Attorney General Holder Names CIA Special Prosecutor

Apparently deeply disturbed over some of the things he read in the recently released and redacted 2004 report on interrogations, Attorney General Eric Holder has finally decided to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate 12 cases of torture of prisoners of war.

Reports of mock executions where prisoners were housed in interrogation rooms and were led to believe that the gunshot they just heard in the next room was from an interrogator’s gun, reports of the threats to drill through the skulls of detainees with a power drill, reports like these were just too much, apparently, for Holder to ignore.

So today he announced the appointment of Connecticut federal prosecutor John Durham to head up the investigation, a good choice because he is already involved in many aspects of alleged CIA (or their contractors) prisoner abuse.

Now the idea here is not to go after the people who were taking their orders in good faith that they were legal (although some from the Nazi Wehrmacht might grumble about that one), but to go after the decision makers. Those who gave the go-ahead.

Those who were clearly politically motivated to issue orders that were in direct contravention of the Geneva Conventions. You know, like Heinrich Himmler. Those type of guys.

I think it is probably pretty useless to go after the small potatoes, the ones who poured the water. I think it would be punishment enough to blackball them from any future government contracts.

Now . . . about Blackwater. Can that be next on the list of things to do or is it true that since the crimes were committed in Iraq and Afghanistan, they are copacetic?

Wouldn’t it be appropriate, then, to hand these alleged murderers over to the local governments, and have them render justice?