Mainstream columnist Ruth Marcus: Lawbreaking Bush officials should not be prosecuted

[Chiefofland]

Ruth Marcus writes a piece in the Washington Post today in which she presents what she believes is a justification for pardoning Bush officials who broke the law, including (and she mentions him by name) Dick Cheney, who recently admitted to being involved in torture:

"I'm coming to the conclusion that what's most crucial here is ensuring that these mistakes are not repeated. In the end, that may be more important than punishing those who acted wrongly in pursuit of what they thought was right."

One progressive blogger finds the argument absurds and puts forth an analogy:

Glen Greenwald, today:

Much more important than punishing murderers or getting caught up in protracted disputes about prior murders is the need to prevent murders from occurring in the future. Therefore, we ought to abandon our quest to impose punishments on people who get caught having murdered someone. To expend resources trying to punish murderers is to squander vital resources on the past, to waste energies that could instead be more productively devoted to preventing future murders.
There are too many important challenges we face to waste time bogged down litigating past murders. Let's allow murderers to go unpunished so that we can move beyond the past and concentrate instead on the more important priority of minimizing the number of murders in the future.

[sam sarrha]

1. i want em do'n HARD TIME in the general prison population for LIFE, NO PAROLE thats an F'n deterrent

[screembloodymurder]

2. Wrong!

The rule of law demands their prosecution. Prosecute or pardon the millions in our prison system for petty offenses.

[DCKit]

3. Nice catch and welcome to DU Chiefofland. n/t

[Mist]

4. Are these editorials re: no punishment for crime being floated to see just

how strongly the public believes in holding the * admin. accountable? Seems there's been a few of them the past few days.

[tularetom]

5. Glenn Greenwald stole my argument

After the 2006 elections my neighbor and I got into a discussion about prosecution of bush administration war criminals. Her point was that it would be far more productive to use resources to prevent future war crimes than to spend years draggin the country through trials and punishments for past law breakers. (BTW she was married for many years to our local right wing district attorney and was a former prosecutor herself so I found her argument a but inconsistent).

My response was that I agreed that it was probably more cost effective to disband prosecutorial staffs and use the money that was saved thereby to work on preventative measures in order to deter future crimes. It was fun watching her babble in an attempt to respond.

I think I've finally convinced her to see the light. She came over Thanksgiving evening pretty well shit faced and admitted she voted for Obama. I think it was just to piss off her ex who dumped her for his 30 y.o. secretary a few years back.

[kenny blankenship]

6. They always say this, then they always act blasé when similar outrages happen again

"Preventing a recurrence is more important under the difficult circumstances now surrounding us than prosecution and punishment. Let's not get caught up in quibbles about who applied electric current to whose genitals and how many times it happened. Mistakes were made and let's leave it at that."

And usually the next time it's even worse than the last. It's a pattern as American as apple pie and broken Indian treaties. It's the sea-swell to my nausea.

[Frosty1]

7. Bullshit!

:nuke: