Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman have sent a letter to President Obama urging him not to prosecute Bush Justice Department officials who wrote legal rationales for torture. "[T]he Department of Justice is currently conducting an internal ethics review of the OLC memos," the trio write, "but that is a quite a different matter from making legal advice with which we may disagree into a crime."

This has been a common refrain from these three for some time, but this letter belies the facts that the use of torture predated the memos that were written to retroactively justify it, and that the Attorney General has independent authority to investigate and, possibly, prosecute their authors. I've pasted the full text of the letter below the fold.

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A senior enlisted U.S. Army soldier--Master Sergeant John Hatley--was convicted two days ago by a military jury in Germany of executing four handcuffed, blindfolded Iraqi men by shooting them in the backs of their heads.

That's a newsworthy (and, of course, gruesome) story in and of itself, but there's a story behind the story.

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