{"id":7352,"date":"2009-08-11T23:43:35","date_gmt":"2009-08-12T06:43:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bradblog.com\/?p=7352"},"modified":"2009-08-11T23:43:13","modified_gmt":"2009-08-12T06:43:13","slug":"latimes-holder-all-but-certain-to-launch-narrow-probe-into-bush-administration-torture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=7352","title":{"rendered":"LATimes: Holder ‘All But Certain’ to Launch ‘Narrow’ Probe into Bush Administration Torture"},"content":{"rendered":"

From the sub-title used with the LATimes<\/i> story over the weekend<\/a> about AG Eric Holder’s long-rumored<\/a>, now reportedly “all but certain” plan to appoint a special prosecutor to examine torture during the Bush Adminstration:<\/p>\n

Insiders say Atty. Gen. Eric Holder is close to naming a prosecutor to look into reports of excessive<\/i> waterboarding and other unauthorized methods.<\/div>\n

So non-“excessive waterboarding” is now legal?<\/p>\n

From the article itself…<\/p>\n

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A senior Justice Department official said that Holder envisioned an inquiry that would be narrow in scope, focusing on “whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized” in Bush administration memos that liberally interpreted anti-torture laws.<\/div>\n

(Note for wingnuts: The use of the word “liberally” there is precisely appropriate, as the Bush Adminstration’s legal policies on torture (and most everything else) are the very definition of classic liberalism<\/i> — just in case any clue-impaired wingnuts out there who have been horn-swaggled into believing they believe in conservatism<\/i> remain under any remaining delusions about that.)<\/p>\n

As to the actual news<\/i> there, if taken at face value — even as it comes from an anonymous source, in a less-than-credible paper — it would signal the absolutely shameful notion that the Obama\/Holder Administration is willing to recognize the entirely illigitimate, entirely illegal patena of “legality” the Bush Administration concocted out of whole clothe in order to carry out its blatant perversion of Constitutional justice, as if it was actually legitimate.<\/p>\n

While those who went beyond the confines of the illegal and illegitimate<\/i> Bush Administration “authorizations” should absolutely<\/i> be prosecuted as well (page 2 of the LATimes<\/i> article<\/a> details several outrageous cases in point), the apparent recognition of any legitimate “authority” of the Bush Administration’s scandalous torture memos is, as mentioned, just shameful and equally scandalous. If true.<\/p>\n

One hopeful, if rather ironic note from the Times<\/i> article: The unnamed DoJ official says that Holder, “as attorney general…has the obligation to follow the law.”<\/p>\n

Really? All of them? Or just the ones that affect people nobody has ever heard of? We’ll hope he discovers it to be the former.<\/p>\n

* * *<\/div>\n

Post-script<\/i>: I actually wrote the above item on Sunday night, but held it back to allow our Sibel Edmonds coverage<\/a> to stay at the top of the blog. In the meantime, MSNBC’s Countdown<\/i> took up the story with guest Scott Horton on Monday, and focused on many of the same issues I was struck by above…<\/p>\n

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