Torture Memos

NPR mentioned the release (finally - after much stonewalling and extensions) of four new torture memos today and the DOJ's explication. Short version: You CIA agents did in fact torture people, which is illegal, but we won't prosecute you, because you were just following (illegal) orders.

Update:

Glenn Greenwald excerpts and discusses the memos here, and concludes:

At least when it comes to the orders of our highest government leaders and the DOJ lawyers who authorized them, these are pure war crimes, justified in the most disgustingly clinical language and with clear intent of wrongdoing. FDL has a petition urging Eric Holder to immediately appoint a Special Prosecutor to determine if criminal proceedings should commence.

Obama did the right thing by releasing these memos, providing all the information and impetus the citizenry should need to demand investigations and prosecutions. But it is up to citizens to demand that the rule of law be applied.

[...]

Marc Ambinder reports that senior Obama officials told him (anonymously, of course) that nothing Obama or Eric Holder said today was intended to foreclose prosecutions [of Bush officials]. Russ Feingold made a similar point.

But I don’t believe it will happen.

Needless to say, I vehemently disagree with anyone -- including Obama -- who believes that prosecutions are unwarranted. These memos describe grotesque war crimes -- legalized by classic banality-of-evil criminals and ordered by pure criminals -- that must be prosecuted if the rule of law is to have any meaning.

But that’s a pretty big “if”.

Finally, it should be emphasized -- yet again -- that it was not our Congress, nor our media, nor our courts that compelled disclosure of these memos. Instead, it was the ACLU's tenacious efforts over several years which single-handedly pryed (sic) these memos from the clutched hands of the government.

I’m surprised (and thankful) the ACLU is still in business.