Prosecution of Torture Architects Has Evolved in Just 2 Days

I started collecting links on Sunday, and it appears that the the news has developed in a rather interesting manner, with strong statements that there would be no prosecutions, followed by a retreat by the Obama administration following push back from multiple quarters.

On Sunday, we have appearances by administration officials saying that there will be no prosecutions of anyone involved in torture

I asked Emanuel: "The president has ruled out prosecution for CIA officials who believed they were following the law. Does he believe that the officials who devised the policies should be immune from prosecution?"

"He believes that, look, as you saw in that statement he wrote, let's just take a step back. He came up with this and worked on this for about four weeks. Wrote that statement Wednesday night after he had made his decision and dictated what he wanted to see. And Thursday morning I saw him in the office, he was still editing it. He believes that people in good faith were operating with the guidance they were provided," Emanuel said.

What about those who devised the policy, I asked?

"Yeah, but those who devised the policy, he believes that they were, should not be prosecuted either," Emanuel said.

"And it's not the place that we go, and as he said in that letter, and I would really recommend people look at the full statement, not the letter, the statement, and that second paragraph: "This is not a time for retribution. It's a time for reflection. It's not a time to use our energy and our time in looking back and in a sense of anger and retribution.' We have a lot to do to protect America. But what people need to know? This practice and technique, we don't use anymore. We banned it."

(emphasis mine)

Then the pressure mounted to not bury everything, and Obama is now saying that investigating the people who crafted the policy is up to the Department of Justice, and Michael Isikoff and Evan Thomas reporting that, "Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. has discussed naming a senior prosecutor or outside counsel to review whether CIA interrogators exceeded legal boundaries--and whether Bush administration officials broke the law by giving the CIA permission to torture in the first place.

Once again, showing that, when absolutely forced to by the weight of public opinion, the Obama administration can come around on this.

This is a good thing, because whoever was involved in waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times in one month, about 6 times a day, was not following even the Orwellian rules of Bush and His Evil Minions^™.