Attorney General Holder Considering Opening Torture Investigation-- Like the Failed Abu Ghraib Lynddie England Coverup?

"The Department of Justice will follow the facts and the law with respect to any matter," the department said in a statement released Saturday. "We have made no decisions on investigations or prosecutions, including whether to appoint a prosecutor to conduct further inquiry. As the attorney general has made clear, it would be unfair to prosecute any official who acted in good faith based on legal guidance from the Justice Department."

The department is expected to complete an ethics report about Bush administration officials who drafted memos, since discredited, granting leeway for harsh interrogation standards. Mr. Holder's decision on a possible criminal inquiry could come around the same time.

Any
criminal inquiry could face challenges, including potent legal defenses
by CIA employees who could argue that attorneys in the Bush Justice
Department authorized a wide range of harsh conduct. But the sources
said an inquiry would apply only to activities by interrogators,
working in bad faith, that fell outside the "four corners" of the legal
memos. Some incidents that might go beyond interrogation techniques
that were permitted involve detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, and are
described in the secret 2004 CIA inspector general report, set for
release Aug. 31.


Among the unauthorized techniques allegedly used, as described
in the report and Red Cross accounts, were shackling, punching and
beating of suspects, as well as the waterboarding of at least two
detainees using more liquid and for longer periods than the Justice
Department had approved. That conduct could violate ordinary criminal
laws, as well as the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which the United
States signed more than a decade ago.