I agree to some extent with what you're saying which is why I called this a "symbolic gesture" and also said that these proceedings should be happening here in the US. This is not the job of a Spanish judge, and I am sure a lot of it is due to his own quest for celebrity.

Now how do you suppose the righteous wrath of "people like" me could be used against the Romans? That Empire is long gone and the soldiers who crucified Jesus Christ are all long dead. Sort of hard to be wrathful against them.

Oh wait – did you mean the Jews? You honestly think I blame the Jews for killing a Jew? That sort of deranged logic has never sat well with me. Not to mention I doubt Jews were using Roman means of execution to kill their own. I'm pretty sure had it been up to them a stoning would have sufficed.

I imagine I'll be accused of apologizing for torture and stooping to the level of the Islamist torturers and beheaders, but Superjudge "That dude doesn't mess around" (Sullivan dixit)Garzón is nothing more than a publicity hound and a partisan hack. He has more than enough human rights abuses to investigate right there in Spain, if it weren't for the fact that it's governed by the Socialists. I'd be inclined to change my opinion of him if were wasting his own taxpayers' money by bringing suit against Castro's Cuba and Hamas, for example. Next, he'll be revising the judgment against Jesus Christ and calling down the righteous wrath of people like ED Kain against the Christ-killers.

Are these risks greater than those incurred by telling future administrations (and the current one) that their flagrant violations of habeas corpus, the right to privacy, and the laws of war will go unpunished? I understand your concern but it absolutely pales in comparison to the risk we run of unchecked executive power if serious prosecutions are not pursued against the Bush administration. You'll have to do better.

John also says:
"Torture is a terrible thing; but it's not deliberate murder of innocent civilians who were no where near a combat zone. "

Torture may not be as bad as 9/11, though outside of ED's exaggeration (however great) I don't know why that needs to be or should be our benchmark. But it certainly WAS murder of people who certainly WERE civilians, people who were in a 'combat zone' only insofar as they happened to be somewhere inside Iraq or neighboring countries. (A tough criterion to beat for the vast majority of them.)

Was that murder deliberate? Depends on your sense of the word. Is it a 'deliberate' murder when a guy gets loaded at a bar, tries to drive home, and plows into another car, killing someone? He never set out to kill anybody — yet he engaged in incredibly dangerous behavior that displayed a willful disregard for the safety of others. Not a simple call.

A few points:

1) I never argued it was permissible to secretly suspend habeas for any reason; I expressed concerns about the mechanism for punishing violation of the principle. I think expressing moral outrage is important.

2) There is nothing 'morally nihilistic' about observing that there is no precedent in the U.S. for the type of prosecutions you support, that they are unlikely to happen, and that this is probably a regrettable necessity if peaceful transitions of power are to be the norm in the United States. It is not possible to prosecute all moral wrongs.

3) I am curious about why you think the Obama Administration (and every Presidential administration in U.S. history) will not pursue prosecution of the former administration. Are any of these concerns valid, or is it all moral nihilism?

The Obama administration could very easily temper accusations of partisanship by increasing oversight of its own prosecution of the war on terror as it pursued criminal charges against Bush administration officials. That they will not do this is, as you say, all but a given. But that doesn't mean we are required to pat them on the back for not even trying.