Certainly judging by Rahm Emamnuel's statement of yesterday, there seems little hope of the Administration pursuing prosecution for the torture committed in America's name over the course of the Bush years.
There still remain other possibilities, however: Congress demanding an investigation,, the AG appointing a special prosecutor.
And so, since the very thought causes the enablers of the torturers' blood to turn cold, we have soulless automatons like Peggy Noonan and George Will dispatched to do their best to make sure this never happens.
After all, many of those in the Bush administration who'd be held accountable are good friends of Noonan and Will! Likely many of them have been seating partners at dinner parties, or have kitbitzed with them over hors d'ouveres at cocktail parties! These fine upstanding Republicans can't be allowed to face jail time for a few good-natured fingernail removals and simulated drownings! Come on!
Observe the pooh-poohing of accountability for war crimes by these two wise, sagacious, most esteemed and civilized of the Beltway pundits:
Will argues that Obama has played a dangerous game by releasing the memos, for the enemy will jot the information down and 'adjust' to our 'enhanced interrogation techniques' (thank you, MR. Orwell).
Gee, where have we heard that idea before?
Well, we heard it from Bush repeatedly, most notably in his Matt Lauer interview. We also heard it from McCain during the Republican primaries.
You know what? When one hears an idea like that over and over again, one begins to think it was dreamed up in the bowels of the White House by a subhuman slime beast for the express purpose of repetition to deflect criticism of torture by subtly inferring that those who criticize torture are helping the enemy and are less than patriotic.
This is proven by the fact that the idea make no sense whatever upon examination. They're going to 'adapt' to waterboarding? How? By wearing a snorkel?
But in Will's case the argument makes even less sense because Obama outlawed these tactics the day after he got into office. So cranky uptight torture apologist Will has no point at all. He's merely barfing up the Republican party line once again, the same one puked up by Bush himself, and to hear it from someone who's supposed to be some sort of independent journalist displays he's really just a spokesman for the torture regime, and the haphazard deployment of this stale-non-excuse shows how desperate he is that his pals escape punishment for their crimes against humanity.
As repellent as Will is in his desire for American values to conform to those of the Khmer Rouge or Pinochet he is outdone by the smarmy sighing sycophantic queen of oozing and unearned condescension, former Reagan speechwriter, Peggy Noonan. With her trademark dreamy enunciation, as though she's reciting the 'they slipped the surly bonds of earth' passage that she wrote for Reagan's Challenger speech, Noonan says "Just keep walkin'." No accountability, no acknowledgment, no Geneva Convention, no human rights - it's the American way, Noonan insists - let bygones by bygones. At an uncharacterisitic loss for words, Noonan says "Some things have to remain...mysterious..."
It's the American way, Noonan implies, to ignore the breaking of the basic laws of civilization, to allow torturers to sully the name of America, to destroy the very values which America is supposed to stand for. And in her loss for words, we see her awareness that she really has no case for the point she's trying to make. She just thinks these people shouldn't be prosecuted because...well, they're her friends that she enabled into office, and then enabled as they committed these atrocious acts...and they shouldn't be held to account for breaking international law because...well, they just shouldn't, darn it! They're my pals!
As Sam Donaldson notes, with that kind of logic the government could do anything, literally anything, and remain unaccountable. They could even perform acts beyond torture, unimaginably hideous crimes against humanity of the kind we've only read about in history books.
And yet to Noonan that would be alright - there's no time to deal with the crimes of the past (yet what other crimes are there - the ones of the future?), and though she can't tell us exactly why, the course of action she prescribes is "Keep Walkin'"
Even this does not dissuade the reptilian Will from coming at the question from another angle (presumably realizing his first tack was unconvincing) as he weighs in with: "Some very intelligent people believe in the President's power to order such acts." He tries to make the point that in the interpretation of these "very intelligent people" the Constitution gives the President this power so that the acts committed were not illegal. Sam Donaldson asks "Where in the constitution?" Will says "According to their reading." Donaldson says "I'm reading English, where is it?"
The topper is when Will confesses he doesn't think it's in the Constitution either - but contends that "very intelligent people" believe it's in there, so the argument could be made that they acted in 'good faith' in accordance with that belief.
Has a more disingenuous, intellectually disgraceful and dishonest argument ever been made in the history of this fair republic - in defense of savagery? Will is such a disease-ridden whore that he sells out his own belief in the values contained in the Constitution to protect these barbarians and monsters who have appropriated the name of America as a cover for the expression of their moral and mental sickness. Will obligingly defends those who subvert the Constitution. Will obligingly gives creedence to dictator-like powers for the President (but only a Repub one, of course!), willingly acceding to a vision of America which is exactly the opposite of what America is supposed to be about.
Could any conduct be more disgraceful on behalf of a supposedly independent political commentator. Could it be any more clearly illustrated that Will is a man of no principles, no values, and no conscience?
And let us not forget Noonan, of whom the same can be said, and so much more. They are both defenders of war criminals. And as Sam Donaldson pointed out, their rationales could be used to justify virtually any type of behaviour by the government. These people are sock puppets for a movement which insists a US (Republican) president should be allowed to do anything, no matter how vile and inhumane, and be unanswerable to the public. Yes, I've heard of Godwin's Law - that whenever someone brings in a Hitler/Nazi comparison they've automatically lost the argument - but the basic rationale here is obvious in its implications for Nazi-like behaviour. And the sickeningly illogical arguments of Will and Noonan - in defense of their friends - provide an illustration of just how evil mestasisizes and survives.
These people really are blights on the body politic. The only ray of hope is that their obviously insubstantial arguments show how scared there are of the rising awareness of the crimes committed.