Torture "may be necessary in the future."
As Gonzales argues that the US should have the right to torture in future:
They may be necessary in the future. And by disclosing it, means you take them off the table and they can never be used again.David Waldman sums up what is actually at stake here:
When one listens to O'Reilly, Limbaugh and now Gonzales, speak of the US right to torture, one realises that Rove was not kidding when he sought to portray torture as a "policy difference". That really is the way things are panning out between the two parties. One side says it is illegal and the other side says it is necessary. So, the US has not abandoned the practice of torture, it has simply been put to sleep until the next Republican administration decides whether or not to bring it back.As tiresome as it can sometimes be to see people frame matters so that it all comes down to one issue and one issue only, I find myself returning to this one again and again. Whether or not torture is your issue. Or wiretapping. Or indefinite detention. Or signing statements. Or anything, really -- environment, global warming, abortion, health care, taxes, terrorism, the war. No matter what your issue is, at heart, you're dependent on a continuing and consistent respect for the law. Because without it, none of your work on politics and policy is worth anything the moment the White House falls to someone who's not you. You can pass all the environmental laws you like, but if it's accepted as a legitimate tenet of Republican governing philosophy that all of those laws can be safely ignored or otherwise set aside, you'll have gained nothing from your work with a friendly Congress and administration.
And if you can set aside all statutory and constitutional law on something like torture, I'm unsure what barriers you think remain in the way of doing the same on any other issue.
This is why prosecution is vital and why the Obama regime cannot, "look forward and not backward." For failure to prosecute is almost a tacit admission that the Republicans are right when they state that this is a "policy difference". At the moment that it how this is being portrayed. This is not about "policy differences" this is actually about crimes.
Criminals seldom respect the law which is why we prosecute them and jail them. It's our way of making them see sense or locking them up if they refuse to abide by the rules which we all live by.
The Republican party are making it abundantly clear that they do not respect the law when it comes to torture, which is why they should be treated like any other persons who refuse to respect the law; they need to be prosecuted to make them see sense.
Nobody is allowed to state which laws they will and will not obey, so why are the Republicans being allowed to state - publicly and loudly - that they are reserving for themselves the right to commit war crimes? They are not remotely apologetic for what they have done and are promising to do it again.
Obama has stated that the US is, "a nation of laws". It's hard to believe that whilst a bunch of criminals boast about their crimes and threaten to recommit them at the first opportunity and his regime does nothing.
The Republicans who committed these crimes are no different from any other criminals, they simply do not respect the law. They do not agree with it and they refuse to be bound by it.
Society has a way of dealing with such people. It's called prosecution.
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