who's going down for the torture memos?

In my earlier post, holder: obama does not decide who will be prosecuted, I wrote, "It appears Obama opened a whole can of worms with the release of these memos. Not only does he lack the authority to decide whether there will be prosecutions or not, I assume he also put members of his own party at risk. (Feinstein and Pelosi, members of the Intel Committee…)"

This appears to be just the tip of the iceberg. As reported in the Washington Post a newly released report from the Senate Intelligence Committee showed that Condi Rice played a greater role than she has previously acknowledged in the CIA's harsh interrogation program, and approved the use of water boarding. The report finds that Rice approved the CIA's request to water board a captured al-Qaeda member in 2002, making her the first known Bush administration official to do so.

Condoleezza Rice, John D. Ashcroft and other top Bush administration officials approved as early as the summer of 2002 the CIA's use at secret prisons of harsh interrogation methods, including water boarding, a technique that new Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has described as illegal torture, according to a chronology prepared by the Senate intelligence committee and declassified by Holder.

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld were made aware of the program in September 2003. "Strikingly, unless there is a further story in records not yet shown to us, the secretary of state and the secretary of defense were not involved in the decision-making process, despite the high stakes for U.S. foreign policy and for the treatment of the U.S. military," said Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.).

In the fall of 2002, four senior members of Congress, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), now speaker of the House, were secretly briefed on interrogation techniques, including water boarding, according to U.S. officials. Pelosi has confirmed that she was then "briefed on interrogation techniques the administration was considering using in the future. The administration advised that legal counsel for both the CIA and the Justice Department had concluded that the techniques were legal."

Peter Hoekstra wrote in the Wall Street Journal, Congress Knew About the Interrogations - Obama should release the memo on the attacks prevented:

...Yet last week Mr. Obama overruled the advice of his CIA director, Leon Panetta, and four prior CIA directors by releasing the details of the enhanced interrogation program. Former CIA director Michael Hayden has stated clearly that declassifying the memos will make it more difficult for the CIA to defend the nation.

It was not necessary to release details of the enhanced interrogation techniques, because members of Congress from both parties have been fully aware of them since the program began in 2002. We believed it was something that had to be done in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to keep our nation safe. After many long and contentious debates, Congress repeatedly approved and funded this program on a bipartisan basis in both Republican and Democratic Congresses.

Members of Congress calling for an investigation of the enhanced interrogation program should remember that such an investigation can't be a selective review of information, or solely focus on the lawyers who wrote the memos, or the low-level employees who carried out this program. I have asked Mr. Blair to provide me with a list of the dates, locations and names of all members of Congress who attended briefings on enhanced interrogation techniques.

Any investigation must include this information as part of a review of those in Congress and the Bush administration who reviewed and supported this program.

So, it would seem to me that not only could the lawyers who drafted these recommendations be subject to prosecution, but also Bush, Cheney, Condi Rice, Colin Powell, Nancy Pelosi and members of Congress.

Also appearing in the WSJ today was this article, Presidential Poison - His invitation to indict Bush officials will haunt Obama's Presidency:

Mark down the date. Tuesday, April 21, 2009, is the moment that any chance of a new era of bipartisan respect in Washington ended. By inviting the prosecution of Bush officials for their anti-terror legal advice, President Obama has injected a poison into our politics that he and the country will live to regret.

Policy disputes, often bitter, are the stuff of democratic politics. Elections settle those battles, at least for a time, and Mr. Obama's victory in November has given him the right to change policies on interrogations, Guantanamo, or anything on which he can muster enough support. But at least until now, the U.S. political system has avoided the spectacle of a new Administration prosecuting its predecessor for policy disagreements. This is what happens in Argentina, Malaysia or Peru, countries where the law is treated merely as an extension of political power.

snip

Those officials won't be the only ones who suffer if all of this goes forward. Congress will face questions about what the Members knew and when, especially Nancy Pelosi when she was on the House Intelligence Committee in 2002. The Speaker now says she remembers hearing about water boarding, though not that it would actually be used. Does anyone believe that? Porter Goss, her GOP counterpart at the time, says he knew exactly what he was hearing and that, if anything, Ms. Pelosi worried the CIA wasn't doing enough to stop another attack. By all means, put her under oath.

Obama said that only the legal advisers who are no longer in government should be investigated. I really don't understand how you can prosecute legal advisors, but not members of the government who actually ordered these actions be carried out.

I don't think Obama thought this all the way through, do you? Should he have checked with Eric Holder first? Do you think he really wants Pelosi, Powell and Rice brought down?

Politico has a story up titled Obama muddles torture message:

"President Barack Obama’s attempt to project legal and moral clarity on coercive CIA interrogation methods has instead done the opposite — creating confusion and political vulnerability over an issue that has inflamed both the left and right."

The WSJ Presidential Poison article finishes:

Above all, the exercise will only embitter Republicans, including the moderates and national-security hawks Mr. Obama may need in the next four years. As patriotic officials who acted in good faith are indicted, smeared, impeached from judgeships or stripped of their academic tenure, the partisan anger and backlash will grow. And speaking of which, when will the GOP Members of Congress begin to denounce this partisan scapegoating? Senior Republicans like Mitch McConnell, Richard Lugar, John McCain, Orrin Hatch, Pat Roberts and Arlen Specter have hardly been profiles in courage.

Mr. Obama is more popular than his policies, due in part to his personal charm and his seeming goodwill. By indulging his party's desire to criminalize policy advice, he has unleashed furies that will haunt his Presidency.

When you have pundits like Tingles beating the drums for the take down of Bush and Cheney, it doesn't help the case for Pelosi, Congress and all those involved, does it?

"Well if it turns out that those who drew the lines and said it was okay to use waterboarding and other coercive techniques, violated the law, and those people who did so include the Vice President and the President what do we do? You say we might consider prosecuting them. But how do we do it? Under what law do we go after them? Under international law? Under U.S. law what do we hit ‘em for? If we do it?" ~Chris Matthews