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Originally Posted by Tex
Of course not. Which is why I explained my reasoning.
Totally absurd. Again, setting aside the fact that murder is far more clearly defined than torture, I still don't see the "conspiracy" here. Were Bybee to have written a memo that stupid, he should be fired, not prosecuted. Give me a break.
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If you don't see the conspiracy here, you won't see it anywhere. Give me a break.
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Again, I'm no lawyer, but the commentary I've read suggests that a prosecutor would have to prove he knowingly advocated illegal behavior. It is impossible to come to that conclusion (based on the info we have) without a tinfoil hat. In fact, the whole point of the memo was to legally justify it.
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Torturing people is illegal, and we already know that Bybee knew torture was illegal (he says so in the memo). So did he know that waterboarding was torture? Based on the fact that he has privately been telling close friends that he was uncomfortable issuing the opinion but did so because he believed it wasn't going to be relied upon (he was told the administration wanted a wide variety of opinions discussing many possible ways torture could be viewed and his assignment was to write an opinion that could justify the legal use of torture), he could be in hot water, especially since I understand there to be at least one email from him on this topic to a close friend from January of 2007.
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No prosecutor is going to touch this. Moreover, the American people are not interested in seeing it happen either. This is a lose-lose for Obama, politically and legally.
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Irrelevant to whether he committed a crime.