Screw the hicks

By Fester:

Screw the hicks!

At least that sounds like one plausible interpretation of the trial balloon of the US government actually attempting to follow through on the rule of law. That intrepretation treats Yoo's memos as established and reasonable law, and only goes after the interrogators who thought that testicle crushing was for the weak and wimpy.

If this is the case, it is Abu Ghraib all over again. There, the only people who were punished and castigated were the people who were dumb enough to follow orders on everything except the NO PICTURES part of the implied order. The 'leadership' elements were not prosecuted, the architects of transferring a torture and false confession system into an 'intelligence' system were not punished, and the political leadership which condoned and encouraged this lawlessness was re-elected. There was no accountability mechanism except for the hicks who got caught with indefensible pictures.

Thoreau at Unqualified Offerings defends the underlings with an informational asymetry defense:

An underling in the field is not a lawyer. He has a responsibility to refuse orders that he knows to be illegal, but he is not a lawyer. When something is unambiguously criminal, like beating a prisoner to death, there is no wiggle room. But I admit that some things will in fact be in gray areas. Not being a lawyer, the person in the field can only go by his training and by the information provided by legal experts when he encounters a gray area. If a person in the field encounters something that appears to be a gray area, I might excuse him if he goes by the guidance of lawyers and manuals, and follows orders that are consistent with what the training materials and legal experts tell him is legal.

But in allowing latitude for the person who goes by his training in a gray area, we have to recognize that this imposes an even greater responsibility on people who write manuals, or legal experts who write memos. If we ever contemplate leniency for an underling who does something because a legal memo advises him that it is not a crime, then we have to impose a very high standard on the people who render that advice.

Let’s sweep up and down the entire chain, and if there should be leniancy (in exchange for testimony), it should be for the men and women at the bottom of the chain of command, and not at the top.