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May 6, 2009
Serious Lapse in Judgment Indeed
By Stephen Pizzo
Here's a bit of change we didn't bargain for: DOJ: Torture Memos Just "Serious Lapses of Judgment" New York Times - An internal Justice Department inquiry has concluded that Bush administration lawyers committed serious lapses of judgment in writing secret memorandums authorizing brutal interrogations but that they should not be prosecuted, according to government officials briefed on its findings. (Full Story)
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Here's a bit of change we didn't bargain for:DOJ: Torture Memos Just "Serious Lapses of Judgment"If this DOJ judgment stands, civics and political science textbook publishers will only have until Fall to correct their texts to reflect this new measure of bad behavior. Among the events currently treated by history books as crimes and crimes against humanity requiring a serious downgrade to simply "serious lapses of judgment include such events as:
New York Times - An internal Justice Department inquiry has concluded that Bush administration lawyers committed serious lapses of judgment in writing secret memorandums authorizing brutal interrogations but that they should not be prosecuted, according to government officials briefed on its findings. (Full Story)
"After Japan surrendered, the United States organized and participated in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, generally called the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. Leading members of Japan's military and government elite were charged, among their many other crimes, with torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. The principal proof upon which their torture convictions were based was conduct that we would now call waterboarding."... As a result of such accounts, a number of Japanese prison-camp officers and guards were convicted of torture that clearly violated the laws of war." (More)
Stephen Pizzo has been published everywhere from The New York Times to Mother Jones magazine. His book, Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans, was nominated for a Pulitzer.