Bush Interrogation Analysis

940 Words4 Pages
The release of four Bush administration memorandums approving the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques has increased momentum for an investigation into the architects of the program, but the prospect of indicting any of them remains unlikely. Steep legal and political hurdles remain to criminal prosecutions of the high-level policy makers, and even lesser punishments — like disbarment of the lawyers who signed off on the program — are supported by few precedents, legal specialists say. “Those who want heads to roll are likely to be dissatisfied,” said Daniel C. Richman, a professor of criminal law at Columbia University. Still, human-rights advocates said they believed the ground had shifted in the last week toward holding a searching look at the interrogation policy. “A criminal investigation of…show more content…
Posner said. The shield against prosecution provided by the Bush legal team’s assurances has led some critics to focus on the role played by the lawyers themselves, like Mr. Cheney’s counsel, David S. Addington; Mr. Rumsfeld’s counsel, William J. Haynes II; and the authors of the Justice Department memorandums: John C. Yoo, Jay S. Bybee and Steven G. Bradbury. Legal specialists from across the ideological spectrum have criticized those memorandums, especially a set written in 2002 by Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee, who is now a federal judge. Some have accused the lawyers of deliberately writing down a false reading of the law to enable policy makers to violate it with impunity. But there is little precedent for prosecuting government lawyers who provided arguably bad legal opinions. Moreover, Mr. Yoo, the memorandums’ principal author, had espoused idiosyncratic views about presidential power before joining the Justice Department, so it would be difficult to prove that he did not believe what he was

More about Bush Interrogation Analysis

Open Document