Bravo McCain

In conclusion, Mr Finder agrees with what I said earlier on Michael's two post;

"The process that Mr. Holder has unleashed threatens to undermine one of the basic principles of our government. For a new administration to repudiate a consequential legal decision in an individual case made by the previous administration serves to delegitimize our government itself, which is, after, all premised upon institutional continuity.

Whatever Mr. Holder's motive for reopening these cases — whether a well-intentioned desire to provide the American people with the “reckoning” for the “abusive and unlawful practices in the ‘war on terror' ” that he demanded last year, or a more cynical political calculation— the consequences will be grievous."

Joe, that article by Finder is flimsy at best. You rely on some claim that the cases had already been reviewed by US prosecutors in Virginia and found not fit for prosecution.

first, surely you know the state of US prosecutors in the Bush administration so political influence on those decisions should not be surprising and the fact that US prosecutors decided not to prosecute doesn't really mean anything.

second, finder completely ignores the fact that the Office of Professional Responsibility specifically advised Holder to revisit at least 12 of those no-prosecute decisions.

Holder is doing the exact thing you want from an AG - following the law. Whether it is politically a good thing or not or a misstep or whatever is completely irrelevant and good for him that he and President Obama know this.

Joe: Your opinion of John McCain of the "recent years" is indeed known, however, I think you missed a great opportunity to explain why this is/was so.
.
The pre-2007 McCain was adamantly anti-torture, having been subjected to it himself in Vietnam.
.
Sadly, John McCain the presidential candidate of 2007-2008, was not anti-torture.
.
The 2009 McCain is, again, anti-torture. The prodigal son has returned.
....
Re: Finder/Holder. Our country has endured investigations of Watergate, Iran-Contra, Whitewater, to name a few. All of these were potential criminal/civil matters, none of them involved the potential violation of the Treaties of Geneva.
.
We owe it to ourselves, our children, our forefathers and our constitution to investigate this matter to determine what happened and, if necessary, take corrective action.

Why don't they just change the constitution so that it states that any politician, government worker, or private contractor, associated with a Republican administration, is not subject to the laws of the land, unlike the rest of the people? That appears to be the de facto law anyway.

Joe -- I'm a huge fan of your work, even when I disagree with you. Since you get more than your fair share of criticism, I've always refrained from commenting... you have enough sniping.

But I can't share your enthusiasm for McCain's statement. It is a ridiculously damning statement on us -- our country, our media, and our politics -- that a prominent person suggesting that torture is wrong is cause for celebration.

There are those -- Jake Tapper of ABC News, who I likewise admire, among them -- who have said that the very fact we are having this debate -- is torture good or bad? -- is a sign of our nation's vital democracy. I disagree. It is a sign of our degradation, and a cause for shame.

Joke Line, as is often the case, fails -- intentionally or unintentionally -- to name the US Attorney under whose direction "career prosecutors" reviewed the CIA torture cases: noted perjurer Paul McNulty, who lied to congress when he told the Senate Judiciary Committee in a hearing on February 6, 2007, "that the White House played only a marginal role in the dismissals" of U.S. Attorneys fired all on the same day, a statement that was contradicted by later testimony and subsequently released documents. He also said most of the prosecutors were fired for "performance-related" reasons.

That latter lie is what caused the fired U.S. Attorneys to stand up on their hind legs and raise hell, eventually resulting in first AAG McNulty's, and then AG Gonzalez' resignations in shame.

McNulty's involvement alone is enough reason for Holder to take a second look at this suspect initial review.

Bravo Joe, It's refreshing to read your suggestion to prosecute this genuinely rotten man , especially after yet another day of him aggravatingly getting his name in the news using his ever welcoming Fox news pulpit.

Joe Klein:
.
Your fidelity to the rule of law is overwhelming.

Prosecute Cheney. He's admitted that he approved the water-boarding. He'll probably get off, but I've come to believe that a public excoriation of this dreadful man is a necessary cathartic.

Now I can understand why you think that liberals and "civil liberties extremists" are bent on revenge, as opposed to waging a campaign to reintroduce laws, consequences and accountability into our government (and elite institutions in general).
.
No, Joe Klein, we should not prosecute Richard Cheney simply to have a media-driven national catharsis. That's insane.
.
We're not motivated by revenge, we're inspired by the ideals represented in our Constitution.
.
You should try that perspective on for size sometime, Joe Klein.

You're killing me Joe. Despite, eight years of lies from the Bush and Cheney administration and neglect by a media who still can bring themselves to say the word -- you now have the balls to say we should take their word, or a word of a journalist who says their word was good -- that these matter were adjudicated properly?
.
You and this reporter and all of the Cheney's on the Sunday circuit fault Holder for politicizing the process, how rich! Nevertheless it is typical GOP strategem and the fact that the media falls for it repeatedly is like a battered woman taking back her abuser because he promised not to do it again.
.
You throw around the term career prosecutor as if it is some great soothing balm that will make us forget that ideology is not the only possible motivating factor. Did it ever occur to anyone in the press that an implied threat of ruination could weaken the knees of the most dispassionate pragmatist. Do you really not know that human beings can be vulnerable on a variety of fronts beyond being a kool-aid drinking Republican?
.
What about the guy with two mortgages and a kid in college, or gal whose just a few years away from her pension and doesn't want to spend her final years in the cubicle next to the men's room. Do you think they weren't privy to the worst kept secret in Washington -- how vindictive the Cheney white house had become. I heard the most seven most dreaded words in Washington were "the vice-president's office on the phone..."
.
You only wrote stories about the political firings at justice when they didn't get their way. So what, do you think civil servants can't be punished? Sure there are protections from random firings, but that doesn't mean they can put you in a dank dusty basement or worse send you out to Alaska where you will never be heard from again. Any prosecutor career or otherwise who didn't fear for their job or their way of life was either independently wealthy or a fool.
.
So don't tell me that nothing could have possibly influenced how this case was pursued. In administration that routinely lied, whose VP is right now advocating that our duly elected President break the law on his behalf by intervening in a justice department investigation has absolutely no credibility with me and shouldn't have any credibility with you. Joe what little credibility you had you literally just threw away on an administration whose words and deeds aren't worth a warm cup of spit on a dry hot day in the desert.

