If there are no prosecutions of the Bush Six and Bush et.al. then Obama will have slyly accomplished the policy an Israeli Commander succintly and unashamedly stated. The Israeli Commanders statement being -------

Commit War Crimes that go unpunished so as to create a new precedent and
standard as to what is a considered a War Crime.

Obama is creating a precedent for government immunity and War Crimes immunity.

My best reasoning tells me Obama squashed the Spanish prosecution of the Bush Six during his two personal meetings with the Spanish PM.

I love the British style.

Just as the revocation of Financial Regulations imposed to prevent a reoccurance of the the Great Depression resulted in todays financial collapse, a de facto revocation of International War Crimes Laws through lack of prosecution will allow a resurrection of a Nazi like regime.

In case anyone here doesn't know what 'walling' is, it was described in the documentary Ghosts of Abu Ghraib. A detainee was put on a medical stretcher, had another stretcher placed on top of him, and they were bound together and twisted ever tighter...I suppose someone could be crushed to death or suffocated by this. The soldiers also said it was routine in the early days of Abu Ghraib.

If the best that comes out of this in the case Jay Bybee is that his current judgeship is the highest he will ever reach, that is small consolation. By his very posting, his name would have come up as a candidate for a US Supreme Court opening in the next Republican administration. With the public now being able to read his shoddy legal work on the Torture Memos (that title has a "Banality of Evil" ring to it), an impeachment proceeding in the US Senate should occur. At the minimum, it appears as if the 9th Circuit will be his highest stop of his legal career.

One reason I can see to prosecute CIA officers is to discover how they may have influenced policy. For instance, Could the CIA officers have feed torture gotten information to influence support for torture as a technique to gather intelligence.

Indeed, it does not excuse the top level decision makers of allowing torture techniques based only on CIA officer reports.

Similar practice was discovered during Vietnam war , when generals and their subordinates feed kill counts to push for sustained support from policy makers to send troops and war heads to Vietnam.

toophat for you!

Unless you believe in an ultimate reckoning for all human beings, this pack of shyster, mouthpiece gangsters with law degrees will go forever scot free.

The CIA agents knew that torture is illegal, inhuman and only practiced by subhuman shitbags. No moronic justifications concocted by slimy Justice Department appointee shysters changes that, and they knew it.

If they tortured people, they need to be made examples of, or the next administration will have their equally scumbag lawyers write equally moronic justifications of even more horrific actions.

"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats

Alas! milord, "must" is too bold a word here Across the Water.

Here, our craven politicians are denied the luxury of even holding principles, much less governing in accordance with high principle.

Quite the opposite, I fear: whether knowing and intentional departures from the rule of law are rationalized as necessary for state security, as with the previous arguably criminal maladministration; or, as presently, when legal duties and obligations are devalued, discredited and discounted in favor of the be-all and end-all of doing "what works"-- the only concepts even approaching "principle" in US government are the mundane and treacherous rules of machiavellian pragmatism.

Simply put: the technocratic zeitgeist has promoted and rendered acceptable the appalling dogma that political leaders must of necessity reduce EVERY question to a naked political calculus.

Too many citizens have, perhaps unconsciously, fallen into line with this precept by aping and internalizing a sort of "pop(ular) 'inside politics'". And, at least in Amerika, the corporate media celebrity pundits, aka infotainwhores, hew to a superficial and "knowing" perception and interpretation of events which functions as a catechism of Received Opinion for the the layman, the citizen, the Common Man to adopt, and echo or garble according to each's wits and sensibilities.

I recommend the distinguished social and political analyst and critic Professor Noam Chomsky's writings on "Manufacturing Consent", a lucid and profound analysis of the process by which political powers and principalities and highly corporatized mass media outlets shape and manipulate public opinion.

These teevee and web touts, shills, and professional handicappers legitimize and validate the status quo, and blow the Establishment's propaganda memes out as a child blows a dandelion's seeds into the breeze-- except increased a millionfold.

