Jonathan Turley: Getting Away With Torture?
On MSNBC last night, on the Rachel Maddow show:
TURLEY: Somehow, he's equating the enforcement of federal laws - that he took an oath to enforce, to uhold the constitution, and our laws - and he's equating that with an act of retribution in some sort of hissy fit or blame game. You know, it's not retribution to enforce criminal laws. But it is, is obstruction to revent that enforcement, and that's exactly what he's done thus far. He is trying to lay the groundwork to look principled when he's doing an utterly unprincipled thing. There's very few things worse for a president to do than to protect accused war criminals, and that's what we're talking about here.
President Obama himself has said that waterboarding is torture, and torture violates at least four treaties, it is considered a war crime. So the refusal to let it be investigated is to try to obstruct a war crime investigation. That puts us in the same category as Serbia and other countries that have refused to allow investigations to occur.
MADDOW: Can't a president actually decide who gets prosecuted for breaking a law and who doesn't?
TURLEY: Well, he's not supposed to.
