Not forgetting anything at all. Simply stating that ignorance may or may not constitute an “excuse.” Willful, not so much.
It’s actually quite simple if you give it some thought.
And this is exactly the line of argument that I was alluding to in the post you’re responding to. Again, if sheer ignorance is an excuse, then your defense applies.
Not being a lawyer, I’d like to read further opinions on this particular line of reasoning prior to accepting or rejecting it.
Pray tell what exactly you’re having problems parsing and I will oblige with further explanation.
Mayhaps this will help: “Since I am very rich and I know Bush’s tax plan will be advantageous to me, I am willing to vote for the guy even though I disagree with his policies (and actions) on torture.”
With such intense political ramifications that Holder isn’t going to make it without giving the President’s views strong weight. That obviously took place some months ago.
Well, it might. I see this admin as very much opposed to the “unitary executive” fantasy of the Bushiviks, and tilting strongly towards revitalizing the whole “seperation of powers” thingy. Which I applaud, without hesitation. If it moves him off a very uncomfortable poltical spot at the same time,well, so much the better.
Turn it around. Say that the DOJ opposed further investigation/prosecution, and Obama favored it. However much I may approve of Obama’s motives, I would be very leery of Presidential power being exerted over the DOJ. Had quite enough of that. Quite.
As I mentioned way back at the beginning, the point of all this is that Obama doesn’t want to be seen as the driver of the investigations. And he’s shocked, shocked, to find evidence of torture going on.
I suspect that ideally (from O’s point of view) Congress will get into one of its grandstandy moods and start investigating this whole mess itself, so that the Senate Foreign Intelligence Committee can pretend that they didn’t tacitly authorize all these “creative questioning techniques” in the first place.
And I think that ideally ( from Obama’s point of view ), the DoJ will hem and haw and stall until what little outrage there is fades away. I see no reason to think that anything will be done. And ten, twenty years from now the vast majority of Americans will deny that America ever tortures, and either get a blank face or claim that it’s a myth that we did in these cases.
Bush was re-elected precisely because of his “tough” approach on the “War On Terror” and everybody knew about Abu Ghraib, how Iraq had been a big lie, etc. And he was re-elected. And even today a lot of Americans, many on this board, defend the use of torture.
So let us not try to contrive explanations as to why torture just happened without no one really intending it. The American people supported the use of torture and today the American people do not, as they should, overwhelmly support the investigation of what happened and the punishment of the guilty. They support the torturers.
I don’t mean to answer for sailor (or RedFury), but there is such a thing as a deal-breaker, and it boggles me that for any American, torture would fail to be one.
I hate to use the term of “Victor’s justice” because it’s so often used by neo-nazis, but it does seem to apply to the US since Vietnam “It’s not a crime if an American does it, but we will prosecute foreigners for it” seems to be the general guideline.
We’re the good guys, and everybody knows it. That’s a big part of why so many of us bought into the line that Saddam and ObL were in cahoots: of course they were, they’re bad guys, and all the bad guys are on the same team against us.
In 1947 we put 4 Japanese soldiers on trial for torture. Their crimes included beatings and water boarding. We also convicted their commanding officers. They got life. Who says waterboarding is torture? We did. We did it in a militarycourt of law.
This is disheartening. I was thinking that Rove and Cheney’s defense of torture will destroy any credibility they may have had with the American people.
Really? Think about how many times you hear people say, “we should just nuke the whole Middle East,” and mean it.
Do you really think that someone who’d snuff out the lives of half a billion people so they wouldn’t have to see them on the news anymore would have a qualm about having one or two people tortured so they wouldn’t have to take off their shoes at airports?