Tuesday, January 20, 2009

PROSECUTING TORTURE


Wow. The conservative, republican-supporting, Washington Times has an editorial calling for Barack Obama to support "the rule of law" by going after President Bush and those in this administration who participated in torture. While the article is a bit winded, it makes the following points (not necessarily in this order):

In the New York Times, Former Solicitor General Charles Fried has argued against prosecutions because the suspected Bush administration culprits fell short of the criminality of Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin or Mao Tse-tung! That absurdity is akin to reserving murder prosecutions to the likes of Jack the Ripper . . .

Unpunished lawlessness by government officials invites lawlessness generally. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis taught in Olmstead v. United States (1928): "Decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously . . . Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy" . . .

Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Gonzales and others . . . took an oath to "defend the Constitution of the United States," not their idiosyncratic notions of what was good for the country . . .
- Mark

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