...well, McCain certainly has been on both sides of the torture equation...having spoken out against it and voted AGAINST the CIA torture ban in 2008, but I digress.

Shorter Joe Klein: We should turn our courtrooms in Kabuki theaters.

Seriously, his column is stupid and repulsive. This is supposed to be a country of laws.

I do not think prosecution of Cheney for acts he committed in office is possible, especially as he can claim those acts were privileged and also “needed”.

As for legality, if Eric Holder pursues him based on the rue of Law, it will not work. Why? Not just for the reasons I have stated above but also because there was (in reality) no rule of law per se for a long time under George W.

What is the goal of all these Cheney interviews and his continued decision to flaunt his “crimes” and support for such crimes with impunity. Surely this continuing discourse must have an anticipated end or outcome? Political and other discussions of this sort just do not occur for their own sake.

As for Cheney being excoriated by McCain, I am also in total support! I think more people should lend their voices in a wholesale condemnation of what he so vocally supports. Even criminals LIE to hide their offensive conduct. People who have done evil, deny. In this case, it appears Cheney is out of touch with the implications of his support of these brutal acts.

Anyway, in general, Evil men and Women need to be strongly addressed, their acts condemned and to what ever extent possible such people should be prosecuted and made to pay for their crimes.

This is why we live in a civilized society, no?
There should be no room for crime and support of same should be just as strictly met with stiff penalties.

http://theblindspotsofgod.wordpress.com/

Joe: Speak to some of our foreign service people. Those abroad will tell you about the amused contempt they encounter when they talk about the abuse of human rights, for example, in Zimbabwe. We have become a banana republic. Soon we will have a banana legal system. Make every issue purely political; and no investigation or prosecution can take place.

It's a great game. and the Republicans know how to play it.

JK might want to reconsider the use of "cathartic" the word, but I agree with his suggestion otherwise. At the time of Clinton's impeachment, I was of the view that the whole proceeding was pointless, but in retrospect I've come to see some benefit to it. At least it gave new life to the old cliche that no one should be above the law. Three cheers also for the judge who whacked Clinton with sanctions. Break the law -- pay the price.

Dick Cheney has confessed publicly to war crimes. He should be prosecuted for the criminal he is. Not as a way of taking revenge on him; that's pointless. Rather as a way of demonstrating yet again that this country is bigger than Cheney, not vice versa. Break the law -- pay the price.

Yesterday morning, in about as friendly an environment as he could ask for, and fed questions for which "softball" is an inadequate description, he proudly produced yet another admission of conspiracy to torture. He deserves as much mercy as those who, at his behest, suffered those "enhanced interrogation techniques" he so values -- when they are inflicted on others. But the catharsis lies not in inflicting anything on Cheney, whether it be a literal physical slap on the wrist or death by flashlight. It lies in vindicating the law by enforcing adherence to it.

Not that we'll live to see anything like it.

Holder is not making a mistake.

Joe, the world is watching us. Once the ACLU won its case and so much was made public, the highest legal official in the land had no choice but to investigate something.

Our credibility is at stake. We lose moral standing if we do not at least SEEM like we're prosecuting lawbreakers. How can we criticize other countries for human-rights' abuses if we don't even bother to do something about our own egregious actions?

We're in a lose/lose situation but at this point just saying that corrections have been made isn't good enough. It is very unfair that the real culprits will go unpunished while the underlings get the blame but it we don't at least pretend to prosecute those who broke even Bush's very lax standards we lose most of what moral standing we still had in the world.

There are no easy answers but I think Holder is right to continue, all the while insisting that he has a very narrow brief. His investigation is not going to be an open-ended travesty like Whitewater became.

But does Holder's decision to prosecute really implicate the White House? After all, isn't that assuming the Obama administration is working along the same quasi-legitimate lines of cooperation between an "independent" Justice and the political intrigue of the White House?

http://www.political-buzz.com/

Prosecute Cheney. He's admitted that he approved the water-boarding. He'll probably get off, but I've come to believe that a public excoriation of this dreadful man is a necessary cathartic.
.
Once again Joe misses the point. Administering justice isn't about doing what feels right. It's about dispassionatley following the evidence where it leads and then determining whether a crime was commited and following through if it turns out there was.
.
The thing is, that the issue at hand is even bigger than the torture itself and Dick Cheney is at the center of it. The question before the house is "can the President of The United States order someone to violate the law and who's culpable if he does?"
.
Even people who somehow think that torturing confessions out of known terrorists is absolutely brilliant ought to be nervous to think that all it takes is a permission slip from the OLC and a malevolent informer to turn anybody at all into a terrorist suspect and hence a torture victim.
.
Steven Hatfill has only his lack of ME descent to thank that he isn't himself a torture victim. Certainly the rules currently in place would have qualified him.

I've come to believe that a public excoriation of this dreadful man is a necessary cathartic.

You misspelled "execution."

[...] disappointing that some have been persuaded by Finder's allegations because they don't withstand even minimal scrutiny. He accused Holder [...]