Maddow: Pardon Bush for Torture To ‘Make it Clear Crimes Were Committed’

Maddow: Pardon Bush for Torture To "Make It Clear Crimes Were Committed" (RealClearPolitics)

RACHEL MADDOW, MSNBC: Tonight, the head of the national ACLU has just published this op-ed in the New York Times. It calls for President Obama to issue a pardon to former President George W. Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney and other senior Bush administration officials for overseeing torture as the U.S. policy for years.

The spectacle of the president's granting pardons to torturers still makes my stomach turn. But doing so may be the only way to ensure that the American government never tortures again. Pardons would make clear that crimes were committed.

Again, this is the head of the national ACLU calling tonight by President George W. Bush to be pardoned by President Obama over the issue of torture, that's provocative.