{"id":7413,"date":"2014-12-10T19:32:42","date_gmt":"2014-12-10T19:32:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=7413"},"modified":"2014-12-10T19:32:42","modified_gmt":"2014-12-10T19:32:42","slug":"a-presidential-pardon-may-be-in-order","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=7413","title":{"rendered":"A presidential pardon may be in order"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>The beans are spilled. The cat&#8217;s out of the bag. The CIA just might have broken some laws when it detained suspected terrorists and subjected them to torture techniques immediately after the 9\/11 attacks.<\/p>\n<p>The spy agency says otherwise, that it broke no laws.<\/p>\n<p>U.S. Senate Democrats on the Intelligence Committee insist that the torture techniques were real and allege that they broke U.S. law.<\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"wp-embedded-content\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts\" security=\"restricted\" title=\"The Senate Report on the C.I.A.\u2019s Torture and Lies\" src=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/svc\/oembed\/html\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2014%2F12%2F10%2Fopinion%2Fthe-senate-report-on-the-cias-torture-and-lies.html#?secret=QhCz3mnrE1\" data-secret=\"QhCz3mnrE1\" scrolling=\"no\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The New York Times editorial board refers to the findings in the just-released Senate summary of the &#8220;enhanced interrogation&#8221; as a sign of &#8220;depravity&#8221; that defies comprehension.<\/p>\n<p>The thought has occurred to me. Perhaps it&#8217;s not an original thought, but I&#8217;ll toss it out there anyway.<\/p>\n<p>Given that there&#8217;s really no serious need to prosecute anyone for alleged criminal activity, perhaps a presidential pardon would be in order.<\/p>\n<p>Go ahead and snicker. This is a serious suggestion, even absent any formal criminal charges being filed against the principals involved &#8212; namely President Bush, then-CIA director George Tenet, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney.<\/p>\n<p>Hey, President Ford pardoned his immediate predecessor in the White House, Richard Nixon, for crimes he <em>may<\/em> have committed while covering up the Watergate burglary. That was the right call in 1974. A similar pardon just might be the right call now.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s have the debate over whether the suspected terrorists were tortured illegally. Both sides will vent. Both will have their say.<\/p>\n<p>There well might be an inclination in some circles to prosecute those in charge at the time. Others will be declare that there&#8217;s no need now to punish those who might have committed a crime.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s where President Obama can step in.<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s got the power to issue summary pardons. This well could be the time to act.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The beans are spilled. The cat&#8217;s out of the bag. The CIA just might have broken some laws when it detained suspected terrorists and subjected them to torture techniques immediately after the 9\/11 attacks. The spy agency says otherwise, that it broke no laws. U.S. Senate Democrats on the Intelligence Committee insist that the torture &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=7413\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A presidential pardon may be in order<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,13,14,1],"tags":[95,989,4211,4562,4864],"class_list":["post-7413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-news","category-national-news","category-political-news","category-uncategorized","tag-95","tag-cia","tag-senate-intelligence-committee","tag-terrorism","tag-torture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7413\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}