The precedent is being set by the Obama administration for justice and fairness. In early April, Attorney General Eric Holder announced to a surprised newsmedia that the Justice Department was dropping all charges against former Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens. The 85-year old Senator was convicted of lying on Senate financial disclosure forms to conceal hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts and home renovations from a businessman.  
    
Prosecutorial misconduct was the transgression on which the Attorney General based his decision, thus signaling a new standard of integrity being introduced into the justice department. An internal Justice Department investigation is also underway.

In mid April both the President and the Attorney General announced that those CIA   operatives who followed the legal guidance they were given will not be prosecuted, even if they used harsh interrogation methods. If the Attorney General and the President want to be consistent they should be introducing measures to release those scape-goated prison guards of Abu Ghraib fame.

As the truth continues to surface, a look back at the war policy of the Bush, Cheny, and Rumsfeld group, is revealing a shameful bunch of cowards form every angle. To begin with they were your classic chicken-hawks, who never served in combat or even in the military in the case of Rumsfeld and Cheney. They were posturing as tough macho men launching an unnecessary if not illegal war at the expense of the lives and limbs of our military women and men.

Now we find that they approved and directed the various torture measures and chose to euphemize them by labeling them “interrogation enhancement techniques.” Nevertheless, to quote William Shakespeare, “a rose by any other name is still a rose.”

The over arching question is what were their limits? How low would they or did they go? What level is it that they wouldn’t stoop or maybe they didn’t have to stoop because that’s where their principles resided. To them, revealing the secret identity of a CIA operative to punish Ambassador Wilson and his wife Valerie Plame for disproving administration generated lies to justify the invasion of Iraq was acceptable.

How low is it, to send instructions to subordinates to commit war crimes, and when discovered, to denounce the acts devised in the instructions, and punish those who complied as if they were renegades?    

Twelve guards at Abu Ghraib were convicted on charges related to the abuse of detainees, which included attaching leads to naked prisoners, terrifying them with dogs, beatings and slamming them into walls. These torturing measures were authorized and approved by Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush, and Condoleezza Rice. But when the scandal was exposed the architects who authorized the abuse slithered away and feigned ignorance and innocence.

In early May 2004, on a much heralded trip to Abu Ghraib after the scandal broke, Rumsfeld spoke to the troops. "In recent days there's been a focus on a few that have betrayed our values and sullied the reputation of our country," Rumsfeld said, adding that the actions of a few do not represent "the values of America and I know that and you know that and your families know that — we're proud of you, each of you.”

Bush is also on record commenting on the Abu Ghraib according to Freedom Daily, In a May 28, 2004, interview, a French journalist mentioned Abu Ghraib and asked President Bush, “Do you feel responsible in any way for this moral failure in Iraq?” Bush replied,

“First of all, I feel responsible for letting the world see that we will deal with this in a transparent way that people will see that justice will be delivered. And what I regret most of all is that the great honor of our country has been stained by the actions of a few people.”

In view of what we now know regarding the culpability of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Company in their torture agenda, their denouncing the troops that carried out their illegal directives is the ultimate treachery. As many suspected, which has since been verified Charles Graner, his former lover Lynndie England and the other guards were the fall guys, the scape-goats for the President and his people.

It is only fair and just that if the Justice Department and the President have declared the CIA operatives exempt from prosecution for following orders of their superiors who may have engaged in torture, those enlisted men and women who were demonized and punished for doing that for which the CIA operatives are being excused, should also be exonerated. In other words those enlisted men and women should be released and given pardons and compensated for any  hardships they may have suffered because of their being scape-goated.