Saturday, April 10, 2010

Waterboarding Decision


Judge Jay Bybee


John Yoo

The Justice Department recently ruled that lawyers who authorized CIA interrogators to use waterboarding are not guilty of professional misconduct, but did show "poor judgment," after an internal investigation into the Bush administration's counterterrorism policies.

Though Obama has abolished the technique, the Justice Department was responsible for deciding if those who previously authorized such tactics would be punished. An initial review had concluded that the two former government lawyers, John Yoo and Jay Bybee, had committed professional misconduct, but the Justice Department's most senior lawyer disagreed after re-examining the case. But he wrote in a memo, "This decision should not be viewed as an endorsement of the legal work that underlies those memoranda." The ruling comes as George W. Bush is seeing a strong show of support at a recent Conservative Political Action Conference, reports Benjamin Sarlin, who notes that Bush never lost a large chunk of his party's base.

Keep watching and listening. Who says that crime doesn't pay?

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