Dealing With War Crime Investigations Would Be Uncomfortable And... Icky

I guess disbarment is somewhere between a slap on the wrist and a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. But it certainly isn't the thorough investigation of the three Bush Regime shills from the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility. Remember when the far right was shrieking about the martyrdom of Scooter Libby? This would be at least as ugly and it makes the cowardly, self-serving Democrats cringe and cower. All the carefully orchestrated headlines yesterday were along the lines of the NY Times' Inquiry Suggests No Charges and the Wall Street Journal's Justice Likely To Urge No Prosections: nothing to see here; move along please.

It looks like the Justice Department will recommend turning the cases over to The Hague's International War Crimes Tribunal local bar associations for possible disciplinary actions-- meaning anything from going to bed without dinner to, if the general public screams loudly enough, disbarment for John Yoo, Steven Bradbury and Jay Bybee, now a federal appeals court judge. All three wrote and signed memos justifying torture and encouraging others to think that criminal activities were legal.

But there's more. Bradbury was kind of in charge of the Bush Regime DOJ "investigation" and was almost certainly tampering with it, as was Yoo. In yesterday's Washington Post Carrie Johnson didn't even mention that when she reported how ex-members the former criminal outfit ironically known as the Bush Department of Justice were rallying around their colleagues, at the incitement of Yoo's and Bybee's attorneys, and urging gold stars on their permanent records instead of wrist slaps.

Former Bush administration officials have launched a behind-the-scenes campaign to urge Justice Department leaders to soften an ethics report criticizing lawyers who blessed harsh detainee interrogation tactics, according to two sources familiar with the efforts.

And in today's Washington Post the same Ms. Johnson breaks the good news: that even ersatz justice is dead and none of these outrageous criminals would get even a slap on the wrist. Yes, despite how serious the findings are against Yoo, Bybee and Bradbury, the system has been neatly fixed so that none will face any kind of retribution whatsoever, unless being vilified by Jonathan Turley (see below), Rachel Maddow, Firedoglake and possibly even Stephen Colbert is the kind of retribution that fits their crimes.