How black and white are we really talking about?

Per Godwin's Law, we were not executing en-mass here.

Well put, DF, but I would offer a caveat. A protracted criminal investigation that does not result in convictions would not serve the purpose of demonstrating accountability to the world. While I believe that the torture was certainly unethical and perhaps criminal, it's not clear that anyone will be convicted.

Moreover, given the ambiguity and differences of opinion, I'm not sure that I feel that these guys should be convicted. Waterboarding is torture, but it's not murder, and it's certainly not genocide. There are intelligent people of good conscience who believe that it's ethically permissible in certain contexts, and the CIA guys had backing from legal counsel.

So while I agree with the principle, I think that there is a real question of whether the principle applies to the example, and the Administration should weigh carefully whether to proceed.

Regardless, I would like to see some legislation or legal ruling which unambiguously outlaws such practices so that if this should happen again, there would be no question of whether or not to prosecute.

I did see Smith of Fox.  I thought, "Wow.  Someone on Fox News actually has a conscience.  There is a point at which one of these people will actually say, 'Enough.'"

I don't watch any cable news at all these days, aside from clips like this that earn buzz on the net.  My last residence had free cable, but I didn't order it when I moved into my new place earlier this year.  I don't miss it one bit.  Everything is a circus on cable news.  I feel infinitely more sane when I am not trying to make sense of the abject horeshit that passes for information and discourse in that realm.

A tangent: CNN's early adoption of Twitter is one of the reasons that I doubt its usefulness.  Brevity is the soul of wit, but it's also the soul of the soundbite news presentation that passes as the gold standard these days.  What better way to make sure that nothing is ever discussed with any detail, reference or nuance than to keep all thoughts under a 140 character limit?  And some people seem to regard this development as liberating!  Unbelievable.

Anyhow.

When I brought up the Nuremberg defense earlier, it wasn't because I was eager to start making Nazi analogies.  However, it just so happens that the "good faith" defense of interrogators' actions deals directly with the subject of the Nuremberg defense - namely whether or not an individual can be exonerated for potential war crimes on the basis that they were merely complying with orders from a superior.  The unpleasant fact that this may well be precisely the legal precedent that we're dealing with should not be dismissed as sensational or needless comparison to Nazis or their acts.  To be clear, I was not making comparison of specific acts, but it should give us significant pause that this is the legal territory in which we may find ourselves.

Nuremberg Principle IV:

"The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him."

Does this statement not deal directly with the question of interrogators acting in "good faith"?  As for the question of moral choice, there's this story about a soldier whose moral conflict over the order to commit these acts lead her to suicide, her last words, left in a notebook, redacted.  I imagine that these words probably would have been instructive as to the nature of moral choice.

You say that other concerns are more immediate and important, but I cannot imagine what is more important than our humanity.  Nothing less is at stake here.  We're dealing with the very question of what is acceptable when it comes to how we treat each other.  In this capacity, to note that horrible things happen in the world strikes me as a non sequitur.  We cannot stop all horrible acts.  We can, however, resist that they be institutionalized.  That's what has happened here.  There is blood on all of our hands now.

I cannot agree with you at all that the outcome of justice is not possible, nor can I understand how you could believe such a thing.  This very notion seems to question the moral character and capabilities of those we've elected to serve exactly this end.  Is it faith in them that you lack or faith in the very idea of the execution of law?

I agree that there is political risk here.  I think that Obama made a mistake in putting the "good faith" meme out there too quickly.  He's on the right track now.  Eric Holder's statement yesterday made it clear that he understands the environment he's working in.  However, somewhere in your objections I sense a notion that I have long since come to detest: That we cannot proceed here as we should because the Republicans will raise holy hell over the matter.

Well, guess what?  They're going to do that regardless.  They are perfectly willing to contrive fracas where none exists in every instance where they believe it will serve.

One thing that I think is worth noting on this count: Impeaching George Bush might have avoided some of this.  Such an action could have been widely perceived as an indictment and rebuke of his entire administration.  However, the Democrats weren't willing to do that, either.  Again, the reason was the same: We've got other things to do.

So, who's actually willing to enforce the law in this land?  As I asked above: If the parties won't prosecute their own, for political reasons, and they won't prosecute the opposing party, for political reasons, then who watches the watchers?  Of course, it's also important to note that the GOP has no problem sending the opposition to the clink (see: Don Siegelman).  So, what we end up with is Republican Justice (TM).

How's that been working out?

The trouble here is that the seemingly pragmatic approach only satisfies in the short term.  We know what we should do, but it's daunting.  So, we kick the can down the road because we've got other things to do.  Now we're finding out that the situation is quite possibly worse than we had thought.

This is the time to act like adults and reckon with it.  There are long-term consequences if we acquiesce.  What happens when the GOP wins the White House back?  If we don't clean up the Bush mess, they will simply be able to build on it.  What happens the next time there is a terrorist attack and the terrorist rhetoric revolves around the crimes that the U.S. has committed against the world and refuses cop to?  There will be no "unipolar moment" for us then.  There will be little international sympathy for a nation that publicly sweeps institutional brutality under the rug.

Obama is a very capable person.  That's why we supported him.  He's got a big team that is working on a variety of fronts.  They are perfectly capable of collectively doing more than one thing at a time.  In fact, that's the job description.  The Republicans will fuss about every last damned thing he says and does for the next four years.  That's just par for the course.  Let them justify torture.  Let them tell the nation why 50 million should remain uninsured.  Let them sell the virtues of a free market health insurance industry in this environment.  They are, as Obama would say, on the wrong side of history.

If we fear them and their noise machine so much now, at this moment when they have nothing that even resembles political power or popularity, that we can't even find the courage to uphold our most basic values, then when will that ever be possible?  What does that say about us?

When weighing all of this, I have to say that I think you are wrong.  Justice is not only possible, but necessary.  Obama does not need to spearhead this effort, nor should he.  He should allow the DOJ to proceed, as is now the case.  If Holder finds that it is too sticky a political wicket, he can recuse himself and appoint special counsel.  We've been there before.

Let the squawkers squawk.  Their sound and fury signifies nothing and won't be remembered.  What will be remembered is the moral choice that we make at this moment in time and the message that our choice sends to the future.