(I read a report today that über-pragmatist Rahm Emanuel stated that the Obama administration is disinclined to pursue ANY prosecution of officials involved in devising or committing torture-- a substantially broadened, if not universal, issuance of the "Get Out of Jail Free" cards deftly handed out by Obama in conjunction with releasing classified memos detailing the heinous and atrocious acts for which blanket amnesty and immunity was summarily granted.)

Despite all of the hype and positive spin justifying the elevation of expediency over principle, the administration's failure or refusal to honestly face up to the admittedly grievous mega-scandal of metastasized government malfeasance makes it equally culpable and an accessory to heinous crimes.

Unfortunately, it's quite true that Mr. Obama inherited a mess. But having volunteered enthusiastically for the job, he must accept that fact that either openly or tacitly continuing and supporting the outrages of the previous maladministration makes him complicit in them.

· Yr Obd't Servant

Steven Bybee is on the 9th circuit and in a very important position right under the Supreme Court and he should be impeached.

Also why is Steven Cambone not one of the Bush 6? He was directly under Rumsfeld and he ordered enhanced torture in Iraq.

Also why is General Geoffrey Miller not mentioned-- he brought the Guantanamo techniques to Abu Ghrab and now he is just quietly retired on a generals retirement benefit.

These are the bigger apples who should be accountable not for carrying out the orders but for ordering them in the first place.

also that Yoo the law professor at U of California advised Bush wrongly that one could do torture as long as it did not do organ damage--- U of California should be ashamed of having him hired as a professor. Every time I see him on a panel-- I could just about throw up.

Our "Dear Leader," Mr. Obama already has all the "Enabling Acts" he needs. He is using them well to enrich his wealthy friends on Wall Street, and in the MIC.

He has thrown a morsel to his supporters who put him into office. He only did this so that the anger and dismay of his policy right turn will not over turn his imperial rule.

Nothing will come of any release of documents. He has said so already-no investigation, no prosecutions of war criminals.

Lord Carlyle misses a few points. First, Obama didn't courageously decide to release the memos, he was forced to do so by an ACLU FOI lawsuit. Second, his legal acumen is much overstated; the UN Torture Convention contains a clear, unmistakable, affirmative duty to prosecute any and all torturers. Third, the earnestness of his promise is in doubt in view of multiple disclosures of increased detainee abuse at Guantanamo and continued denial of basic rights at Bagram on his watch.

Obama did only what he was forced to do, just enough to say he was doing something, but far short of what ethics and the law require of him.

Can we pay one half of the legal class to prosecute the other?

Yesterday, Sunday April 20 the White House by the mouth of Rahm Emanuel who speaks for the president announced that the writers of the torture memos will not be prosecuted. Ergo Obama will not uphold and defend the law of the land which obliges him to investigate and, if necessary prosecute. This is Bush III. If he swore a false oath at inauguration he must be impeached.

Typical for this cowardly bunch to announce this on a Sunday when most Americans are distracted from politics by prayer.

Obama averred that he was going to change the climate in Washington. No change at all!

The tragedy of the war crimes, is that it reveals how little men have progressed, as we still exhibit the characteristics of the feudal system of vicious over-lords and serfs. In contrast with the lack of progress of the human, is the leaps and bounds of progress made by technology. We can now have skilled medical practitioners intensify and prolong suffering which would have mercifully ended life in earlier generations.

Many Americans and many of the worlds populations would like to believe that as a whole society has made progress, and that those "villains" who revert to a brute, evil interaction with others, must and can be contained through proper administration of the law. Justice, tempered with mercy. I would have no problem with shortening sentences, or pardons, if justice was served by trial, by conviction, and by publically acknowledging the crimes committed. Once this has been done, we can begin to rebuild a society on a stronger foundation looking forward rather than backward.

Maybe President Obama and his crew think it is inappropriate to prosecute members of the GOD party for doing ungodly actions. Or are they concerned that many robots in the guilty party are also members of the GUN association and could get nasty? There is something not right going on in this matter.

Lets remember to punish all the freaks that run community watch gang stalking 24/7 surveillance torture.

Thousands of Americans report gang stalking to the DOJ every year, and the complaints are ignored.

WHY????

Who runs these stazi torture programs and funds them with money??????

There is a storm coming, and the truth will set us constitutional FREE.