Waterboarding during the Vietnam War (Image from Norman's Blog)Bush Doctrine Stalls Holder Confirmation -- Washington Post
GOP Wants No More Investigations
Even as Senate Republicans seek assurances that new leaders at the Justice Department will not prosecute former government officials over national security abuses, one of the highest-profile investigations of the Bush era is grinding to a close.
A little more than a year ago, then-Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey handpicked a prosecutor to investigate the destruction of CIA videotapes depicting harsh interrogation tactics used against two al-Qaeda suspects. The disclosure that the tapes, believed to portray the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, were destroyed in 2005 touched off an outcry from defense lawyers and civil liberties advocates who said the government should have produced the materials in lawsuits pending at the time.
Since then, the federal inquiry has proceeded mostly in the shadows. But prosecutor John H. Durham recently told a federal judge that he would wrap up interviews by the end of February -- a timetable complicated by the highly sensitive subject, the reluctance of current and former agency employees to cooperate and Durham's painstaking approach, according to court documents and three lawyers following the case.
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My Comment: On the one hand, one can argue that this is a witch hunt that targets those who were authorized to protect us after 9/11. On the other hand, if rules and guidelines (and orders) were not obeyed, accountability must then be exercised.
But from my understanding, members of Congress were always notified of what was happening. If this is the case, and no information was withheld from Congress, this investigation is then dead. But if evidence reveals that information was deliberately destroyed, accountability and punishment must be the result. This investigation has been going on for a long time now .... it is time to put up .... or shut up.
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