it's completely inevitable that this will be perceived as a partisan move.

Are we talking about holding people accountable for torture, or the sort of post-war international commission? In the latter case, I agree. It'd be something we'd have to setup for the completion of future wars. In the former case, foreign leaders and officials have been executed for war crimes, including torture. The precedent is there.

I hope you can see that if we can accept in some cases that the guilty aren't held accountable and the system doesn't fall apart, there is precedent for holding that justice doesn't always mean that individual guilt is assigned and punishment paid for the acts.

That's why I want everyone in prison for marijuana possession, or three strike laws released. I doubt it would cause our system to fall apart, and it seems like the moral thing to do.

As Yglesias pointed out, the idea of personal responsibility doesn't ever seem to extend to our elites:
The United States isn’t run along Social Darwinist lines, but we’re closer than any other major developed country. To an extent that I find frankly astounding—and certainly unseen in other wealthy nations—people from modest backgrounds are expected to suffer the economic consequences of poor decision-making or bad luck, all in the name of personal responsibility. But when someone really important screws up, either in terms of provoking a financial crisis or overseeing a policy disaster or breaking the law or whatever, well then it turns out that we have better things to do than “look backwards” at who deserves what.

It’s absurd and it’s unfair.

If you want to extend your mercy for torturers to other criminals in the United States, then at least you're being consistent. Otherwise you're perpetuating the idea that there is one system of justice for the rich and powerful, and another for the rest of us.

I think justice is best served by convincing the large group of Americans (well over half) who currently feel these techniques were effective and acceptable, that that's not so. And looking for personal culpability will IMO, greatly undermine the opportunity to changing people's mindset about that.

I don't know how you can say that. The 1/3rd of the country that thought Bush was a great president, seems to be aligned behind him and Cheney in support of torture. Not only that, but they have very prominent mouthpieces in Rush Limbaugh, Hannity, Glenn Beck and members of Congress. Versus who? You and John McCain?

These people are not going to stop believing torture is acceptable policy, and they are only one election away from regaining control of the government. The best option we have it to use the law to scare the living sh*t out of them. If Cheney, Bybee and some CIA interrogators are rotting in prison for war crimes, I think it'd give future torture advocates and the people they ordered second thoughts about instituting similar programs.

And since I believe it's important to unite the country against the acceptance of immoral interrogation techniques, the division that would cause would run counter to the primary goal IMO.

I still haven't had time to read all of Mikkel's links but read the one of his own articles that he linked back to about justice, and while it's well written I just disagree with his central thesis there- I do think that sometimes other factors trump the need for individuals to be held accountable for their acts. Think of times when you might feel that way- that Miranda rights, when neglected, allow probably criminals to go free. I realize you wouldn't agree with me about the factors in this case being of the same nature as that (as obviously I'm not claiming that this is a civil rights for protection of innocent type of exception) but I hope you can see that if we can accept in some cases that the guilty aren't held accountable and the system doesn't fall apart, there is precedent for holding that justice doesn't always mean that individual guilt is assigned and punishment paid for the acts.

There's just an element of retroactive punishment to a standard that people haven't been held to in the past that bothers me- and also the fact that nearly everyone involved in the political class either agreed to these acts or looked the other way, and to me those actions had to have been based on what they believed their constituents wanted or needed in the way of national security. I think there may have been exceptions to that rationale of 'good faith', but overall I think that was most of the motivation. If there's a way to tease out the good faith from the more nefarious motivations, fine- but I'm not inclined to push for retribution of people who made incorrect decisions if those were made in good faith.

All court justice is necessarily “retroactive”, unless we've secretly implemented a Judge Dredd system of law enforcement. The fact that Bush and Cheney lied about what was going on for six years made it virtually impossible to build the evidence based call for investigations and prosecutions.

That past executives weren't held accountable for their crimes isn't a valid concern unless you do in fact believe that executives should be above the law.

Hasn't every war criminal acted in some perverted form of “good faith”. Hitler believed he was protecting Germany by exterminating the Jews. Stalin's purges were a way of solidifying the national government. Those crimes certainly dwarf torture, but they were all committed in “good faith” for what the perpetrators thought was the betterment of their country.

