Reynolds Responds

And says nothing - nothing - about why his 2004 position that those responsible for Abu Ghraib should be jailed or executed has evaporated. My own position on torture has been consistent from Day One of the war. It genuinely didn't occur to me that any president would adopt the standards of Communists and Nazis in prosecuting it. So yes, discovering such an atrocity was perhaps the deepest reason I changed my position on Bush entirely. Finding out that a man you supported in good faith is actually a war criminal will do that. But what I have also done is make a deep, grueling and long attempt to take responsibility for my original misjudgment, and show how my own changed position on Bush has much to do with what we subsequently discovered and that was, at the time, unknown to me.

Reynolds, in contrast, has never provided an ounce of accountability for his own support for Bush and Cheney and Rove and their entire legacy these past few years. Nowhere is this clearer than on torture, a position that reveals that his alleged libertarianism is simply a cover for a defense of raw power and brute, often vicious, force and brutality.

Remember: back in 2004, his position was that what happened at Abu Ghraib was torture, period, and that those responsible should face jail or execution. His position now is that no legal sanctions should be applied to those responsible for the torture, let alone jail or executuion. In fact, he opposes even further investigation of these war crimes. And what he once called torture, he now defers to Jack Goldsmith's judgment thus:

The people in government who made mistakes or who acted in ways that seemed reasonable at the time but now seem inappropriate have been held publicly accountable by severe criticism, suffering enormous reputational and, in some instances, financial losses. Little will be achieved by further retribution.

So Jack Goldsmith and Glenn Reynolds believes that the techniques revealed at Abu Ghrain seemed reasonable at the time? To whom? Certainly not to Reynolds. And bringing torturers to justice is now "retribution"? And notice the kind of justice this law professor supports: Lynndie England is thrown in jail but the man whose orders she was following remains untouched? What England did was a crime but what those who ordered her to do it were merely making mistakes? Sometimes the corruption of justice fomented by Bush and dutifully echoed by hacks like Reynolds is really brought into the light.