Agreed.

I can accept compromise on many things, but this isn't even compromise it's absolute and total capitulation.

I honestly do wonder, if this level of criminality can be ignored is there any crime in the name of national security shocking enough to be prosecuted? People who steal a tv set or who are arrested for possessing less than an ounce of weed are dealt with in the harshest manner in this country, often serving years in jails that would shock Dickens. But those who would torture people mercilessly are given a pass? This is what one would expect in Stalin's Russia, not in the United States.

From Wikipedia/nuremberg trials:

Critics of the Nuremberg trials argued that the charges against the defendants were only defined as "crimes" after they were committed and that therefore the trial was invalid as a form of "victors' justice".

The US does not even have this defense as justification. If the law is so malleable as to be rendered useless by the powerful, then stating an adherence to the rule of law by the most powerful nation on Earth is a joke.

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/nuremberg/nurembergaccount.html

Excerpts
The Nuremberg Trials
By Doug Linder (c) 2000
“No trial provides a better basis for understanding the nature and causes of evil than do the Nuremberg trials from 1945 to 1949. Those who come to the trials expecting to find sadistic monsters are generally disappointed. What is shocking about Nuremberg is the ordinariness of the defendants: men who may be good fathers, kind to animals, even unassuming--yet who committed unspeakable crimes…. Like Eichmann, most Nuremberg defendants never aspired to be villains. Rather,
they over-identified with an ideological cause and suffered from a lack of imagination or empathy: they couldn't fully appreciate the human consequences of their career-motivated decisions.
THE DEFENSE CASE
Hermann Goering ….In a long answer delivered without notes, Goering gave his account of the Nazi rise to power. He told the court, "Once we came to power, we were determined to hold on to it under all circumstances." Goering was unrepentant. He evaded no questions; offered no apologies. He testified that the concentration camps were necessary to preserve order: "It was a question of removing danger." The leadership principle, which concentrated all power in the Fuhrer, was "the same principle on which the Catholic church and the government of the USSR are both based."
Other defendants used their testimony to emphasize that

they were merely following orders--although the IMT disallowed defense of superior orders, the issue was raised anyway in the hope that it might affect sentencing.

The trials also helped expose many of the defendants for the criminals they were, thus denying them a martyrdom in the eyes of the German public that they might otherwise have achieved.”

Will it be said; that our CIA did the right thing in the interest of the Country and ideological cause. US against them ?

Yeah, it is unacceptable (although maybe not quite as bad as concentration camps, eh?)

Following orders is an attractive argument to make, and accept, because it implies that someone, somewhere, is guilty. Will they ever be found out and prosecuted?

My psychic powers predicted this post.

There are a few points I would like to make in the interest of a full discussion. First, the DOJ made the case in that sovereign immunity clause filing that if the executive voluntarily chose to release incriminating documents, then civilian agencies can file lawsuits. So I would reccomend contributing dollars and time to the ACLU.

Second, Congress is already indicating that they are going to investigate. My wish is that there is a push for a special prosecutor. The prsecutor would be immune from executive considerations vis a vis protection from prosecution.

Third, only operatives who performed torture are immune from DOJ proswcution. The architects of the policy have no such protection. That leaves Rumsfeld, Yoo, Cheney, and Bush open for prosecution.

Finally, the public will begin to mobilize against the torture policies. Any and all prosecutions must be underscored by public outrage. This must be a moral and legal repudiation of torture. I resent Nuremburg being used, because it is NOT YET an effective barometer of the current historical environment. We as a nation have to adjudicate and explore our existing legal means and play this out for justice. By invoking Nuremburg, the dialogue is pre-Godwined and the will of the people is silenced. You are throwing your hands in the air and weeping over what is not yet lost.

I have already contacted my Congresscritters, the DOJ and contributed to the ACLU. I will sign any reasonable petition that will help lubricate the wheels of justice. What I am NOT doing is invoking an international war crimes tribunal to describe the current situation. That is wrong. We have had a peaceful transition of power. We still have many avenues of justice to pursue. The fight is far from over. The fact that the memos have been released is a huge step in the right direction.

I get that this is your opinion, and I got that from your article. But you're engaging in lynch-mob witch-hunting mentality, oleeb.

I'm all for sane investigations. I think that's Congress' job first, not Obama's job. Or maybe a special prosecutor. Having the Executive Branch investigate itself is problematic even if the individuals being investigated are no longer in the EB.

The general public impression for those who seek to be informed has to be that the Bush Administration authorized and engaged in conduct which fits common notions of torture. But there is a gap between the public impression and the law which demands a higher standard of proof in most cases. And as I suggested, careful parsing might let the OLC attorneys off the legal hook. So an investigation needs to proceed diligently and not by assuming the desired conclusion.

"We" don't know with certainty just what crimes were committed by which individuals. The only way to put the government on trial in law is via impeachment of individuals. But those are no longer in office.

That doesn't make sense.

Your commanding officer gives you an order. You question it. The officer says, yes it's a legit order and legal. You proceed to break the law.

