Of all people, he should have been denouncing torture from the roof top. What an asshole. He's never done a worthwhile thing for the nation - lousy pilot, lousy husband, dishonest legislator.

I am thinking about the future. What will prevent this from happening again if people who did it in the past are not punished?

If it isn't appropriate to investigate the Executive branch of the government for authorizing torturing prisoners until they were dead, under what circumstances would it ever be appropriate to do so?

Failure to pursue this now answers that questions: NONE.

You can't hold executioners accountable.

You can't hold the legal consultants accountable.

And I bet McCain's gangs will be against holding any Bush officials accountable.

Yet torture is a war crime, that I believe that McCain believes.

So, is torture an offender-less crime to them, or just a tragedy that no one should be paying the price?

"What part of ILLEGAL don't you understand?"

1. these people are terrible

2. sorry that's all i've got. they're terrible.

"If there's any punishment for the memo authors, it will likely come in the form of professional sanctions arising from the ethics review the senators mention in their letter, not criminal prosecution."

Why should we on the "left" accept this as a foregone conclusion? We're either a country of laws or we're not. When in the hell did we become so cowardly that we can't prosecute people for TORTURE?

My grandfather who fought in WWII is rolling in his grave. Clearly the ideals he fought for are no longer part of the American psyche

For these douchebags who are so oblivious of history, so ignorant of true justice and real morality -- and evidently have short attention spans -- I recommend one movie as a must-see primer on this topic:

Stanley Kramer's "Judgment at Nuremberg" from 1961.

The summation and verdict handed down by Spencer Tracy at the end to the Nazi war criminals crystallizes all this in just a few riveting minutes. The so-called Nuremberg defense -- "just following orders" -- is blown away. And justice denied is nothing more than that -- justice denied.

If there's any punishment for the memo authors, it will likely come in the form of professional sanctions arising from the ethics review the senators mention in their letter, not criminal prosecution.

There are others--and not just the Spanish--who'd reject this statement, and you can be sure they'll act on it with deliberation, as they should, in the absence of an American determination (and here's a novel idea) to prosecute torturers. I wouldn't be so dismissive of this possibility were I you.

They are defending lawyers? Too much.

It really is time to investigate and prosecute where necessary. I can't believe what I am hearing, no one in Gw's cabinet knew we prosecuted Japanese soldiers who waterboarded POW's? I mean don't these people google or wiki anything? Did they never take a history class? I can hardly believe this, the authors of the torture justifications didn't know we prosecuted war criminals, it is like they were barely functional morons. So McCain and his idiot cronies can stuff it, illegal is illegal, no one is above the law, remember that one boys, when you swore to uphold the constitution of the United States of America, which also requires you uphold already signed treaties! Too Late, time to pay the piper.

It saddens me that the honorable Senator McCain has squandered the life lessons he learned the hard way in his years of service in pursuit of access to power. It is precisely those who authorized and enabled criminal behavior who needs to be brought before the bar of justice. To excuse "white collar" crime misses the whole point; it isn't the acts of torture that corrupt our society, it's those who constructed the permissive environment in which these heinous acts are officially sanctioned that corrupts the fiber and foundation of our society.

The "honorable" senators: McCain, Graham and Lieberman have by their letter, forsworn the oath of their office which called upon them to defend the Constitution. For this tragic mistake in judgment; I call on them to resign their offices and high honors.

I ask that all patriotic citizens join me in sending a polite request to the offices of these "honorable" men to remind them of their failure to duty, and draw their attention to the acceptable redress.

cause if he knew the issue of NOT prosecuting these scumbags (and i'll happily include any Dem that was briefed and said nothing) would blow up and possibly eventually lead to a popular demand for Bush admin charges and trials, he is an even better politician than i thought.

its like LBJ said to MLK et al: i want a civil right bill too....now go out there and make me sign one.

Torturers (and we're forgetting that at Bagram we have at least five cases that ended in murder) can't be held accountable because some lawyer told them it was legal. And the lawyers can't be held accountable because they were just making legal recommendations. And the politicians who ordered those recommendations can't be held accountable because they were just formulating policy, and "you can't criminalize a policy dispute."

Can anyone in his or her right mind buy this shit?

What happened to all that Republican talk of "personal responsibility"? I guess that only applies to the colored and the poor.

If careers don't end, if Bybee isn't impeached and Yoo fired and disbarred, as an absolutely minimal act of atonement for this barbarity, we as a nation are hopelessly lost.

BushCo was nothing more than a vast criminal enterprise. We need a fucking revolution in this country to overthrow the gang of thugs that run the economy, manufacturing, the banks, etc. It's always the same in every class-divided society: everything for the rich, screw the rest of us. It's like Dennis said, "Wake up America!"

Mr. Attorney General Holder;

By his own hand in the 08-01-2002 OLC torture memo, in considerable damning detail, Mr. Bybee appears explicitly complicit in subornation of war crimes. You don't get to parse away and define torture down. This is not even a close call. We imprisoned and even executed people for participation in the very same types of acts. The history could not be more clear.

The fact that Mr. Bybee now sits comfortably on the federal bench owes ENTIRELY to the suppression of this torture memo during the time of his judicial confirmation hearing. Had it come publicly to light, he would never have been confirmed. He should not have been confirmed. He, and his fellow torture conspirators should be fully and openly investigated for having put this odious moral stain on our nation. They have put the nation and its defenders at significantly greater risk while sullying our reputation in the world.

The Israeli High Court once had to slap down its own intel service over torture -- and, you cannot accuse the Israelis of being "soft, liberal, terrorist coddlers" either. Their conclusion:

"This is the destiny of a democracy—it does not see all means as acceptable, and the ways of its enemies are not always open before it. A democracy must sometimes fight with one hand tied behind its back. Even so, a democracy has the upper hand. The rule of law and the liberty of an individual constitute important components in its understanding of security. At the end of the day, they strengthen its spirit and this strength allows it to overcome its difficulties."

See "Educing Information," the 372 page report issued by our own National Defense Intelligence College. That's where I found the quote.

Do the right thing. Minimally, appoint a neutral and respectable independent prosecutor to investigate these matters. There must be accountability. Absent that, we are really no better than our enemies, for the incentive and opportunities to behave as do they will remain.

Thank you.

Robert E. Gladd