I'm in Love with Elizabeth de la Vega

I heard the most amazing thing on the radio the other morning: Dick Cheney, it was being reported, had 'directed' the CIA to de-classify certain documents which he, Cheney, felt would make demonstrable his opinion that torture --excuse me, "enhanced interrogation" -- had resulted in actionable intelligence for this country in what we used to call The Global War On Terror.

Really, Dick? You directed the CIA to de-classify information? You are even more delusional than I thought, and I think you a madman. You have as much authority over the CIA (or any other agency or agent of the government) as, say, Richard Kincaide. Your ability to "direct" anyone or anything in government to do anything ended at 11:59 am EST on January 20, 2009 and thank God for that!

Meanwhile, Elizabeth de la Vega (isn't that one of the sexiest names you've ever heard?) a former federal prosecutor, has published her thoughts on the prosecution of Cheney and Bush et.al. for their war crimes at Truthout.org. I love her writing. I may be in love with her. I can't say. I've never seen a picture of her. But I can tell you that she has a great legal mind. In her view, the appointment at this time of a special prosecutor in the torture matter would be a grave error:

Yes, Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel, has now said flatly that there will be no prosecutions of Bush officials, but the reality is that this story is far from over. As former CIA head Michael Hayden said on April 19, more by way of complaint than promise: "There will be more revelations. There will be more commissions. There will be more investigations," he said.

This statement may be one of the few Hayden has ever made that I can agree with. The truth is that - frustrating and appalling as it is - given the amount of damning information that's been revealed, we are just starting this process. If we are to have any hope of achieving some form of justice for these criminals and their victims, we must let the horror of the conduct and the extent of culpability reveal themselves in public view. And we must facilitate a narrowing of the focus so that specific defendants and charges can be clearly identified in the minds of not just the general public, but decision-makers at the Justice Department.

What we continue to need, in sum, are unwavering spotlights, even more civic education, and, most importantly, an irrefutable and cohesive factual narrative - comprised of direct and circumstantial evidence - that links the highest-level officials and advisers of the Bush administration, ineluctably, to specific instances and victims of torture. What we will surely have, however, if a special prosecutor is named, will be precisely the opposite: The initiation of a federal grand jury investigation right now would be roughly the equivalent of ceremoniously dumping the entire issue of torture into a black hole. There will be nothing to see and we will be listening intently to radio silence, trying to make sense of intermittent static in the form of the occasional unreliable leak. For years. There may never be any charges and we will almost certainly never have the unimpeachable historical narrative that we need.

Caution and complexity don't sell very well on cable, I know. So you might not hear it there, but we can wait a while for a prosecutor and - if we want to succeed - we should: I don't think any of these guys presents a flight risk and we need to keep this road to accountability well-lit and noisy.

I reccomend the full peice by Ms. de la Vega to Everybody.

The news today is that Cheney tortured not merely to prevent another mass-casualty attack on America, but rather to obtain "proof" of a link between al queda and Iraq. What a lying bastard. What a murderer. I'm with Ms. de la Vega. We can wait for the wheels of justice to turn on this one. The wait will be worth it.