That doesn't make you a sadist. (I think some of the right wing objections involve a conflation of sadism with torture).

It makes you a willing part of the chain of illegal conduct, if the conduct is in fact illegal. Were you misled by the officer? Yes. Should you have known better? In some case Yes, in other cases, No or Maybe. Should you be hounded for following orders? IMO, No, but neither should your conduct be whitewashed or ignored.

We should not prosecute people merely for giving a bad impression or perception. We should only prosecute for law-breaking conduct.

There is a difference...

This is not verification with the officer who gave you the order, this is verification with the agency of law that would be responsible for pressing the charges of same, that said activities were not chargeable. Secondly, the DOJ is outside the chain of military command, which is why the 'following orders' meme is not totally accurate.

In effect, the DOJ, by pre-authorizing the activities, granted the actors a virtual writ of immunity that must be honored now, as despicable as that may be.

If you were to go into court right now, on any charge, and present to the prosecutor a letter from that same prosecutor that says 'I will not prosecute you for doing this because it is legal', that's a pretty tough defense to beat.

If the following from Truthseeker is correct (and it is) then your statement tht "The only folks who could get punished legally will be the lawyers" is simply incorrect. Take a look and then check out Truthseeker's post:

Today, Obama absolved CIA agents who tortured on the grounds that they were under orders. In other words, he tells us they are innocent of any crime.

"In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution," the president said.

This violates the Convention Against Torture, to which we are bound, which states in Article 2:

1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.

2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political in stability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/h_cat39.htm

Quoting Karl:

"Unless the situation is at gunpoint, one will not take a superior officer at their word about the legality of a particular questionable action, but will consult the appropriate entity"

That's exactly my point. That's what they did. And the appropriate entity may have given the wrong answer, but they did get an answer.

One thing, and I am doing this from memory, I don't recall Obama saying the interrogators were innocent. What he said was they will not prosecute. It is common for prosecutors not to seek charges when they feel they don't have a winnable case, even when they are certain the target may be guilty...

Imagine the flip side. What if these individuals were charged and the majority of them were acquitted. What message would that send?

Yes, you obey all lawful orders.

At that unfortunate point in our lives, the Bush administration proposed that torture was enhanced interrogation. They also undermined the Geneva Conventions by directly attacking its language.

I will also add that Congress did not declare war in Viet Nam, Granada, Panama, Lebanon, and Iraq (twice). That is a gross violation of the constitution and in the case of Iraq international law.

With that being said, I have obeyed unlawful orders as a Marine in Iraq. Therefore, I am a war criminal. Would you advocate my prosecution? I won't tell you what I did or did not do... But given the nature of war, you can guess. So, I repeat: am I a war criminal subject to prosecution? If not, then why not?

It would send a good message if the trials were good (conducted well and correctly). But more likely, a close investigation would not lead to charges being pressed if all defendants were unlikely to be found not guilty.

It would help clear the air, and it would say that a jury (I presume jury trials) found they didn't break the law.

Next?

Any more stained than arms for hostages? Any more stained than funded paramilitaries in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Panama? Any more stained than supprting Suharto? Any more stained than Viet Nam?

I think you get my drift. This is a terrobly flawed empire masquerading as a democracy. This is why I take any positive steps towards transparency, diplomacy, and sanity as GOOD. This nation has caused so much damage, and the efforts to undo this damage and right our country are so onerous, that we have to celebrate the good, criticize the bad, and strive for greater and grander acts of decency and justice.

Perspective. It is all I ask for.

No, Obama has stained his presidency with this. Pace Keith Olbermann, I think it would ill become Obama to go after the previous administration over this issue, and it would alienate a large numbers of moderate voters. He's changing the policy. End of executive branch story.

At the same time, however, Oba,a's blithely opened for door anybody else who wants to throw their hat in the ring. Congress to start with, they are the really appropriate ones to launch an investigation -- though they largely are complicit, having done nothing at any point along the way, even when the indicators were clear enough.

So then, perhaps the people. Perhaps those of you who are so incensed could lead the charge and engender a groundswell. Then congress would have to act.

Glenn Greenwald interviewed Jameel Jaffer from the ACLU and was told the same thing. See Update III.

Jameel (a) calls for a Special Prosecutor on behalf of the ACLU and (b) emphasizes that nothing said by Obama or Holder today should be understood to foreclose criminal prosecutions.

TAP also has an article on the memos and quotes Alex Abdo, a legal fellow with the ACLU's National Security Project:

Abdo notes that the blanket immunity issued by Obama also did not seem to apply to officials outside the CIA. Abdo says that Obama's statement "leaves open the possibility of prosecuting the architects of the Bush administration program, Justice Department officials, and senior level Bush administration officials."

Bravo to Obama for releasing these memos, against much pressure. He deserves credit. (Remember, carrots and sticks). Giving a pass to people at the CIA who followed the memos was a way for him to dampen down their anger at the release.

