Gonzo on Torture: "I Did My Best To Defend Our Country"
This boggles my brain. Gonzales is worried that lawyers who gave their "best advice" might be penalised, which he feels could have "a chilling effect" on other lawyers.
Firstly, the problem is that these lawyers didn't give their "best advice", they tailored their advice to reach a conclusion determined by the Bush administration to enable torture.
Secondly, isn't the whole point of law and order and the sentencing of criminals done precisely to send such "a chilling effect" and make others less likely to behave in a similar fashion? That's the whole idea behind the criminal justice system, isn't it?
It would be a very good thing if no lawyers ever again behaved as shoddily as the ones in Bush's O.L.C. did. Gonzales' appears to find this notion worrisome. To the rest of us, that's the very reason why we punish people who break the law. We want to send "a chilling effect" warning others not to replicate what the person being punished did.
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