After the Eric Holder confirmation hearing, where the nominee for Attorney General gave his opinion that waterboarding is torture (duh), many said it would be interesting to see what the Obama administration might do about it: The incoming head of the new Justice Department essentially acknowledging that the U.S. tortured, which would mean that it committed war crimes. Is it a portent of prosecutions to come?
Well, one of the main architects of the former administration's policy of rendition, "enhanced interrogations," and torture is pretty sanguine about whether or not the Justice Department will seek justice against him and others. The reason for Alberto Gonzales's optimism: "making a blanket pronouncement like that'' could possibly have a negative "effect ... on the morale and the dedication of intelligence officials and lawyers throughout the administration."
Morale would drop? Could it drop any lower? (See Clinton's welcoming at the State Department from The Daily Show. Spoiler alert: It was a standing ovation). A typical argument that has been recycled over and over in our history: "For the good of the nation, we all must come together and forget the past in order to heal." We hear that whenever government seeks to absolve itself.
He continues: "I don't think that there's going to be a prosecution, quite frankly...Because again, these activities ... They were authorized, they were supported by legal opinions at the Department of Justice.''
Yes, we all know that----and we also know that the Office of Legal Counsel, centered around Cheney's office, with his lead attorney, David Addington and others, arbitrarily rewrote law through their very-own, very ludicrous legal opinions and interpretations----in contradiction to strongly precedented domestic and international law. Lawyers who disagreed with the OLC, and were thus marginalized or forced to resign, like Jack Goldsmith (here, and here,), made stands against Addington and Co. because they were not giving legal opinions so much as legislating from within a very secretive, tightly-knit inner circle----the self-proclaimed "War Counsel." (What's that about "activist judges" legislating from the bench, guys?) Here they were-----legislating from the Vice President's office.
Once Congress, and then the world, found out about their programs, they moved to retroactively immunize their own actions out of fear of prosecution with the Military Commissions Act. Interestingly, Sen. McCain was so perturbed by what he learned of the program he pushed for reform, but ultimately buckled because of presidential ambitions, not wanting to look "soft on terror," and voted for an act that sought to not just to create a uniform standard for interrogators, but also to retroactively immunize past criminal activity (mainly from the CIA and their use of "black site" operations).
And so today, Gonzales responds to the possibility of prosecution by saying, "I find it hard to believe." And again, the common refrain: "I'm not sure how productive it is to lament about things that went wrong. Maybe it was inevitable."
Right, Mr. Gonzales. So then we, as individuals, have no Free Will to act in this world, but instead are only subject to our own separate, determinate and circumstantial realities; and like all the "relativists" that you faux conservatives purport to loathe, your team, victimized by the vicissitudes of History, cries out: "We are not responsible...it was inevitable."
On the bright side: At least someone in The Congress cares about accountability and justice.
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