Holder ‘torture probe’ a sham and head fake?

The Washington Post mentions the details a href="http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/12/holder/"of what would — and would not — get investigated/a if Attorney General Eric Holder names a special prosecutor to investigate torture allegations against BushCo members — something Newsweek, in what looks more like a href="http://www.newsweek.com/id/206300"a fluff piece/a, omitted.br /br /(Hat tip to a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/11/AR2009071102787.html"Greenwald/a, among others.)br /br /Here’s the bottom line:br /blockquoteSources said an inquiry would apply only to activities by interrogators, working in bad faith, that fell outside the "four corners" of the legal memos. . . . The actions of higher-level Bush policymakers are not under consideration for possible investigation./blockquotebr /So, this would be a bottom-feeder investigation, fishing up minnows while deliberately ignoring the sharks — iand while pretending the minnows actually are sharks./ibr /br /Per other links within his post, Greenwald notes that letting John Yoo’s opinion stand as final is essentially Nixonian: “If the president does it, it’s not illegal.” (Tim at Balloon Juice a href="http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=23949"has more/a.)br /br /Scott Horton claims a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-07-12/torture-prosecution-turnaround/p/"Holder plans a real investigation/a, but his claim is undercut by the New York Times, a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/12/us/politics/12justice.html"which agrees in broad outline/a with the Post story linked at top.br /br /Scott, like Glenn, is too smart to fall for sandbagging, at least I think he is, so I don’t know what’s up.br /br /Anyway, to tie back to the Newsweek fluff, rather than this being a sign of Holder’s independence, you have to wonder if this was discussed in detail with the Obama White House.div class="blogger-post-footer"There is no god and I am his prophet.img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/7532871-7394432182668404801?l=socraticgadfly.blogspot.com'//div

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