>>>Do you really believe that the "Bushies" as you (with affection I am sure)call them, wanted to break the law?

Yes. If they hadn't wanted to break the law, they would have sought to change the laws that they believed were unduly constraining.

>>>Do you really believe that they thought it fun to use rendition and torture to insure our safety.

Don't know for sure, but taking pleasure in cruelty is a persistent theme in human history. Since there is ZERO evidence that rendition and torture ever increased our safety one jot (much less "insured" it), the possible role of simple sadism can't be discounted. I recall the pictures of the grinning torturers at Abu Ghraib; maybe the people who gave the orders were grinning too.

>>>Isnt it possible that they were, for the most part, well-meaning men and women placed in an untenable postion and seeking to cope best they could with information you did not have?

No. Again, their position was not untenable. To the extent that the laws of the United States prevented them from taking measures they believed were necessary, they could have sought to change the laws instead of breaking them. That's how the whole "rule of law" thingy works, for those who take it seriously.

>>>Is it possible that Obama and his Administration, for all their self-righteousness and self-righteous bluster are now privvy to the same intel and it is shaping their decisions?

I'm not sure what this question means. In rule-of-law land, to the extent information exists that would put Bush's crimes in a better light, it would be perfectly appropriate for Bush and his co-defendants to utilize that information at their trial and/or sentencing.

>>>"To my way of thinking, the taking of someones private property is an affront to the very foundations of the Constitution."

You might want to take a gander at the Fifth Amendment.

>>>"but so were a lot of guilty people. That doesn't in any way excuse the abuses that Americans inflicted on them, but it does make it pretty hard to let them go, even though they couldn't possibly be convicted in an American court of law after all the evidence against them has been hopelessly tainted."

If they haven't been (and indeed, could not possibly be) convicted in a court of law, how can you refer to them as "guilty"? That's one of the key features of the rule-of-law thingy -- one is innocent until PROVEN guilty, i.e., convicted in a court of law. Since these people have not been proven guilty of anything, they are, yep, innocent.

Under the blind-squirrel-acorn principle, it is possible that the Bush Administration managed to incarcerate a few actual terrorists. But absent due process, there is no way to know who they are. All the detainees should be charged with crimes or let go.

It's true that Obama has been tasked with making chicken salad out of chicken shit, but the fact that his predessor employed illegal and immoral policies is not a persuasive justification for continuing those policies.

President Obama faces a stark choice between accountability, in the form of meaningful high-level prosecutions, and willful complicity. To fail to punish crimes of this nature is to ratify them, and inaction will make Obama every bit as morally culpable as Bush.

If Obama makes the wrong choice, history may view him even more harshly than Bush. Bush, it could be argued, is an intellectually dim, narcissistic sociopath who is genuinely incapable of appreciating the moral and legal implications of his conduct. Obama has no such excuses.

How, pray tell, might the "reflection not retribution" theory be valid in the context in which Obama used it?

You are indeed a cunning linguist.

Wanting to see criminal offenses investigated and prosecuted via due process of law is not a "lynch mob mentality" -- it is the precise opposite.

I'm sure most of us clamoring for prosecutions would like to start with Bush and work down. I know I would. At the same time, I find myself unable to work up any sympathy for those who obeyed directives to slam people into walls, semi-drown them, make them lie in their own shit, etc. There is no excuse for following orders like that. I'm all for punishing those who conceived the torture program, but the actual torturers shouldn't get a free pass either.

As always, fuck you, you bigoted piece of garbage.

You touch on something GG has written about before, namely, the continual and ubiquitous misuse of the term "Commander in Chief." Obama appears to require reminding that he is Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces, not of the nation. The USA doesn't have a commander in chief, dammit!

You are a brainless, soulless, bigoted piece of human refuse. Kiss my Jewish ass.

As long-timers here know, I am a Jew, fond of Israel, who has always condemned those "pro-Israel" types who use the bullying, manipulative tactic of cavalierly equating criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. As a frequent traveler in Left Blogistan I see a lot of criticism of Israel, and most of it is fine with me, even if I (in some cases vehemently) disagree with it.

Usually, the only time I really question someone's good faith is when they go out of their way to compare Israel to Nazi Germany. To make that comparison, a person must either be: (a) abysmally ignorant of what the Holocaust actually entailed, and thus genuinely unaware of the absurdity of the analogy; (b) lacking in even the most basic reasoning skills, and thus genuinely unaware of the absurdity of the analogy; or (c) neither ignorant nor stupid, and thus fully aware of the absurdity of the analogy, but dishonest and mean-spirited enough to use it anyway because it's just a fun way to fuck with Jews. Which describes you?

That was really funny... My laughter almost woke the baby (which would not have been funny at all, but thank goodness the little JAP stayed asleep).

:-)