Yesterday, I treated this new Newsweek report that Eric Holder is "leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration's brutal interrogation practices" as something to celebrate. But new facts about what that investigation would entail and, more importantly, would exclude -- facts added by today's Washington Post -- strongly suggest it's the opposite.-- GG

As for your Horton update.... what I find amazing is that people continue to get suckered into their web of lies. The mere hint that something is being considered is worth "celebrating." I realize it is because there is a significant "want to believe" (it's that "hope" and "optimism") but still, the clinging to the belief that something will be done is rather sad and pathetic at this point.

Holder will not be investigating and prosecuting any high level torture team members no matter what "trial balloon" lies are floated. It is not going to happen. It is amazing and disturbing that people still cling to their unwarranted and unrealistic "hopes."

The mere hint that something is being considered is worth "celebrating."

The Newsweek article didn't provide a "mere hint" that it was being "considered." It said 4 independent sources close to Holder said he was leaning towards doing it. Anyone with a working brain would understand that it'd be worth celebrating only if it actually happens, not merely because it's being considered.

I realize it is because there is a significant "want to believe" (it's that "hope" and "optimism") but still, the clinging to the belief that something will be done is rather sad and pathetic at this point.

What's sad and pathetic is someone who is a thoroughly and completely defeated human being mistaking their defeatism and resignation for moral superiority.

**Holder will not be investigating and prosecuting any high level torture team members no matter what "trial balloon" lies are floated. It is not going to happen. It is amazing and disturbing that people still cling to their unwarranted and unrealistic "hopes."**

-- adnoto

I agree to some extent. I find it difficult to believe Holder/Obama will let this get that close to Cheney as this would surely bring out some communications that link him to the undertaking. Cheney is untouchable. As is Bush, or any other top echelon officials. Period.

NWW

But new facts about what that investigation would entail and, more importantly, would exclude -- facts added by today's Washington Post -- strongly suggest it's the opposite. At least if that article is to be believed...

The article is not be to believed.

It comes from a paper that literally acts as a journalistic pimp to spinmeistering whores.

I can't believe people still take the Washington Post seriously.

The WP is now to print journalism what Fox News is to cable TV journalism.

I would encourage everybody reading to omit Washington Post links in the future if you want your articles to be taken seriously.

Isn't she on Sunday talk today? I guess there is still time. She's probably in makeup.

Those who argue that there should be no investigation often claim that investigations and prosecutions would demoralize and drive away good intelligence agents. But what could do this more effectively than an investigation that prosecutes those at the bottom but shields those at the top?

On the other hand, it's too early to know whether this is really what is being considered. Often these leaks reflect infighting between disagreeing factions, each trying to get their story out in the press. Furthermore, it's common for criminal investigations to go after the foot soldiers first, to get them to turn state's evidence so that higher-ups can be prosecuted. When this process is inverted, as it was in the Iran-Contra hearings, and people at the very top of the operation are granted immunity too early, we wind up with the most culpable people (North and Poindexter) getting off free.

to attribute some degree of a priori insight, if not restraint, to Mr. Lad’s instincts here yesterday, for which he was mildly upbraided? Or to suggest that the celebratory endorsements of an, after all, serious, principled and well-intentioned Administration that really will come around and vindicate our investment in their promise of Hope and Change, would have been tempered by a less needy and idealized assessment of motive and of “our political [i.e. criminal] culture” ?

Somewhere over at DoJ,

On any given day;

There’s some dumb little striver

Who’ll be willing to say:

It’s legal!

[The following is a repeat of part of a comment I made yesterday]

Was John Ashcroft part of “The War Council”? If not, why not? Why Deputy Assistant AG John Yoo?

September 2001-A tight-knit group of senior administration lawyers convenes. It includes David Addington, Counsel to the Vice President. The group includes White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales; his deputy, Tim Flanigan; William "Jim" , the Pentagon's General Counsel; and Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo. The group will secretly call itself "the War Council." http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/torturingdemocracy/timelines/

April 2003 - Bybee resigns as head of OLC and begins tenure as a judge in the Ninth Circuit. The WH pushes for John Yoo to be promoted to the position at OLC, but Yoo is “blocked by Attorney General John Ashcroft and his senior aides, who reportedly "had grown weary of what they saw as Yoo's end runs to the White House,"” [115] Jack Goldsmith, who had been working in the Legal Counsel’s Office of the DoD under Haynes, becomes the new head of OLC. Ashcroft and the others who interview Goldsmith “make quite clear that they did not feel sufficiently in the loop about what [Yoo] was doing, especially vis-à-vis the White House.” He repudiates two OLC memos in December 2003. Goldsmith resigns in summer 2004. For more about Goldsmith’s tenure at OLC, see [116]

Sources at:

http://www.webdsi.com/jebbie/tline.html

What's sad and pathetic is someone who is a thoroughly and completely defeated human being mistaking their defeatism and resignation for moral superiority.

I think Adnoto is sometimes crippled by his despair, and would like to think that despair is not an inapropriate response to the last several years. That said, as one who frequently experiences that emotion myself, I have to hope that it isn't a permanent condition.

As our Great And Hopeful Leader says, empathy is important...

What's sad and pathetic is someone who is a thoroughly and completely defeated human being mistaking their defeatism and resignation for moral superiority.

Freakin amen.

For a couple of hours yesterday I thought it was interesting that Holder would float this, but then I remembered whose administration we are talking about.

Even so, I found myself hopefully wondering: how can this possibly be bad news?

So thanks, as always, you've answered my question. Well, duh, of course.... I really need to get a firm grip on the perfect consistency of this administration, get a bead on the fact that it is an extension of the Bush and Clinton administrations only with much more skillful P.R.; and stop getting all excited about how maybe Obama might be a good chess player after all.

It isn't chess he's playing. It's us.