That’s Marcy Wheeler, at Firedoglake, commenting on Tuesday’s announcement by the Justice Department that the federal prosecutor assigned to investigate the destruction of C.I.A. videotapes showing two high-level detainees being tortured during hours of interrogation in a secret C.I.A. facility in Thailand will not file criminal charges against C.I.A. officials responsible for the destruction of the tapes, which occurred in November, 2005:
Of course no one will be charged for destroying the evidence of torture! Our country has spun so far beyond holding the criminals who run our country accountable that even the notion of accountability for torture was becoming quaint and musty while we waited and screamed for some kind of acknowledgment that Durham had let the statute of limitations on the torture tape destruction expire. I doubt they would have even marked the moment–yet another criminal investigation of the Bush Administration ending in nothing–it if weren’t for the big stink bmaz has been making. Well, maybe that’s not right–after all, Bob Bennett was bound to do a very public victory lap, because that’s what he’s paid for.
The investigation continues, DOJ tells us, into obstruction of the Durham investigation itself. Maybe they think they’ve caught someone like Porter Goss in a lie. But at this point, that almost seems like a nice story the prosecutors are telling themselves so they can believe they’re still prosecutors, so they can believe we still have rule of law in this country.
[…]
The ACLU’s Anthony Romero reacted to this news saying, in part, “We cannot say that we live under the rule of law unless we are clear that no one is above the law.”
I think it’s clear. We cannot say we live under the rule of law.
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