Don't hold your breath

get with it

A Quantum of Decency

If he had even a particle of decency, he never would have written the memo in the first place.

At the time this was started, the participants were highly confident that the time would never come (at least as much as it mattered) where the Republican party was no longer in power. They knew there was no power anywhere to hold them accountable -- certainly not the Democrats who were supine even before 9/11.

That is the other shameful part. Acting virtuous under scrutiny is no great virtue. What we got is what they were willing to do when they felt they were privileged to do anything.

If the United States is so weak that the prosecution of former officials who publicly bragged about committing a war crime would 'tear the country apart', then the for all practical purposes we, as a nation, are already dead.

I do not think that America is as weak as Mr. Lyons suggests. I DO think that Mr. Lyons has decided to make an assertion which flatly contradicts the aspirations and hopes of the majority of Americans who voted for Barack Obama in the blunt understanding that he- as a president who is bound by the US Constitution and its laws- would enforce those laws as his oath of office requires him to.

I would also point out that unlike Bill Clinton- whose own prosecution emphatically did NOT 'tear the country apart' (but who did get away with obvious perjury, thus creating a dangerous precedent which Mr. Lyons is now asking us to reinforce)- the matters on which George Bush should have been impeached and which he should be prosecuted and jailed for are not irrelevant or trivial. They cut to the heart of what it means to be a nation of laws.

In asking us to ignore this for the sake of expediency, Mr. Lyons is demonstrating exactly the cowardice which George Bush and Dick Cheney counted on to get away with their crimes in the first place. And if, unprosecuted, the agents of the Bush Administration commit those same crimes in the next Republican Administration, this time it will also by Gene Lyons' fault.

Only a handful of the Republican crooks in the '70s were prosecuted, so in the '80s they brought on Iran-Contra; we also had a sitting Vice President intervene to stop a prosecution of his son (W.) for insider trading. After staging a coup d'etat in 2000, they were emboldened even further. Extrapolations are risky, but I fear there will be nothing left of our Constitution if we allow them to go unpunished yet again.

He is a Conservative. He is capable of neither embarrassment nor shame. It is a direct result of having his conscience surgically removed: A trait of all Conservatives.

I think Bush administration officials have to place their shame in a blind trust for the duration of their service. Since Bybee's appointment is for life, that means he never gets it back.

It is unlikely he even knows it is gone.

(1) To reiterate a point already made, if America is so weak that it can't enforce its own laws, we're already dead. Hold the Henny Penny act. Juries are still remarkably good at following directions--regardless of the issue. And if a jury wants to let the wingnuts off, let 'em.

(2) If Bybee had any decency he wouldn't have written the memo in the first place. Enough with the impotent calls for resignation. Can you imagine Obama doing something like that? Impotent calls for resignation should be a part of our nerdy past. There is no place for them in Obama's Democratic party. Impeach or STFU.

Failure to prosecute these people declares that law and the Constitution are arbitrary.

And with that, we should simply declare that we no longer have a country.

If we aren't going to prosecute people for this sort of behavior, what sort of behavior could possibly justify prosecution?

Re: "If we aren't going to prosecute people for this sort of behavior, what sort of behavior could possibly justify prosecution?"

Lying about getting a blow job.

"To bring such prosecutions would tear the country apart -- creating a political and media spectacle that would make the Clinton-Lewinsky follies of 1998-99 resemble last week's farcical "tea parties." It would tear the intelligence agencies to pieces, producing a veritable army of would-be Oliver Norths tearfully regretting that they could no longer practice sadism on behalf of their country.

The tribal passions unleashed could turn torture from a shameful embarrassment into a partisan issue, almost surely dooming President Obama's domestic agenda."

Fuck this! Why is it that we are always called upon to fear the neo-cons' "tribal wrath" for even suggesting members of the Bush junta be called to account for their sullying the reputation of our country? That this seems to be the mainstream view doesn't change the fact that to forgive and "look ahead" in order to appease the dittohead dead-enders is a de facto surrender of the country I remember growing up in to lawless fascism. I'm not a member of a tribe- I'm an American, and it's my country too. If these people aren't called to account myself, a lot of other Americans, and the world at large will be very angry- and I for one don't intend on just lying down as Gene Lyons, President Obama and the mainstream media suggests. If the US stands for anything other than fear of the dittohead mob we must investigate, prosecute, and punish those who violated not only our own laws and principles, but the treaties we strong-armed the rest of the world into ratifying after all.

And as for the "tribe"!? In the words of their main man Stalin- "Let the dogs bark."

I have been aware for some time of the bare essentials of what this memo contained, i.e., a rather shallow, simple-minded, and obviously self-serving "definition" of what actions constitute "torture." After reading the entire memo, however, I am literally astonished at the circular quasi-logic employed to justify the final recommendation that all of the proposed "interrogation techniques" would be legal to use on Mr. Zubaydah. Criticize Mr. Lyons for his use of the word "particle" rather than "ounce," or criticize him for positing that a full-fledged investigation would be potentially very harmful for our nation. Fine. But please read this entire memo for yourself, and you will have to agree with his unassailable assessment of Mr. Bybee's unfitness for the position he currently holds.

This entire memo was so transparently intended to provide justification for the use of these techniques that it should have been written by someone in the "spin room" rather than by someone serving in the Justice Dept. Of course, under Alberto Gonzalez the Justice Dept. should have been renamed the "Dept. of Spin," anyway, so I shouldn't be surprised - and honestly, I'm not.

I am not a lawyer, so I do not claim to have any working knowledge of the codes of conduct or ethical imperatives that Asst. Attorney Generals operate under. But I believe I am correct in assuming that Mr. Bybee took an oath to support the Constitution of the United States, and that at a bare minimum any Asst. Attorney General is expected to fulfill his or her duties honestly and with the intent of upholding justice. This memo provides damning evidence, however, that at best Mr. Bybee is a pathetic excuse for a lawyer, and that at worst he is a morally bankrupt "tool" who is willing to do whatever he is told in the interest of those to whom he is beholden.

Sadly, I do not think that Mr. Bybee possesses the requisite "particle," "ounce," or even "iota" of decency that would cause him to resign. If he did, he would have resigned when given the task of justifying the unjustifiable back in 2002. Impeach the jerk!