The case for prosecution

[zipplewrath]

The OPR's report merely highlights the problem with trying to look at the issue of torture in some sort of "isolated" sense. They view this as the "independent" acts of lawyers working in the OLC. The crime that needs to be prosecuted here is as much a conspiracy to commit torture as it was the acts of torture themselves. The personnel that floated these requests for "clarification" KNEW that their acts were criminal. They weren't looking for clarification, they were looking for cover. Through the office of the VPOTUS, the CIA colluded with the OLC in the Justice Department to commit acts of torture. That's the crime. But you won't uncover this by just looking in the Justice Department. You won't find it by looking just in the CIA. And to some extent even just looking in Cheney's office files won't show you the collusion. That was intentional. They knew they were committing crimes. It's why they destroyed tapes that documented their crimes. It is why the spread their collusion over three different offices. And in each you can be sure that they were only documenting their "limited" involvement. But it wasn't limited. It was coordinated. They weren't "operating within the four corners of the policy". They were CREATING the four corners, and hiding their involvement by conspiring with people in other whole cabinet offices to each make a "corner" of that policy. No one office, no one person created the whole policy. Each had a small role and could not be represented as the "author" or of promoting the acts of torture.

And this can't be uncovered by just the Justice Department. Ignoring for a moment the degree to which the Justice Department is already implicated in these crimes, they can only force a certain amount of access to the information needed. Not even the CIA has all of the information necessary to reconstruct the crimes. Only the Office of the POTUS can reassemble this crime, to some extent because it was the Office of the VPOTUS that coordinated the conspiracy to begin with. This falls squarely in the Presidents lap to uncover, declassify, and collect the various memos, meeting notes, visitors logs, and testimony that will expose the conspiracy that did occur.

The case will be made that this will "politicize" the prosecutions. But it is in fact the perpetrators that politicized it. They did so in an attempt to avoid being judged by juries, and instead be able to limit it to the "court of public opinion". They forced these questions into the public eye through calculated leaks, and by an ever expanding list of public servants whom were knowledgeable after the fact to the crimes that were committed. It was placed squarely into a public policy debate as part of political campaigns precisely to politicize the crimes, and make it burdensome, if not impossible, to ever bring them to trial. The perpetrators learned well from prior crimes including Watergate, Irangate, and to some extent Monica-gate that BY politicizing crimes by civil servants and elected officials, you make it possible to prevent them from ever being prosecuted. Oliver North walks free today, not as a convicted felon, because his crimes were politicized. No elected official did time for Watergate. Ollie, Poindexter et. al avoided time because their crimes were politicized. Scooter Libby's only problem was that he could NOT politicize it because the GOP controlled everything, including the prosecutor that convicted him.

Only the Office of the President of the United States can sort this out and DE-politicize it, and bring it to the courts, where a jury of 12 can decide the fate of these people. And that is where it belongs. The American People deserve these questions to have their "day in court".

[BeFree]

1. Heh

I so want to be on that Jury. I will be fair and impartial, I swear, just like Cheney has been.