Bush administration lawyers who wrote memos blessing the waterboarding of terrorism suspects and other harsh interrogation tactics "exercised poor judgment" but will not face discipline for their actions, according to Justice Department correspondence sent to lawmakers late Friday.Oh, and it gets worse as the FBI also officially closed the case today on the anthrax attacks.
The long-awaited conclusion marks a turnaround from recommendations against two of the lawyers by the department's Office of Professional Responsibility. OPR, which conducts ethics investigations of Justice Department attorneys, twice urged that allegations against John C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee be sent to state legal disciplinary authorities for further action, the correspondence said.
But the decision was overruled by David Margolis, a career lawyer in the Deputy Attorney General's office, on Jan. 5, the letter said. Margolis "declined to adopt OPR's findings of professional misconduct and concluded instead that Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bybee exercised poor judgment in connection with the drafting of the pertinent memoranda," said the letter from Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich.
The FBI sought to close the book on its long, frustrating hunt for the killer behind the 2001 anthrax letters Friday, formally ending its investigation and concluding a mentally unhinged scientist was responsible for killing five people and unnerving Americans nationwide.I'll tell you what, Obama. You make it pretty goddamn hard to support you when your FBI and your Department of Justice is even more corrupt than Bush's. Not that Hillary Clinton or John McCain would have done any better, mind you. But on this, you are an utter failure. And I'm calling you and Eric Holder out on it.
After years of false leads, no arrests and public criticism, the FBI and Justice Department said Dr. Bruce Ivins, a government researcher, acted alone.
Ivins killed himself in 2008 as prosecutors prepared to indict him for the attacks. He had denied involvement, and his family and some friends have continued to insist he was innocent.
It's time to seriously consider dismissing Holder from the position. He's as bad as Gonzo. He's letting Yoo and Bybee walk for torturing people in our name, and letting a dead man take the fall for a crime he may have not committed.
You tell me, why does he deserve not to be made to resign again?
Unfortunately, our voting choices are limited to who is the best of a bad lot these days. :-/ I wish that were not so, because I feel very strongly that we're in such an utterly disastrous position as a nation that unless someone has the guts to do what's right, we'll soon be relegated to the ash heap of history as an also-ran.
ReplyDeleteHolder is one of many Obama administration officials who should be fired for corruption and incompetence. As Attorney General, Holder is showing the exact same contempt for the rule of law as Ashcroft, Mukasey, and Gonzales.
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