes may come
When we have revealed the truth of the Neocons
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
For the rule of law that makes us all equal.
For who would spurn the Constitution and its laws,
The cronies backdoor, the corporations outsourcing,
The pangs of Darth Vader, Gonzales’ no recall,
The insolence of Bush, the spurns
That merited the cries of Impeachment!
Then we learned the house and senate
Left our table bare.
How can these representatives say,
To those that grunt and sweat under a weary life,
That the dread of something other than Bush,
That history will prove him a great visionary,
It puzzles the will.
And makes us bear this shame upon our country,
That will last for eternity.
Will investigation make cowards of us all,
Will prosecution derive a resolution
Of the administration that had no law?
With this regard the rule of law
Must not lose the name of action.
For the record…
When this story first broke about a month ago; I too was optimistic about true justice being brought to the Bush administration…But sitting with the events since Obama took office brought me back to sobriety.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say that Obama is Bush’s 3rd term…Obama is more like a return to Clinton, Clinton was a huge sellout.
Comment #11..DONN WITHERSPOON
That was exquisite my friend…
re Bluehawk’s comment about the third term of Clinton — I guess that explains why the Congolese student asked Mrs. Clinton what her husband thought about the Chinese loan to the Congo — the student must have thought that Bill Clinton was still president.
In the other thread, we said that currently there’s 2 stories not in the “liberal media” (corporate owned media ANBCBSNNX): Blackwater founder/murder/prostitution story & Sibel Edmonds.
Let me add a 3rd, and this is only recnet stories:
Computer scientists reveal new voting machine hack successfully changed votes
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/08/12/computer-scientists-reveal-new-voting-machine-hack/
Computer Scientists Take Over Electronic Voting Machine with New Programming Technique
http://www.jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/news/news_releases/release.sfe?id=873
OOPS! Someone beat me too it! Sorry!
🙂
Nicely written, Brad.
The Center for Constitutional Rights prepared a letter to Attorney General Holder asking him to assign a special prosecutor to investigate and prosecute “the entire torture team.”
Those interested can link and sign the letter.
Narrow probe. If it wasn’t so serious, that phrase would be laughable. The narrow probe is designed entirely to quash any attempt to really investigate what happened.
Probe those instances that went beyond what was legally outlined? What kind of bull-shit is that? WTF is “legal torture?”
This is nothing but a continuation of the bushco bull-shit that we endured for eight years.
We needed a patriot and all we got was a freaking politician.
Uh, Tom, I think the word you’re grasping for is “puppet” …
Isn’t it customary in such cases for the prosecutor to preface his activities with the caveat that he will investigate the matter at hand regardless of where it leads and let the chips fall where they may? Maybe it’s just a touch of Waldheimer’s disease (you know – you get old and forget you used to be a Nazi), but at least that’s my recollection.
“It’ll be narrow in scope…meaning, if they did anything illegal outside of the narrow scope, that’s OK. Oh, f*ck it! Even if they did anything illegal within the narrow scope, it’s OK! You know, the way we usually do ‘investigations’ into the Bush administration. Simply because I announced this FAKE investigation, it will shut everyone up! Why did I use the word narrow? You figure it out! It’ll be narrow…YEAH! That’s the ticket!” – MAD Magazine – what they’re really saying…
There is really no difference between Holder’s effort to limit inquiry to those few occasions in which a CIA officer or contractor may have exceeded the guidelines of quasi-legal memorandums which, themselves, should be grounds for prosecution of the attorneys who wrote them and the Bush regime’s limitation of prosecution in the wake of Abu Ghraib to “a few bad apples.”
In both instances, a few low level grunts are sacrificed to absolve those who ordered torture in the first place.
Ernest A. Canning
What about the doctors who participated in the torture program? They should lose their licenses but so far there is no movement to investigate them.