12 Jul Holder Leaning Toward Appointing Torture Prosecutor (Updated)
This according to Newsweek:
Holder, 58, may be on the verge of asserting his independence in a profound way. Four knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that he is now leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation practices, something the president has been reluctant to do. While no final decision has been made, an announcement could come in a matter of weeks, say these sources, who decline to be identified discussing a sensitive law-enforcement matter. Such a decision would roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama’s domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform. Holder knows all this, and he has been wrestling with the question for months. “I hope that whatever decision I make would not have a negative impact on the president’s agenda,” he says. “But that can’t be a part of my decision.”
I think Holder has it precisely backwards: appointing an independent prosecutor is the only way that the Obama administration will be able to focus its attention on its domestic priorities. Obama can talk about the need to look forward instead of backward all he wants, but he’s not fooling anyone — most Americans know full well that “not looking backwards” means “impunity for systematic criminality.” That’s why appointing an independent prosecutor is so essential from a domestic policy perspective: Obama will no longer constantly be on the defensive about his stubborn unwillingness to hold the Bush administration accountable for its innumerable crimes, the evidence of which mounts with each passing day. On the contrary, he will be able to point to the independent prosecutor and say — justifiably — “it’s inappropriate for me to comment until the prosecutor completes his investigation.” The crimes get investigated, Obama gets political cover, and everyone is happy.
Other than the criminals, of course.
UPDATE: The Washington Post‘s story adds the following ominous note: “But the sources said an inquiry would apply only to activities by interrogators, working in bad faith, that fell outside the “four corners” of the legal memos…. The actions of higher-level Bush policymakers are not under consideration for possible investigation.” As Glenn Greenwald notes, it would be very unfortunate if only low-level interrogators were investigated. That said, I’m not sure that it would be “something close to the worst of both worlds,” as another blogger has described it. The CIA interrogators whose torture went beyond even the torture authorized by Yoo, Cheney et al. are certainly deserving of investigation and prosecution in their own right. And I would hope that such a public investigation of the interrogators would ratchet up the pressure on Holder to expand the independent prosecutor’s brief.
Response…How dare this congress even consider prosecuting our soldiers for doing what the enemy does to them in an effort to save their own lines.
Hmm. Last I checked, no one was talking about prosecuting soldiers.
[…] Holder, 58, may be on the verge of asserting his independence in a profound way. Four knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that he is now leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation practices, something the president has been reluctant to do. While no final decision has been made, an announcement could come in a matter of weeks, say these sources, who decline to be identified discussing a sensitive law-enforcement matter. Such a decision would roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama’s domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform. HRead more at https://opiniojuris.org/2009/07/12/holder-leaning-toward-appointing-torture-prosecutor/ […]
I find it interesting that as Obama faces the first “green shoots” of doubt about his presidency, you see the issue of prosecuting Bush-era officials reemerge.
dprosenthal, In addition to Kevin’s reply, the fact that “the enemy has done it to us” does not amount to a sufficient justification for soldiers not observing what is, arguably, “the most important principle of international humanitarian law [that is, more important than the principles of discrimination, necessity and proportionality which it buttresses] and the corresponding war crimes law, [namely], humane treatment.” As Larry May has explained, Humant treatment is the cornerstone of humanitarian law in that minimal suffering, mercy, and honor are indeed the main ingredients in the normative conceptualization of the various traditionally recognized restraints on war. Not only does the principle of humane treatment operate to undergird the obvious restraints on how prisoners of war are to be treated, it also makes sense of restraints on the use of weapons and even on the way civilians are to be treated during war. Indeed…the principle of humane treatment operates to ground and to limit the more traditionally recognized principles of necessity, discrimination or distinction, and even the principle of proportionality that many have thought to be the cornerstones of international humanitarian law. Please see “Torturing Prisoners of War,” in particular (140-163) and generally, May’s War Crimes and Just War (2007)… Read more »
erratum (second para.): “Humane treatment….”
Yes, nothing would convince me more certainly of Holders’ independance…my arse!
AG Holder will not do anything. He will make a public pronouncement about an investigation and looking into a prosecution. But that is as far as it will go. Remember back in April there was all the talk about prosecution of the lawyers and other officials. Nothing happened. Same thing here, AG Holder just wants to talk, not act.
Response…A special prosecutor limited to investigating actions by CIA interrogators that fall outside the egregiously permissive redefinition of torture concocted by Yoo, Bybee, and company would be the worst of all possible moves by Attorney General Holder. To prosecute people under that redefinition would legitimate waterboarding and other painful and inhumane abuses pioneered by the Spanish Inquisition and North Korean “brainwashers.” It would play into the hands of conservative opponents of civil liberties and human rights, including Dick Chaney, who insist that what the Bush administration ordered was not torture and not even illegal. It would be better to have no prosecutions than prosecutions that rest upon and validate the standards of the CIA “Black Sites.”