Opinion: In today’s pages: Reviewing interrogators, reappointing Bernanke and reopening North Korea

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Today the Opinion Manufacturing Division takes both sides of the debate over whether to investigate CIA interrogators, with columnist Tim Rutten lamenting the appointment of a special prosecutor and the editorial board applauding it. Rutten argues that it would be a ‘travesty’ to charge the small fry without going after the higher ups in the Justice Department and the White House who egged them on. And that, he says, is a road to a place we don’t want to go:

Let Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) and spokesmen for the activist group Moveon.org keep demanding that Bush and Cheney be ‘held accountable’ if they wish. But let’s hope Obama and his attorney general understand that prosecuting a president and vice president for policies they believed were crucial to national security -- however wrongheaded, vicious and destructive -- would be a divisive political disaster.
The editorial board, on the other hand, sees wisdom in having a respected career prosecutor conduct a limited inquiry into whether interrogators violated laws against torture or exceeded the ‘minimal’ limits imposed by the Justice Department. It also opines:

Important as the new inquiry is, it won’t remedy all of the injustices perpetrated as part of the Bush administration’s so-called war on terror. Nor is criminal prosecution the best way to document the chain of decision-making that resulted in outrages that continue to tarnish this nation’s image. In fact, a criminal investigation could retard an encompassing inquest into what went wrong, and when, by making potential witnesses unavailable. But that’s a price that must be paid if provable criminal wrongdoing is to be prosecuted.
The board also questions the motives ...

... behind the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s call for the EPA to conduct a ‘Scopes monkey trial’ to test the scientific merit of the research into global warming. And while it endorses President Obama’s decision to reappoint Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, it calls on Congress to overhaul financial-industry regulations to provide better safeguards when the next asset bubble bursts. Back on the Op-Ed page, Timothy F. Brick, chairman of the board of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, praises a set of proposals in Sacramento for conserving water, preserving salmon habitat and creating a new link between the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta and southern California’s water system. And Han S. Park, director of the Center for the Study of Global Issues at the University of Georgia, argues that former President Clinton’s visit to North Korea wasn’t a capitulation to Kim Jong Il’s bullying, but an important icebreaker that can lead to productive talks:

Continuing former President George W. Bush’s policy of treating North Korea as an ‘evil’ regime and denying it the opportunity to sit across the table would be counterproductive and potentially disastrous. Now that a back channel has been opened courtesy of Clinton, the Obama administration should open a direct channel of negotiation with Pyongyang. Once that happens, I suspect North Korea will drop its objections to multilateral forums.
-- Jon Healey