Nadler Calls For Bybee Impeachment

Manhattan Congressman Jerry Nadler spoke out yesterday for the impeachment of Judge Jay Bybee. Bybee has become infamous for having written out the "legal" doctrine that authorized hundreds of acts of torture by agents of the United States government, sanctioned by the Bush Administration. This is one man that should definitely not be adjudicating from the bench of any court, even one's with kangaroos.

From The Huffington Post:

"He ought to be impeached," Nadler said in an interview with the Huffington Post. "It was not an honest legal memo. It was an instruction manual on how to break the law."[...]

"Any special prosecutor on torture would have to look at the authors of those torture memos," said Nadler. "And certainly you have real grounds to impeach him once the special prosecutor took a good look at that. I think there ought to be an impeachment inquiry looked at in any event. Which should happen first, I'm not sure."[...]

"He should be a target. Yoo should be a target. There are a number of targets," said Nadler, referring to for Bush administration counsel John Yoo, who also authorized torture and is now a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Bybee, noted Nadler, "is the only one who's a federal court judge now."

Nadler dismissed Obama's call to look forward rather than backward, arguing that the United States is obligated to investigate whether crimes were committed. "This whole call of looking forward rather than backwards -- you can't say that. The fact is, if crimes were committed, we are duty-bound under our law, we must -- the United States must investigate torture if it happened in America. That's the law. And the fact is, the law specifically says that instructions from higher officials is not an excuse. And we are obligated to investigate and, if indicated, to prosecute. The failure to at least investigate would be a violation of law," he said.

I couldn't agree more. We need to prosecute Bybee, Yoo and every last one of them that was inside the Bush White House and approved these unholy, unethical and illegal acts. If we have to start with Bybee and work our way up, so be it. The important thing is that we do it, and quickly, so that Bush (and maybe even Cheney) is still alive when he goes to jail for his war crimes.