Will Holder’s ‘Reckoning’ on Detainee Abuse Fall Flat?

[WillieW]

http://www.newsweek.com/id/213508?from=rss

Attorney General Eric Holder's decision to name a career prosecutor to investigate alleged CIA interrogation abuses would seem to fulfill a dramatic pledge he made last year when he was promoting the election of Barack Obama. "We owe the American people a reckoning," Holder said in a much-quoted speech that blasted the excesses of the Bush administration in its prosecution of the war on terror.

But while Holder's move in choosing John Durham to probe agency abuses has roiled the intelligence community and infuriated Republicans on Capitol Hill, it is far from clear that such a "reckoning" will ever come. The investigation Holder has directed Durham to conduct is sharply circumscribed. It won't involve the conduct of senior Bush officials who approved waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation" techniques. In a statement Monday, Holder said it won't endanger any CIA operatives who relied "in good faith" on controversial Justice Department memos that gave . . . con't

[WeDidIt]

1. Nice propaganda subject line

Your subject line is past tense.

Title of article is future tense.

:eyes:

[timtom]

3. Past tense seems appropriate here.

The choices have been made and the outcome is fairly predictable.

(Of course, we all could be surprised and vindicated. I certainly hope so. But it doesn't look too hopeful at this stage.)

[WeDidIt]

9. Wrong

All investigatins can lead to further investigations. Prosecutors go where the evidence leads them.

So asking the question in the future tense is appropriate. Asking in the past tense is not.

[timtom]

10. Yeah, that's worked out real well

in the past investigations in this country, hasn't it?

[WeDidIt]

11. Well, let's see

An investigation into matters surrounding a land deal in Arkansas ended up with perjury charges on a completely unrelated incident being put forward in teh House, resulting in impeachment.

So you see how investigations can go.

The investigation hasn't even begun yet, so putting it in the past tense is ridiculous.

[timtom]

12. Are you by any chance an attorney?

[WillieW]

4. thank you.

[timtom]

2. Yes!

Epic FAIL on the part of the current administration to quit half-stepping and seriously seek to deal with important issues -- INTELLIGENTLY and without obfuscation.

[Selatius]

5. I would rather trust Human Rights Watch and the ACLU's take on this.

If it is true that Holder's investigation is going to be sharply curtailed to previously reviewed cases of alleged abuse where no prosecution took place because of lack of evidence and lack of witnesses, however few there are, then it will serve as little more than a whitewashing of the last eight years.

John Ashcroft, now dead, knew that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded a whopping 183 times. He knew it and signed off on it.

[aquart]

6. John Ashcroft croaked? When?

[Selatius]

8. Wait, nm. That was somebody else I was thinking of. nt

[Mari333]

7. Johnny Boy is very much alive

altho , of course, he is similar to a zombie.