Obama Continues Jihad Against Bush Lawyers

The Obama administration simply hasn't got any grounds to go after the Bush lawyers that approved enhanced interrogation techniques, but they won't quit until they try every tactic, no matter how ill-conceived:

WASHINGTON — An internal Justice Department inquiry into the conduct of Bush administration lawyers who wrote secret memorandums authorizing brutal interrogations has concluded that the authors committed serious lapses of judgment but should not be criminally prosecuted, according to government officials briefed on a draft of the findings.

The report by the Office of Professional Responsibility, an internal ethics unit within the Justice Department, is also likely to ask that state bar associations consider possible disciplinary action, including reprimands or even disbarment, for some of the lawyers involved in writing the legal opinions, the officials said.

The conclusions of the 220-page draft report are not final and have not yet been approved by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. The officials said it is possible the final report might be subject to revision, but they did not expect major alterations in its main findings or recommendations.

The draft report is described as very detailed, tracing e-mail messages between Justice Department lawyers and officials at the White House and the Central Intelligence Agency. Among the questions it is expected to consider is whether the memos reflected the lawyers’ independent judgments of the limits of the federal anti-torture statute or were skewed deliberately to justify what the C.I.A. proposed.

The problem Obama and Holder has with this whole thing is the fact that the torture statute was not very clear. That's why legal opinions were needed before they could proceed. Different lawyers are going to have different views of the very same law, and if people are going to be disbarred for disagreements on legal interpretation, they'll have to start with the Supreme Court members since they never agree on anything.

They won't be able to prosecute them because there simply isn't proof of misconduct. And I doubt any state bars will take any sort of decisive action because they don't want to be held to a shifting standard themselves should they end up on the wrong end of political correctness.