If the current Democratic administration or Congress decides that we NOW need to start doing that, even though it hasn't been done before (and you and Hemm are both pointing out that such a tribunal would have found guilt in past Democratic administrations as well, yet this wasn't called for then- which is what I meant about selectivity of historical context), then how is it not partisan (or have the strong appearance of partisanship) to decide that this war is the starting point for this kind of scrutiny? We've never before held our elected officials to that standard of accountability. Now, you can certainly make a good argument that we should have, but for heaven's sake, not only was there never any discussion of criminality, those kinds of acts were practically considered heroic acts of war at one time.

All of that should change, but I feel that the only way to get all Americans on board with that is to avoid retroactive punishment under this new formulation of accounting for acts committed in war.

And honestly, I have no love for the previous administration and absolutely no reason to want to protect them. I think I would feel exactly the same if all of the party affiliations were reversed. There's just an element of retroactive punishment to a standard that people haven't been held to in the past that bothers me- and also the fact that nearly everyone involved in the political class either agreed to these acts or looked the other way, and to me those actions had to have been based on what they believed their constituents wanted or needed in the way of national security. I think there may have been exceptions to that rationale of 'good faith', but overall I think that was most of the motivation. If there's a way to tease out the good faith from the more nefarious motivations, fine- but I'm not inclined to push for retribution of people who made incorrect decisions if those were made in good faith.

On your other comment re: Abu Graib- I'm not sure what you're saying and somehow we appear to be talking past each other, but I don't have time to sort through all of the links and figure out where and why we seem to be talking about two different things. Sorry to have brought it up without time to follow through, but I'm going to have to leave it.

Well you know what, some of the people we've locked up and tortured were innocent or had already told us everything they knew. The fact you don't give a damn is something you'll have to square with your God. Meanwhile, the rest of us can put your future comments into the context that your level of morality is on level with brutal dictators.

Bravo, Chris, I admire a person that who actually walks the walk.

My guess is Mikkel was pointing out that we won't be able to convict the genuine bad guys because they've been abused in so many ways, nothing would ever hold up in court.

Ahh… you're talking about the alleged terrorists?

Let all the documents come out. whatever chips fall is secondary to ascertaining the truth.

And from the looks of it, Cheney is more interested in opening up these documents than your side is.

I don't care if they release the documents, and I'm definitely not opposed. On the other hand, I wonder where Dick Cheney was when the CIA destroyed the interrogation videos.

Of course in releasing all these official documents, it'll make it impossible to convict anyone

Hrmm? How so?

And from the looks of it, Cheney is more interested in opening up these documents than your side is.

Of course in releasing all these official documents, it'll make it impossible to convict anyone, which pretty much means that either they'll have to go free or they'll have to make a precedent that can be abused. Yes all this is fantastic.

(sorry, therefore it does not support your claim mikkel that newshoggers is on top of “all” information, but rather just the info that serves the left view)

casualobserver,
So, the rightwing view is that torture is great as long as it works?

Word.

Let's see what that reveals.

even if we were starting from a blank slate and we could simply ignore the fact that techniques like waterboarding are proscribed by numerous laws and treaties, to make a policy case for the use of such techniques, you would have to do much more than establish that they occasionally have produced actionable intelligence. Among other things, you would have to prove that 1) such information could not have been extracted using other means, 2) that the misinformation produced by such methods doesn't overwhelm the accurate information to the point of rending the whole exercise pointless, 3) that the strategic costs of using such techniques (international outrage, increased radicalization of the Muslim world, increased danger to U.S. troops, etc.) don't outweigh the benefits, and 4) the value of the information produced is worth the tradeoff of never being able to use that information (or the fruits thereof) in court and severely jeopardizing any hope of ever convicting that individual in any constitutionally compliant legal proceeding.

http://www.anonymousliberal.com/2009/04/who-car...

LBJ – Viet Nam
Dick Nixon – Illegal bombing in Cambodia
Dick Nixon – Watergate
Reagan – Iran Contra

Every single one of these started out with “cherry picked” evidence “leaked” for “political gain.”

The problem going into these situations is that none start with all the info coming out in neat little quanta. The claim of political partisanship has historically been the opening stanza of denial and denial-denial.