Maine Owl

Abuse of power

But with respect to the refusal of President Obama to hold anyone accountable, I think Keith Olbermann was correct in tonight's Special Comment: "Half the distance is worse than standing still."

Of course it's easy to see why Obama is uninterested in prosecution or even investigation, which is clear from a part of the president's official statement today that Olbermann did not quote:

PRESIDENT OBAMA: In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution. The men and women of our intelligence community serve courageously on the front lines of a dangerous world. Their accomplishments are unsung and their names unknown, but because of their sacrifices, every single American is safer. We must protect their identities as vigilantly as they protect our security, and we must provide them with the confidence that they can do their jobs.

Going forward, it is my strong belief that the United States has a solemn duty to vigorously maintain the classified nature of certain activities and information related to national security. This is an extraordinarily important responsibility of the presidency, and it is one that I will carry out assertively irrespective of any political concern.

And he prefaced this by saying the techniques used (carefully not said to be torture techniques) have "already been widely reported." So he's not telling us anything we shouldn't already know.

Of course, the actions of other countries now go up a notch in importance. Last week in the New Yorker, Jane Mayer described recent steps taken in Spain,

A Spanish court took the first steps toward starting a criminal investigation of the same six former Bush Administration officials he had named, weighing charges that they had enabled and abetted torture by justifying the abuse of terrorism suspects. Among those whom the court singled out was Feith, the former Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy, along with former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; John Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer; and David Addington, the chief of staff and the principal legal adviser to Vice-President Dick Cheney.

This isn't over. The president and the administration seem almost to be daring Spain and perhaps others to issue indictments.