The End of Accountability

Tim Rutten, "Torture began at the top "

Right-wing -- as opposed to conservative -- commentators already have begun branding the Senate investigation and parallel House inquiries as a witch hunt designed to discredit administration policies that they say have kept the country free from attack for seven years. (It's interesting, however, that even Pentagon spokespeople no longer hint that interrogations involving torture elicited information on planned attacks, let alone imminent ones.)

Part of the hysteria over all this that you see in places like the Wall Street Journal editorial pages stems from an anxiety that congressional inquiries, like that of Levin's committee, will lead to indictments and possibly even war crimes trials for officials who participated in the administration's deliberations over torture and the treatment of prisoners.

It's true that there are a handful of European rights activists and people on the lacy left fringe of American politics who would dearly like to see such trials, but actually pursuing them would be a profound -- even tragic -- mistake. Our political system works as smoothly as it does, in part, because we've never criminalized differences over policy. Since Andrew Jackson's time, our electoral victors celebrate by throwing the losers out of work -- not into jail cells.

(And, humbly presented, a retort.)