Attorney General Considering Naming Outside Counsel To Investigate Torture.
Maddow rightly points out that we now have a completely new set of information on the practice of torture. It really does turn out that nothing we have been told is true.
Holder is apparently "seriously considering appointing an outside counsel to investigate 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."
Obama may not want prosecution to take place but, in reality, that's not his call to make; that's for the Justice Department to make. And the noises coming from Holder's department are the most positive we have heard for a while for anyone who believes in, "a nation of laws".
UPDATE:
Glenn Greenwald:
It's worth remembering that the decision of whether to prosecute is not Obama's to make. We are supposed to have an independent Justice Department which makes descisions about prosecutions free of the type of political influence Obama and Rahm Emanuel seem eager to exert on the decision-making process. That, one might recall, was the crux of the various Alberto Gonzales scandals -- that he was making prosecution decisions based on the dictates and interests of the White House rather than apolitical legal considerations. One could actually argue that Obama's opinion about who should and should not be prosecuted is entirely irrelevant. The Attorney General has the independent obligation to make those decisions without regard to the President's political wishes. Either way, at this point, given how aggressive Obama has become about demanding that there be no prosecutions, it seems clear that only a Special Prosecutor can discharge that duty.
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