Yes, U$.
A few people…. What about the pictures we saw from
Abu Graib? You remember, the one with the Iraelis in the background making sure that the white trash did things right. And what about the pictures they didn’t let us see, the one which were so much worse, that every big boy in Washington was walking around with a woody for weeks.
Nothing like a story from Bob “limited hangout” Woodward. What a charmed existence the court stenographer has! At least Bernstein gives some indication of being embarrassed at being snookered by Felt.
Two reasons:
1)To rehabilitate the US’s image under the big O. “We don’t do that anymore.”
2)Bush can’t grant executives pardons without accusations of wrongdoing. So there you go.

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 14 2009 15:08 utc | 3

There is surely some personal statement behind the Right Honorable Judge Crawford stating the obvious, since the RHJC needs to go on with life after Bush, look old friends and colleagues in the eye, and sleep well in the years to come. It is not just a truism that torturers receive the same torment as they dish out — it just arrives internally, in spades, over the years that follow. The RHJC is assuaging guilt personally as well as publicly.
The public import of the RHJC’s clear statement is to help muddle the whole issue, get it slicked up with some limited hangout statements of honesty from the inside, lube it up a bit with rationality at long last so that it all slides into the past without further ado.
Meaning, Obama will get busy in DC this winter, create a whirl of new activity, and gradually let the American public know that he will not be pursuing the crimes of the Bush years in any way but words, words, words.
This little statement of judicious honesty is just a laxative, to help the giant turd in America’s gut go away without the slightest bit of digestion.

Posted by: Antifa | Jan 14 2009 16:50 utc | 5

It’s actually from the last scene of a play (written in verse, yes).
For those who didn’t read J.B. (a modern retelling of the story of Job) in a dramatic lit course somewhere along the line, MacLeish wrote it in 1958. He wrote in response to the horrors of two world wars, the Holocaust, and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The horrors never end; we can only seek what love we can find.
And so it goes….

Posted by: catlady | Jan 14 2009 18:11 utc | 7

If there was justice all at once, all debts paid, every score settled, each drop of blood avenged — would there be anything left but ashes?

Posted by: Chuck Cliff | Jan 15 2009 19:10 utc | 9

Valid question Chuck Cliff, but I answer it with one of my own..
Have you ever walked a mountain trail the spring after a lighting strike and Forrest fire?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 15 2009 20:08 utc | 11

On the consequences of Crawford’s open talk by some knowledgeable law scholars:

Under the 1984 Torture Convention, its 146 state parties (including the United States) are under an obligation to “ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law.” These states must take any person alleged to have committed torture (or been complicit or participated in an act of torture) who is present in their territories into custody. The convention allows no exceptions, as Sen. Pinochet discovered in 1998. The state party to the Torture Convention must then submit the case to its competent authorities for prosecution or extradition for prosecution in another country.
The former chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces and general counsel for the Department of the Army has spoken. Her clear words have been picked up around the world. And that takes the prospects of accountability and criminal investigation onto another level. For the Obama administration, the door to the do-nothing option is now closed. That is why today may come to be seen as the turning point.

Posted by: b | Jan 17 2009 11:25 utc | 13