In one of the more nauseating passages, [of the recently released torture memos] Jay Bybee, then an assistant attorney general and now a federal judge, wrote admiringly about a contraption for waterboarding that would lurch a prisoner upright if he stopped breathing while water was poured over his face. He praised the Central Intelligence Agency for having doctors ready to perform an emergency tracheotomy if necessary.

These memos are not an honest attempt to set the legal limits on interrogations, which was the authors’ statutory obligation. They were written to provide legal immunity for acts that are clearly illegal, immoral and a violation of this country’s most basic values.

Jay Bybee is now a federal circuit court judge. This is as high as you get as a judge short of the supreme court or a fistful of ludes. The phrases above come from a recent piece in the New York Times.

You can bank on it, I think. Eric Holder has apparently been moving in that direction, and JD officials were a bit put off on hearing Rahn Emanuel’s comments to the contrary. Holder may name an outside counsel to investigate torture.

This is coming from Newsweek via Rachel Maddow.

This is being reported:

President Barack Obama does not intend to prosecute Bush administration officials who devised the policies that led to the harsh interrogation of suspected terrorists, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said Sunday.

[Earlier,] … he said “it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice, that they will not be subject to prosecution.” He did not specifically address the policymakers.

Asked Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” about the fate of those officials, Emanuel said the president believes they “should not be prosecuted either and that’s not the place that we go.

source

More details are needed. Is there or is there not a presidential pardon for CIA (or equivilant) field operatives and is there or is there not a presidential pardon for Bush White House “policy makers.” Who are “policy makers” and more importantly, who are NOT “policy makers.” (I.e., is there anyone left out of this rubric?)