It appears President Obama told the CIA the other day that none of them would be prosecuted for illegal torturing because “they were only following orders” from the Bush White House. Since when is following orders a defense if a crime was committed? Isn’t that the same defense the Nazis used at Nuremberg? Obama is a lawyer. He knows better than that.
Now today it appears that Justice Department attorneys who authored the legal analysis memoranda may be subject to prosecution. Strike two. You don’t prosecute lawyers for advising clients in America. Ted Kennedy and others tried that with the Kennedy Kasselbaum amendment to the Medicaid Act which said it was criminal conduct for any lawyer to advise an old person about how to qualify for Medicaid assistance. Despite that law passing, attorney generals with prosecutorial powers announced that they would not enforce the law.
Finally, when I was a draftee in the U.S. Army I was told that I did not have to follow an illegal order from a superior.
I must be missing something somewhere. This is all very disappointing.