I would add, a large part of the reason we’re in such a fix, is that people on the left were afraid to ask the tough questions, but went along with the prevailing winds. The questions I’ve asked about the costs of going after Cheyney (which we are now seeing) relative to the benefits of it, are fair and valid.

I believe you are seriously mistaken to criticize the propriety of torture investigations and prosecutions based on a cost/benefit analysis of the political consequences. Justice Robert Jackson, our Chief Prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, did not do that and Holder shouldn’t do it either. I’m not certain, for example, that it would ever make political sense to prosecute former public officials, who are members of the opposition party, for war crimes or crimes against humanity.

The relevant issue is one of duty and responsibility to uphold the Rule of Law so that citizens have faith that everyone is subject to it. One of the main reasons we are on the road to ruin is we now have a two tiered system of justice in which the privileged wealthy few are not subject to the law. This breeds contempt for law that cannot be meaningfully measured according to some cost/benefit political analysis of short term consequences. This is why the Department of Justice must operate independently from the President.

We cannot afford not to investigate and prosecute because that is a foundational step to restoring our shattered faith in equal justice under law and the legitimacy of our government.

Because, at a time when we need every ounce of clout that we can muster to get that public option, and to help Joe and Jane six-pak get affordable healthcare, haring off after Cheyney and his SS-lite, however moral it may be, is clearly blowing off capital that we need, and are losing, every day.

Obama/Rahm don’t need political capital to feign support for a public option or to pass “reform” which is nothing more than a giant gift to AHIP. THEY WERE NEVER FOR A PUBLIC OPTION. It’s time to give that fantasy up. When the administration finally mounted a determined, aggressive campaign using message discipline and the bully pulpit to frame the opposition as petulant, irrational zealots, the opposition they chose was not opponents of health reform but their entire constituency for having the temerity to hold them to their words.

@7 – Thanks, Jason. As with many of my articles, they were stimulated by someone in press or blogosphere. In this case, Marcy’s questions got me going.

@10 – SP, Thanks. That was my take on ODNI, but thought maybe I was missing something. I agree that the role of the Pentagon in the torture scandal does not get the coverage it deserves. In this sense, the CIA is a lightning rod, but it is also obviously more than that. Whenever I tread down that hall of mirrors, I’m not sure what to think.

@16 – Yes, we need to sort out this mess. But the main question is this: what kind of a country do we want to be? What kind of a society? And, at this point in history, what kind of a world will we have?

@26 – Kind words, drational, but I don’t belong in their company. I’m glad to think I have made some good contributions, but I don’t do what Marcy and Jason do day after day, and with high quality. Plus there are other contributors that may not always show up here, but on the torture issue are primary players (like Andy Worthington, or consider Scahill’s latest work on Blackwater). I strive to be half as good as all these people mentioned.

@54 – tanbark, we cannot parse great evil. The evils are connected. The fight for accountability on torture is not a “conscience-salve”, it is intricately tied up with the fight against militarism, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the need for basic human rights, health care, prison reform, etc. As the great Enlightenment figures understood, the campaign against torture was part of the whole struggle, and maybe uniquely so, as that crime exists at the nexus of state, army (intel agency today, too), national policy, racism, equality and justice. In terms maybe the U.S. public can understand, it’s a fight for the nation’s soul.

@78 – Mary, you hit the nail on the head. The question of questions is where will we find the leadership?

–The Choir?

I hope that americans will face the truth of how bloodily, expensively, wrong was the bush administration in dragging us over the cliff, and that they will support Obama as he extracts us, first from Iraq, and then, from Afghanistan. With the chips falling where they will.

If they don’t, then all of this back and forth, will, I’m afraid, be smoke in the wind, and we will descend into a Churchillian/Orwellian dark night of a tyranny more subtle than that of the Nazis, but tyranny, nevertheless. We’ve been flirting with it for 8 years.

the record must be etched for posterity, today might not judge them guilty but the record will stand clear, and the fact that we did not let thhose crimes go unchallenged, that will stand like a monument for all to see.

they must be brought to trial if only to show that crimes against our constitution WILL be investigated

if crimes are not brought then these annd other criminals WILL renew, revisit, adjust and re-do

we have no choice, othewise the invitation for more of the same is clear