Torturers go free:
WASHINGTON – The Obama administration on Thursday informed CIA officials who used waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics on terror suspects that they will not be prosecuted.
snip
But the statement issued Thursday by Attorney General Eric Holder, the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, is the first definitive assurance that those CIA officials are in the clear, as long as their actions were in line with the legal advice at the time.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30…
This is morally wrong. They had a duty to disobey an illegal order. It was not legal merely because the Bush admin said so.
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disappoitment that the torturers will stay free.
… what those CIA agents who are anti-torture think of this. I think there are plenty of them, btw. I think (tho can’t prove), that it was someone in the CIA who helped leak the International Red Cross report.
Ironic that both Obama and Panetta speak of “morale” in the Agency.
The only ones whose morale will be helped by this are those who tortured.
I think the DoJ is indicating that an “underling” who is told that when the (higher up) LEGAL Department of the administration says its not illegal, the underling then has reason to believe that “following orders”, as contrary as they seem to be, are not …uhm … prosecutable, and is therefore, not culpable.
DoJ, or Obama, whoever, has to go to town with ACLU on these Memo’s, and follow the stink, and somehow legally determine that the directive FROM the OLC was itself illegal in the first place. FIRST.
Its very jujitsu.
Go after Yoo and the OLC who called it “legal”, when they knew it wasnt, to begin with.
Am I crazy?
My sense of Holder is that he is very “letter of the law”…
I was writing my version and didn’t see this!
Damn, I could have saved the typing!
I feel like just sitting down and crying. Course I’m not going to do that. I’m going to fight like hell to get justice.
clearly being taught exactly that: you do not obey an illegal order, period. So now that President Obama and AG Holder have seemingly redefined that precept, will the military change their training manuals and classes, eliminating that timeworn concept. Does the new Army field manual state: you will not carry out an illegal order except as defined by the current administration and their DoJ? Excuse me sir, I can’t kill this prisoner. Yes you can son, I have it on the authority of John Yoo. This is straight out of Catch-22, I can quote you the exact scene!