The Torture Memos: Truth and Consequences

President Obama says Attorney General Eric Holder will have to decide if lawyers in the Bush Justice Department should be prosecuted for memos justifying harsh interrogation techniques. This week, the Senate Intelligence Committee revealed that dissenting legal views were brushed aside by the Bush White House. The release of the memos has raised a host of troubling questions. Did the memos justify war crimes? Should the lawyers who wrote them be prosecuted? Were the interrogation methods being used before the memos were written? Did the methods, including waterboarding, produce information that made American safer? Would other methods have been more reliable? If Obama says some people should be prosecuted while others are spared, is he “politicizing” the issue? Is he violating the law?