In a column about the Senate Armed Services Committee report which demonstrated that orders to use torture - excuse me, harsh interrogation techniques - on suspected terrorists came from the top the LATimes' Tim Rutten writes:
As the Washington Post reported Tuesday, however, documents and e-mails collected by investigators for the Armed Services Committee show that officials working for then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld began their research into waterboarding, stress positions, sensory deprivation and other practices as far back as July 2002, months before military commanders began asking for permission.
Rutten seems to be fairly appalled by the actions of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Yoo, and Addington - he doesn't mention George, however - even going so far as to say, "The fact that these guys seem to have defined executive branch power as the ability to hold people in secret and torture them pushes the creepy quotient into areas that probably require psychoanalytic credentials."
But then Rutten concludes:
Part of the hysteria over all this that you see in places like the Wall Street Journal editorial pages stems from an anxiety that congressional inquiries, like that of Levin's committee, will lead to indictments and possibly even war crimes trials for officials who participated in the administration's deliberations over torture and the treatment of prisoners.
It's true that there are a handful of European rights activists and people on the lacy left fringe of American politics who would dearly like to see such trials, but actually pursuing them would be a profound -- even tragic -- mistake. Our political system works as smoothly as it does, in part, because we've never criminalized differences over policy. Since Andrew Jackson's time, our electoral victors celebrate by throwing the losers out of work -- not into jail cells.
So after condemning a policy of torture - and Rutten could have written about so many more illegal acts committed by the administration (illegal spying, destruction of evidence, violations of the Espionage Act...the list goes on) his preferred punishment for these criminals is...comfortable retirement.
No doubt the Kool Kidz of our benighted punditocracy are all nodding their oversized heads in agreement. Should President Obama and his Attorney General John Edwards - let's say - investigate and prosecute these crimes Rutten and his pals would unleash a firestorm of condemnation which would cripple the new administration.
And then, some years in the future, when another president repeats and even expands on these crimes the Ruttens of the country will shake their heads sadly then seek to dismiss concerns.
Unless, of course, another president is caught getting a blow-job. That sort of thing threatens our whole Constitutional system.
.
