By: Iris

Iris — Sat, 16 May 2009 20:50:28 +0000

Interesting thoughts. BUT (and there always is a but) here is the problem, that I see, with wanting to avoid publicity and not prosecuting the culprits and just putting additional controls in place:
we had controls and they should have been enough to prevent what has happened.
Lawmakers were informed and now they claim that they weren’t told directly enough and even if they had been informed directly, “what should we have done?” so they ask, after all everything had the seal of confidentiality so we couldn’t say or do anything.
- lawyers were rewarded for coming up with ridiculous opinions to give what we did the flair of lawfulness.
if we just fire some or even all of the culprits, they will be still around for the next administration to bring them back into the game.
worse yet, what we saw over the last 8 years was that those who gave the administration what they wanted were rewarded – those who didn’t “play ball” got fired. What does this teach future government employees and those who are asked to do work for the government? I think it is really dangerous to just sweep this all under the carpet and that is exactly what we would do. I think that this paving the road to absolute corruption. Because, if you tell me what you want to do, I can tell you how to get it and if we can bring in some lawyers (and there are enough), they’ll certify for us, that whatever we do is legal. So now we’ re free from responsibility. After all, the ends do justify the means and if that is not enough, we don’t want to embarrass this wonderful and righteous country and if that is not enough, lets just stamp everything “confidential.”
Just a thought.

Comments on: The Legacy of Torture: What would Main Street do?

By: Iris