Holder's recent move is completely consistent with Obama's insistence on looking "forward, not back" when it comes to accountability for torture. Prosecuting most of these cases would require seriously examining the perpetrators' faith that the Yoo memos acted as a "golden shield," as one Bush administration official called them. But the law says that this defense, "the defense of superior orders," doesn't work when the act in question is palpably or manifestly illegal.
It didn't work for Lt. William Calley when he and his platoon killed over 300 women, children, and elderly men in the village of My Lai during the Vietnam War. It didn't work for Lynndie England, the hapless army reservist convicted of torturing and abusing detainees at Abu Ghraib.
And it didn't work for most of the defendants at Nuremberg.
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