Is prosecution required for any federal crime?

Prosecutorial discretion is pretty broad. That said, while I do not know how it works on a federal level, at the state level if that discretion is abused so seriously that the People or those in the system are appalled, the state's AG can intervene and prosecute (or halt it), taking control from the local prosecutor.

But I am not certain how this works at the federal level.

I'm asking seriously here. Is there sufficient documentation that prosecution could be conducted at this point without resorting to lengthy discovery?

To tell the truth, I'm not even sure if this has anything to do with what y'all are talking about, but, I've just begun reading some of the Marty Lederman posts which Arne linked to above and on November 21, 2005, he wrote:

For now, however, I'd like to focus only on the question whether these techniques are federal crimes under two statutes: The federal anti-torture law (18 U.S.C. 2340A), and the federal assault statute (18 U.S.C. 113). […]

[…] How could OLC possibly have concluded that waterboarding and "cold cell" are not necessarily torture? Well, we won't know for certain unless and until we see OLC's specific legal analysis. But surely, a large part of the explanation must be that the Senate (at the urging of the first President Bush) insisted upon adopting extremely restrictive readings of certain key terms of the Convention Against Torture as a condition of its ratification of that treaty -- restrictive terms that Congress itself adopted in the torture statute.

http://balkin.blogspot.com/2005/11/cia-enhanced-interrogation-techniques.html

It seems to me that cases in which it was decided not to prosecute would come more under the heading of competency to stand trial etc. For example in England Pinochet was released because he was deemed to be mentally incompetent to stand trial.

Bush would perhaps have an argument here. He could say that someone unknown to him had laced his coca-cola with rum, thus making his innocuous soda into a Cuba Libre that had rendered him unable to function in his normal brilliant fashion as a Decider.

Or supposing Hamas took a prominent American like Mrs. Clinton hostage. Perhaps the DOJ would swap Bush out for her instead of prosecuting him.

Actually, I picture you as a bright woman, but maybe that is more info than you would like.

The fault is not necessarily yours. I could very well be completely full of shit.

(but I don't think so) ;)

Does this mean that the discretion for torture as discussed here is essentially the same as everything else?

The name is meaningless and is pronounced however you like.

You have mistaken me for an educated man. I can't follow your reasoning process. Mine is proprietary and with it I learned long ago, that there is no way to bring reason or logic into the categorization of races, ethnic group and gender. Besides being nearly impossible to categorize people so neatly, the amount of effort and energy necessary to succesfully categorize a group consisting of millions is beyond most people's off hours. One can use common sense observations to lead you to all sorts of conclusions. White people run America, fat people eat too much, men with big shoes are well endowed, Jews proliferate in the media--perhaps all true, but why would I spend time trying to prove such things when it is much easier and more effective to categorize people based on their actions, i.e. Republicans vote for war-mongering presidents. Its observable they do. Militarized governments tend to seek out war. There is historically observable data. The powerful seek to gain more power. Rulers seek absolute rule when possible. These are all noted dynamics that have accompanied humanity throughout history, and no one will give you any grief if you pepper your observations with them from time to time. The best thing about them is that you never look stupid inserting such an observation, because almost everyone of every race, gender, and class has noticed the same. Just some advice.

However, my reading of him is that investigation of credible allegations of torture is apparently required, based on the portions of the treaty that were executed.

This is the argument/objection that Heller is making, and this is what I find basically persuasive (though I think he describes the discretion being larger than it is). It would make my headline -- "Binding U.S. law requires prosecutions for those who authorize torture" -- not accurate, because (as you say) it would really require only a real investigation and not require prosecutions. But it would also foreclose the in-advance decree that no investigations should happen and the DOJ should just decide without looking not to do anything here.

But again, that's a different issue than whether Article 7 was enacted by Congress.

In 3 years this is the first time I've seen him this far off.

I've been pretty wrong in the past on some occasions. That is inevitable. I probably should have looked more closely at the proceedings underneath the Senate ratification, but the fact that the argument was being made by Phillipe Sands (and, to a lesser though still substantial extent, Hilzoy and Dalhlia Lithwick) endowed it with some preliminary credibility for me.

But Steele, before you are relegated to the Sphere of Deviance altogether, I want you to know that I've followed many of your links with interest and found the Righteous Jews one especially useful.

You must mean this one:

http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/2009/01/13/the-righteous-jews-of-today/

Yes, that is nice to see. However, it would be anti-Semitic to assume that this is a representation of Jews in the main. Moreoever, there is no such thing as "the Jews." So, they appear to be a fringe element with little to no influence over the vast majority of the world's Jews.

Thanks for your feedback. But once the Fusion Centers generate their reports and see all the URLs you and I have visited, we will probably meet each other at some Halliburton Detention Center. I'll cook us up some rat tea, with spider crumpets.

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Mooser - because the IDF and Dershowitz are both JEWS! duh. His Mossad code-name is "Curly," and he is in charge of academia inthe United States. Didn't you see him remove Finkelstein from DePaul?

He supports Israel's aggression. That is why I mentioned him.

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This is some pretty heavy shit, I just found by following one of my sub-links.

http://www.csulb.edu/~kmacd/books-Preface.html

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0759672229/kevinmacdonal-20