No Prosecution for CIA Torturers

[sleigh]

President Obama has said that "those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice... will not be subject to prosecution".

I find myself with a mixed reaction to this. I applaud the administration's statements that torture will no longer be tolerated: it's about time that the United States returned to obeying our own and international laws and stopped being a rogue nation. Yet... the "get out of jail free" card bothers me. We have been both twisting and ignoring law in supporting torture methods, and now no one will be held accountable for those actions? That seems wrong.

Yet... I can see Obama's point here. People were acting on advice from legal counsel who claimed that our law supports these techniques. It seems fair not to prosecute those who acted in response to such advice; who acted, as it were, in good faith that their actions were indeed legal. My hope, though, is that in not prosecuting the agents themselves, the administration will go after those higher-up in the chain of command who drafted and created these memos, who authorized the torture methods, who told those agents "Go on -- we've got your backs."

It's one thing to say that from now on we're going to follow the laws that are in place. It's another to fail to punish those who chose to ignore the law in the first place, and who in doing so tarnished and despoiled the reputation of our country.

Comments

[emerdavid.livejournal.com]

I'm a boomer. I remember the whole country getting upset about Lt. Calley massacreing Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. The upshot of the whole incident was a general consensus (which eventually spilled over into actual military regulations) that it was not only permissable to refuse to obey a direct order you thought was illegal/immoral, but mandatory.

Given all that, and being able to understand Obama's point, I agree that it's the higher-ups who should be prosecuted. All the way up to Bush and Cheney themselves. Too late to impeach? Try them for violent crimes.

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

You're right -- a soldier is supposed to refuse to follow a command that they believe is illegal, but in this case, the people giving the orders were providing 'proof' that the procedures were in fact legal, which gives the scenario a much harder twist.

As for going higher in the food chain to prosecute... I'd be all for that.