You are quite correct.
However, there is a slippery slope argument here I’ve seldom seen addressed with the seriousness it deserves.
There were three basic groups involved in the whole “torture” issue:
1. Attorneys who gave their legal opinion on what interrogation methods are permitted under the law.
2. Policy makers who decided whether to implement those opinions.
3. Interrogators who followed the policies.
My concern is that the conservative position in general appears to be that none of these three groups can be held responsible for violation of law.
The attorneys didn’t break any laws, they just gave their opinion. (We’ll just ignore the rather glaring likelihood that their opinions were tailored to what their bosses wanted.)
The policy makers were just following advide of counsel, so they can’t be held accountable.
The interrogators can’t be prosecuted, they were just implementing policy.
My concern is that if this paradigm is allowed to stand, it would permit any administration to implement just about any policy it cares to, as long as it distributed responsibility for the policy in this way.
I’m not saying laws were broken in this whole “torture” issue, I’m saying that if they were broken somebody should be prosecuted for doing so. Failing to enforce the law sets a really bad precedent.
Certainly similar methods could be used against “right-wing domestic terrorists.”
What you either don't know, or fail to recognize in your thesis, is that career prosecutors - not political appointees - looked at these accusations over three years ago, and found them to be without merit. It's part of the liberal political narrative to say that these events have not been investigated, when in fact, they were investigated with great enthusiasm and candor.
Holder himself now, is overruling long-held traditions (and policies) in reviewing these cases after there has been a determination in the prior administration not to prosecute. This is a precedent in the history of the DOJ, and one that I'm sure others will come to regret long after this particular issue has become irrelevant. While this is not a violation of the principle of Double Jeopardy in the strictest sense, I personally feel it violates at least the spirit of the 5th Amendment.
If we were to examine this from a historical perspective, what would have kept subsequent administrations from investigating and prosecuting Harry S Truman for war crimes at the end of WWII? After all, Truman intentionally targeted and destroyed an two entire citie causing incalculable death and destruction to the civilian populations of those cities. In Eric Holder's world view, nothing would have kept Eisenhower or Kennedy from launching an investigation to examine the legality of Truman's actions. In fact, using Holder's principles of justice, Truman would have been investigated, prosecuted and convicted of war crimes. Now, is that the behavior of a mature democracy, or is that the behavior of a banana republic? I would submit it's the later, and certainly not the former.
The answer is for Congress to actually pass an easily understandable law on the subject. Not something they like to do because they like to be as vague and broad as possible.
Sorry, I can’t entirely agree with you on this one because by definition a “domestic” terrorist would come under civil law especially if that person is a citizen of the United States being held or tried for acts committed on US Territory. Enemy combatants are not covered under the Constitution especially if they are caught on foreign soil and they are not covered under the Geneva Convention except as they fit under the category spy and/or sabateure.