Panetta: "Just Following Orders, Okay."

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By Stephen Pizzo (about the author) Page 2 of 2 page(s)

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So, let me get this straight; we are not going to prosecute the guys who issued the orders, and we are not going to prosecute the guys who carried out those orders. I see.

It seems now that the Obama administration going to accept the Bush administration's well-planned alibi. There was a reason they put Alberto Gonzales and John Yoo at DOJ. They were both yes men of long repute. They were told to provide the mother of all CYA legal opinions giving Bush administration officials and those at the CIA and DOD legal cover for their illegal activities.

“Hey, we had lawyer letters saying it was okay,” is what those who issued the orders to torture and detain now claim. Those orders were issued and now the Obama administration says that, since those who actually conducted torture, kidnappings and the such, should not be prosecuted because “they were just following orders.”

(Kafka, eat your heart out baby. You lacked imagination compared to these guys.)

Finally we got another dose of “when we do it, it's not wrong,” from Dick Cheney this week. No longer in power, and no longer privileged to daily intelligence reports, Cheney nevertheless wanted us to know that he knows something we don't know:

Cheney Predicts ‘Probability’ of Attack
WASHINGTON — In an interview two weeks after leaving office, former Vice President Dick Cheney predicted a “high probability” of a nuclear or biological attack in the next few years and said the Obama administration was approaching a “tough, mean, dirty, nasty business” of keeping the country safe from terrorists too timidly.

So, boys and girls in civics class, lets review the new set of “Western values:”

   1. When countries like Venezuela, Rwanda, Iran, Cuba and others we don't like, flaunt international laws, it's wrong and their leaders need to be exposed, deposed and prosecuted. But when the US or Britain do many of the same kind of things, we are doing them for such a high purpose it's not wrong. In fact, in some cases it merits a medal.
   2. Even though it's enshrined in the code of military justice that a soldier is not only allowed to refuse an illegal order, but required refuse, and liable for prosecution if he/she follows that order. But there's now a footnote that allows them follow illegal orders if it's done in the name of “national security."
   3. The concept that “justice is blind,” used to mean that, only truth, not position or status, mattered in a court of law. It now means justice can turn a blind eye to official law breaking, as long as the accused claim their crimes were committed in the pursuit of “national security.”
   4. Those who claim the facts prove their innocence, are now allowed to keep those facts secret and therefore impossible to confirm or refute. (Another shout out here to Franz Kafka.. hey dude.)

Too cynical, you think? Well, since I can't get my hands on those documents either, I can only go by what I read in the paper. And so far it's not looking good for those of us who still believe all that gushy stuff we learned about the Magna Carta and the US Constitution, and the Bill of Rights and Habeas Corpus and the Rule of Law in civics class.

And it's going to continue getting worse, not better, until the US and GB follow Shakespeare's sage advice.

"This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man."

(See also, The Bush Project)

And: http://prosecutegeorgebush.com/

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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 (more...)

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