Charges Seen as Unlikely for Lawyers Over Interrogations

By GottaLaff

I don't understand our legal system sometimes. And by "understand" I mean "agree with":

An internal Justice Department inquiry into the conduct of Bush administration lawyers who wrote secret memorandums authorizing brutal interrogations has concluded that the authors committed serious lapses of judgment but should not be criminally prosecuted, according to government officials briefed on a draft of the findings.

The report by the Office of Professional Responsibility, an internal ethics unit within the Justice Department, is also likely to ask that state bar associations consider possible disciplinary action, including reprimands or even disbarment, for some of the lawyers involved in writing the legal opinions, the officials said.

Yeah, that'll show 'em. Future officials will be all shivery and cowery just thinking about issuing torture memos and then getting-- dun dun dunnn-- a reprimand. What next, standing in the corner?

The conclusions of the 220-page draft report are not final and have not yet been approved by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. The officials said it is possible the final report might be subject to revision, but they did not expect major alterations in its main findings or recommendations.

The draft report is described as very detailed, tracing e-mail messages between Justice Department lawyers and officials at the White House and the Central Intelligence Agency. Among the questions it is expected to consider is whether the memos reflected the lawyers’ independent judgments of the limits of the federal anti-torture statute or were skewed deliberately to justify what the C.I.A. proposed. [...]

In a letter made public on Monday, the Justice Department advised two Democratic senators on the Judiciary committee, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, that the former department lawyers who wrote the opinions had until Sunday to submit written appeals to the findings.

How excruciatingly evenhanded of them to allow input by the very people who authorized brutal and repeated torture and set a precedent worthy of ... well, Cheney. There may be legal justification for not prosecuting these cretins, but that doesn't stop me from needing a talking down.