Look, these moves are risky, in a sense. The GOP will be using all of this stuff if we get attacked again, and blame a lax securty posture. A demoralized CIA that avoids risks and sits on its hands is bad too.

Keeping the White House out of the Pro-Torture Party's hands is a paramount concern for anyone who sincerely wants to avoid a repeat.

One more thing, the "following orders" blurb is misleading. The Allies actually let most of the Nazis off. We punished the ring leaders, hung a dozen or so, and left.

Nelson Mandela also didn't punish every single culprit. (I wonder if some of you would have been badmouthing Mandela, for lacking the proper spirit of vengance???) But what he did do was have a Truth and Reconciliation committee. And I think that would be a wise move to find out everything and remove the cloud hanging over this country.

(* carrots and sticks )
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/04/carrot-and-sticks-for-specter-model-for.html

I can understand that sentiment, but if not now, when?

Obama has more of a mandate than Bush ever had in building this unitary executive authoritarianism. Bush/Cheney left office with all time lows in public support. Polls have shown for years now that the majority of the public want to see executive crimes prosecuted. I think the tipping point came with the FISA vote, but that doesn't mean things can't be changed now. If this is let go now, how will time make it more feasible?

Obama deserves some credit for modest reforms, but this in a time of great opportunity for overhauling the system. The aftermath of the Bush years and the economic tsunami demand enormous transformation, not the reinforcement of the very oligarchy that has flipped America belly up.

But he has tried to have his cake and eat it too (or cut his loaves in half as Des says). He has presented a persona of lofty principles about transparency and structural change, all the while acting in favor of the desires of the elite establishment All one has to do is look at most of his cabinet and staff. Look at how Holder has changed his tune. Why would all that change if he got another term?

Indeed, from the first there have been abuses in the American enterprise, but that does not excuse any of them. Blood is blood, pain is pain. No ones suffering is worth more or less than anyone elses. This is incident is merely one of the most recent abuses in a long history. One thing here though is that Obama has failed in his promises to so many by his excusing the torturers. It does not matter that he excuses one or all of them, he has spoken.

Subplot or not, excusing torturers is wrong. Of course the architects of the war are guilty of the crime of waging a war of aggression, among many other things. The discussion of the problems with the torturers should not be seen as diminishing any of the other crimes.

Perhaps if you were to see or experience real, unsolicited torture you would think differently. But then again maybe not...

What happened here was people were given orders, they questioned the legality of those orders, and were told, in effect, yes, these orders are legal.

Excusing an interrogator (any branch) from culpability is, in effect, alleging that they have no knowledge of the Army Field Manual or their SOP equivalent, Convention Against Torture, Geneva Convention, Nuremburg Tribunal Charter, US Constitution, or common ethics.

This is like excusing a police officer from shooting a wheelchair bound, unarmed elderly woman in the back because the Chief had “expanded” use-of-force regulations.

Military personnel and law enforcement are trained in the laws, regulations, rules and procedures applying to their profession. I imagine that it's a high priority for interrogators and their responsibility to know them.

That’s not to say that someone's actions aren't mitigated if they were grossly misled by seniors, but that’s up to a court to decide. I don’t think anyone is out to get those who were caught up or forced into abetting this and didn’t commit egregious crimes, but it needs to be sorted out in public. Secrecy and do-nothingness has brought us low.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Whom_the_Bell_Tolls

"Because thou art a miracle of deafness....It is not that thou art stupid. Thou art simply deaf. One who is deaf cannot hear music. Neither can he hear the radio. So he might say, never having heard them, that such things do not exist

As he had done in "A Farewell to Arms", Hemingway employs the fear of modern armament to destroy romantic conceptions of the ancient art of war: combat, sportsmanlike competition and the aspect of hunting. Heroism becomes butchery: the most powerful picture employed here is the shooting of María's parents against the wall of a slaughterhouse. Glory exists in the official dispatches only; here, the "disillusionment" theme of A Farewell to Arms is adapted.

The excuse needed by some who tortured and didn’t care if memos were legalized permission slips. Will they be brought to justice?
Having never read the law, is this an excuse for violating the law?

America needs to wake up. “Take the rafter from your own eye before trying to remove your neighbors splinter “.
May 1, 2001 REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT TO STUDENTS AND FACULTY AT NATIONAL DEFENSE UNIVERSITY
“They hate our friends, they hate our values, they hate democracy and freedom and individual liberty.”

No more words, Be Still, We are not the beacon on the Hill
They hate our values they hate our hypocrisy.

Losing It – Rush 1982 album Signals
Words by neil peart, music by geddy lee and alex lifeson
Thirty years ago, how the words would flow
With passion and precision,
But now his mind is dark and dulled
By sickness and indecision.

And he stares out the kitchen door
Where the sun will rise no more...

Some are born to move the world ---
To live their fantasies
But most of us just dream about
The things we’d like to be

Sadder still to watch it die
Than never to have known it
For you -- the blind who once could see ---
The bell tolls for thee...