Quote:
Originally Posted by Jim in CT
So why hasn't Obama charged them with a crime?
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First, it must be determined if it costs votes in the next election or gains them.
Anyway, I think that there is still a realization that future administrations, or even this one in the next two years, might have to use "illegal" measures if we are placed in a compromised position such as the hidden-bomb-and -prisoner-who-knows-where-it-is scenario. Hurt the opposition with rhetoric, but keep all options open.
The hilarious thing is that as I read it, I was able to insert actions of this and past administrations in place of those actions in the article and they were nearly perfect parallel "crimes." such as:
"Americans have known about many of these acts for years . . . These are, simply, crimes."
As in, it has been known for years that our government has acted illegally by legislating outside of the Constitution.
And:
"They are also banned by the Convention Against Torture, the international treaty that the United States ratified in 1994 and that requires prosecution of any acts of torture."
As also in, our government was banned by the Constitution against not faithfully executing their duties described in the ratified Constitution and banned from not defending it--all of which they knowingly have done.
And:
"So it is no wonder that today’s blinkered apologists are desperate to call these acts anything but torture, which they clearly were. As the report reveals, these claims fail for a simple reason: C.I.A. officials admitted at the time that what they intended to do was illegal . . . they shopped around for the answer they wanted. They got it from the ideologically driven lawyers in the Office of Legal Counsel, who wrote memos fabricating a legal foundation for the methods."
As in, it is no wonder that today's hypocritical apologists delight in twisting the Constitution to say their decades of illegal legislations were "constitutional." As in, from the beginning of the FDR administration it was known and later admitted that ideologically driven government lawyers were consulted to create language to make what they did seem to be constitutional even though they knew it wasn't, as they later admitted. And that illegality crafted by ideological lawyers has continued to this day. And it has been admitted, including by progressive scholars such as professor Seidman, that the Constitution was and is being subverted. And as in Gruber who devised deceptive language and lies to sell the ACA to us and mollify the conscience of all who voted for it.
And:
"We now know that this reliance was not made in good faith."
As in we now know that the ACA and the illegal actions of this and previous administrations of the last eight decades were not made in good faith.
The rule of law has been broken so many times that articles like this and the fellow traveler complaints about so-and-so's, and such-and-such legislation being criminal, illegal, is not only hypocritical, but the cumulative effect of government lying and its contempt of rule of law has created the danger of a reactionary public of contempt for law.
And it is that contempt which may partly inform the confused and often baseless perceptions of bias in our system and the periodic accompaniment of destructive violence.