{"id":752,"date":"2009-09-01T17:12:36","date_gmt":"2009-09-01T15:12:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ofcourseimright.com\/?p=752"},"modified":"2009-09-01T17:14:35","modified_gmt":"2009-09-01T15:14:35","slug":"are-employees-of-the-cia-above-the-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/?p=752","title":{"rendered":"Are Employees of the CIA above the law?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Update<\/strong>:\u00a0 CNN’s Peter Bergen points out all the flaws in Dick Cheney’s logic here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Over the last few days there have been a plethora of conservative commentaries that range in their argument from Dick Cheney accusing the Obama administration of a political vendetta<\/a> to The Wall Street Journal repeatedly arguing that the prosecutions are just wrong headed (such as this one<\/a>) to Debra J. Saunders in the SF Chronicle, arguing that the employees in question should be pardoned<\/a>.\u00a0 There are at least two problems with the arguments now appearing on the street:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. In all cases, torturer sympathizers seem to forget that we, the American People, don’t actually know what happened yet.\u00a0 That is what an investigation is for.<\/li>\n
  2. In some cases, the argument seems to be that members of the CIA who were acting on orders should be shielded by the fact they were just following orders.\u00a0 We tried people and convicted them, not withstanding that defense, in Nuremberg.\u00a0 They were known as Nazis.\u00a0 We as a society need to send a message that no one is above the law.\u00a0 It may take years to catch up with people who have been politically shielded from their crimes, but they will be brought to justice.<\/li>\n
  3. According to the CIA<\/a>, torture has been shown to be unreliable.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    That leaves the argument that the current investigation by the Justice Department is politically motivated.\u00a0 I would have to say that if one’s politics require one to believe that torture is illegal and immoral, then the answer is yes.\u00a0 Our morality throughout the world has been called into question.\u00a0 Do we condone the torturing of human beings?\u00a0 What, then, separates us from those we accuse of being evil?<\/p>\n

    On the other hand, I do not see any evidence that this is some sort of game of political Gotcha.\u00a0 While Debra Saunders writes that General Holder has in the past been inconsistent in his views when it comes to pardons, that means nothing in the context of a factual investigation.<\/p>\n

    As to Mr. Cheney, let him speak.\u00a0 He may, at best, be shielded by the fact that the vice president cannot order anyone in the executive branch outside his own staff to do anything.\u00a0 He would be the wrong person to go after, anyway.\u00a0 If President Bush ordered a crime to be committed, let him be held accountable, assuming a crime was committed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Update:\u00a0 CNN’s Peter Bergen points out all the flaws in Dick Cheney’s logic here. Over the last few days there have been a plethora of conservative commentaries that range in their argument from Dick Cheney accusing the Obama administration of a political vendetta to The Wall Street Journal repeatedly arguing that the prosecutions are just … Continue reading “Are Employees of the CIA above the law?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,4],"tags":[259,256,43,154,199,39],"class_list":["post-752","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humanity","category-politics","tag-crime","tag-dick-cheney","tag-president-bush","tag-republicans","tag-right-wing","tag-torture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=752"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":765,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752\/revisions\/765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=752"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=752"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ofcourseimright.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=752"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}