New Majority on the AG decision to investigate the allegations of torture.

All those interviewed are curious why this is all happening at this time.  Many of them speculated that they are being used by the administration not only to appease the left, but also as a deflection for all the other problems Obama is having.  In other words, they are scapegoats for the Obama administration.  They all attest to the fact that none of the information coming out is new.  They all believe that there is no need for a special prosecutor.  The only reason Holder is appointing one is for a fishing expedition.  One former operative felt that “they don’t have any specific cases against somebody so now they are going to play around in the dark to try to find something.”

In interviews with NM, Congressman Rooney (R-FL), a former JAG prosecutor, said it is unfair to go back and change the rules after the fact.”  Congressman Hoekstra (R-MI) stated that the fact that “the Obama administration apparently is planning to reopen these cases after thorough review by nonpartisan prosecutors raises serious questions.”  Minority Whip Cantor (R-VI) went even further, stating that “I find it very troubling that this administration is turning on the servants of this country who were trying to protect Americans… that is not how we settle political scores with successive administrations.”

Glenn Greenwald on the same.

The fact that we are not really bothered any more by taking helpless detainees in our custody and (a) threatening to blow their brains out, torture them with drills, rape their mothers, and murder their children; (b) choking them until they pass out; (c) pouring water down their throats to drown them; (d) hanging them by their arms until their shoulders are dislocated; (e) blowing smoke in their face until they vomit; (f) putting them in diapers, dousing them with cold water, and leaving them on a concrete floor to induce hypothermia; and (g) beating them with the butt of a rifle — all things that we have always condemend as “torture” and which our laws explicitly criminalize as felonies (“torture means. . . the threat of imminent death; or the threat that another person will imminently be subjected to death, severe physical pain or suffering . . .”) — reveals better than all the words in the world could how degraded, barbaric and depraved a society becomes when it lifts the taboo on torturing captives.