So Remove Panetta. I don't want to see soldiers prosecuted. And we will never get Bush, Cheyney, or Rumsfeld so let it go. But Panetta knows all that was going on and didn't stop it. Fire him. Today.

Maybe I'm misinformed, but Panetta was just appointed a few weeks ago. Before that it was Bush people, and Panetta had no control over this

And who says "we will never get Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld?"
We had better goddamn get them if they had any decision-making power re torture, or our position in the world will be forever compromised. How would you like to be one of the first parents whose kid was tortured as a US soldier because the US had established it as a policy, thereby opening our troops up to it?

The so called USA land of the free and hypocritical, you held Saddam and his henchmen to task over their lawlessness but shirk when its your good ol boys, then whine about how the rest of the world criticizes your hypocrisy. Everyone from bush on down to the secretary that may have typed the memos are touched by the evil of this policy and I'm afraid if you ever want to regain your moral high ground you had better make these animals pay for their crimes, crimes you already have on the books. Every war you people start you cry war crimes of the other side but can't fess up to the actions of your own, last time I checked white phosphorus is still a banned weapon and torture equally abhorrent. If your media were getting the whole story, can you say testicle mutilation, you would be screaming for blood, but your not and the majority of your people have already tuned out so enjoy your diminished standing in world opinion. USA the nation of the deaf, dumb and blind.

Michael Vick got 23 months for torturing dogs. What should the sentence be for torturing people?

xbainx, Panetta has only had the job since February 13, 2009. He's not a leftover from Bush.

I understand that prosecuting these people takes the American people down a long, dark and very unpleasant path and that nobody wants to go through that. Probably more important is that America has lost moral leadership and cannot entirely get it back, even through Obama's good offices, unless we clean our own house. Otherwise we are forever hypocrites of the worst kind.

Wouldn't it be a crime if the whole shady lot, starting with Obama, turned out to be total charlatans? Yikes!

connie47 is right. We are morally bankrupt as a nation if we try to just "move on" as if we didn't commit major war crimes and human rights violations here. Serbia wanted to just "move on" after their war crimes too, but we didn't let them. We hounded them for years and helped cause the collapse of Western-friendly democratic governments there all in the pursuit of justice at all costs. But here in the U.S. where we like to at least pretend we have a more stable rule of law we're satisfied with saying that it would be too politically destabilizing to seek justice for the torture of innocent civilians accused of no crimes by pursuing the prosecution of people who made conscious choices, with no guns to their heads, to commit atrocities against human beings.

If we can't get rule justice then, why not a compromise? Let's just use the same legal basis Bush used to round up people without due process, but in this case let's round up Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, the lawyers who justified that it was legal and those who directly participated in the torture and toture them exactly the same way then release them without apology or recompense. No need for any formal legal process or trial, etc. Then we'll call it even and move on.

EENY44, name the law that it breaks.

Just in case anyone had any doubts about whether Obama himself personally approves of what his DOJ is doing, Robert Gibbs dispelled those at today's Press Briefing (h/t CarolynC and Sam Stein):

Q. Last Friday, the Justice Department invoked the state secrets privilege in asking a judge to dismiss a civil suit filed against the National Security Administration regarding its domestic surveillance program. And in its brief, the Justice Department argued that Americans have no right to sue the government for alleged illegal surveillance.

Does the President support the Justice Department's positions in that case?

MR. GIBBS: Yes, absolutely. It's the -- absolutely does. Obviously, these are programs that have been debated and discussed, but the President does support that viewpoint.

That was followed by this amazing exchange:

Q. Before he was elected, the President said that the Bush administration had abused the state secrets privilege. Has he changed his mind?

MR. GIBBS: No. I mean, obviously, we're dealing with some suits, and the President will -- and the Justice Department will make determinations based on protecting our national security.

Q. So he still thinks that the Bush administration abused the state secrets privilege?

MR. GIBBS: Yes.

Given that Obama is doing exactly what Bush did in this area, Gibbs' claim that Obama "still thinks that the Bush administration abused the state secrets privilege" must be one of the most incoherent and intellectually dishonest claims to come from the White House since the Inauguration -- either that, or Obama believes that Bush abused the privilege and that he, Obama, is also doing so.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/04/09/tpm

The contracting firm of Jessen, Mitchell, and Aldrich LLC, that invented the torture techniques MUST be prosecuted!!!

The public and the media need to keep the pressure on to get to the truth and prosecute those thugs and criminals who decided it was lawful to carry out torture in the name of the American people. This must be cleaned up in order for America to move on and regain credibility and honor in the world and with her own people. I do not want torture carried on in my name and many others...a majority of Amreicans, do not.

The soldiers ie operatives who conducted the torture shouldn't be held accountable except if that torture resulted in death , the accountability should start at Panetta and works its way up the latter all the way to the top , and the trials should be public for all the world to see !!

sonofloud, go back and read Obama's statements on this. He never said the use of the State's secret act should never be invoked. he said Bush was "abusing it" by using it broadly and frequently and not just in essential cases. Its too soon to know if Obama is being a bypocrite on this. Invoking it dake him one -- using it with the freequency of Bush or in cases that later come to light that only served political and not national security purposes would.

I understand why Obama wouldn't go after them. But the fact is, we must. If we don't stand for something... no one else will. It's that simple.

Is torturing people right or wrong? I think you all know the answer...