Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) has announced that he plans to hold House Judiciary Committee hearings on the Bush administration lawyers whose legal memos justified the use of torture on terrorism detainees.
Conyers' announcement Friday follows the release of a report by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility which criticizes lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee for "poor judgment" but concludes that their actions did not rise to the level of professional misconduct.
Conyers, however, is not satisfied with allowing the matter to drop. He has posted a full set of documents at the Judiciary Committee website, including both preliminary drafts and the final Justice Department report, Yoo's and Bybee's responses, and Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis's memorandum explaining why he did not feel that Yoo's and Bybee's actions amounted to "professional misconduct."
"For years, those who approved torture and abuse of detainees have hidden behind legal memos issued by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel," Conyers stated. "The materials released today make plain that those memos were legally flawed and fundamentally unsound, and may have been improperly influenced by a desire to tell the Bush White House and the CIA what it wanted to hear."
"Improperly influenced by a desire to tell the Bush White House and the CIA what it wanted to hear." That's pretty much what The Dick admitted the other day when he said those alleged lawyers had "done what we asked them to do".
"The Office of Legal Counsel has a proud tradition of providing independent, high quality legal advice to the executive branch," Conyers' statement continues. "The materials released today make clear that the lawyers who wrote the torture memos did not live up to that tradition. ... Given the serious nature of the issues raised in this report, the Committee intends to hold hearings on these matters in the very near future."
These torture- and war crimes-enablers are protected from on high so hearings probably won't do much good, but I'm glad Conyers is doing them anyway. More light on the Cheney Darktime can't hurt.
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