What sort of a newly elected President would get into office and then start demanding that actions From the Past -- rather than the Future -- be investigated, just because they might be "criminal"?  This deeply irresponsible Lithuanian leader apparently doesn't care about inflaming partisan divisions, and worse, appears blind to the dangers of criminalizing policy disputes.  Even more outrageously, Lithuania faces one of the steepest recessions in all of Europe; obviously, this is a time, more than ever, that Lithuanians should be Looking to the Future, Not the Past.  Instead, they're wallowing in deeply inflammatory, partisan and extremist rhetoric like this:

Valdas Adamkus, who was president when the CIA prison was reportedly in operation, from 2004 until 2005, said he had no personal knowledge of the covert program. But he raised the possibility that Lithuanian security officials could face prosecution if the reports are confirmed.

"If this actually did occur, and it is grounded with proof, we have to apologize to the international community that something like this went down in Lithuania," he told the Baltic News Service. "And those who did it," he added, "in my eyes are criminals" . . . .

Dainius Zalimas, a legal adviser to the Lithuanian Defense Ministry, said the existence of a covert prison would violate both Lithuanian statutes and international human rights conventions that the government signed.  If firm evidence is gathered by the Parliament, he said, prosecutors would be obliged to open a case and could target both Lithuanian and U.S. officials.

"From a legal point of view, it would mean that Lithuania, along with the United States, was contributing to quite serious violations of human rights," said Zalimas. . . .

"Criminals"?  "Prosecutions"?  "Obliged to open a case"?  "Violations of human rights"?  Just because they maintained a few secret prisons in violation of domestic and international law?  What kind of crazy, purist, Far Leftist utopians are running that place?  They need a heavy dose of pragmatism so they can understand all the reasons why so-called "crimes" like this can be overlooked -- just blissfully forgotten like a bad dream.  Even worse, with intemperate and shrill language of the type they're throwing around, it's seems clear that the Lithuanian press is sorely in need of some David Broders, Fred Hiatts, and David Ignatiuses to explain to them that subjecting law-breaking political officials to "investigations" and "prosecutions" is quite disruptive and unpleasant when those crimes involve matters other than consensual sex between adults.

Even more alarming, this "rule of law" and "human rights" fetish seems to be spreading: "In neighboring Poland, prosecutors in the capital of Warsaw have opened a criminal probe into reports that the CIA operated a prison for al-Qaeda suspects near a former military air base."  Last month, an Italian court convicted 22 CIA agents of the so-called "crime" of kidnapping someone off their street and sending him to Egypt to be tortured.  And the British High Court this week released its written Opinion -- over the objections of British and American officials -- ordering the release of details of Binyam Mohamed's torture at the hands of U.S. agents.

Thankfully, the U.S. remains a bastion of pragmatic sanity in this rising sea of accountability extremism.  Unlike those strange Eastern Europeans and absolutist Western European purist judges, we know there are far more important priorities than "investigating" war crimes, compelling transparency, and holding political criminals accountable.  As the rest of the world gets distracted by all this chatter about The Past, our President gallantly protects us from such divisive unpleasantries by aggressively blocking any war crimes investigations and concealing evidence -- even modifying decades-old transparency laws to do so if necessary.  Even more inspiring, our patriotic media enthusiastically plays a crucial helping role; The Washington Post has known since 2005 in exactly which countries the CIA maintained its illegal, secret prisons but still refuses to say, even though they've now been banned by Executive Order and even though Lithuania and Poland are launching investigations which the Post could easily answer, but chooses not to.

When President Obama was in China last week, he proudly boasted of the American commitment to transparency and lamented that China lacked such values.  Fortunately, he doesn't get carried away with "principles" the way that these short-sighted Lithuanians and Polish and others do.  Unlike those unhinged primitive nations with no democratic traditions, we understand that government crimes should be disclosed, investigated and punished only when they occur during a time other than the Past.  It's vital that we maintain our leadership role in teaching this critical value to the world, lest the type of crazed accountability/rule-of-law fetish currently engulfing Lithuania spreads even further like some uncontrollable virus.

UPDATE:  Jonathan Schwarz notes that in 2005, Donald Rumsfeld traveled to Lithuania and visited a museum in Vilnius which once housed a KGB prison, where the Soviets tortured prisoners.  That museum exhibits "solitary confinement rooms which were used to break down the prisoners and make them confess."  Shockingly, "the walls are padded and soundproofed, made to absorb the cries and shouts for help," as it was the site of barbaric acts like this:

Prisoners either had to stand in ice-cold water or to balance on a small platform. Every time they got tired they fell down into the water.

After his visit, Rumsfeld released an "Open Letter to the People of Vilnius," in which he solemnly observed that "the museum was a stark reminder of the importance of preserving our liberty at all costs."  Schwarz asks:  "Did Rumsfeld Tour KGB Torture Museum to Pick Up Useful Tips?"  

UPDATE II:  Here's a Getty photograph of what Rumsfeld called his "enjoyable and educational" trip to the KGB prison, accompanied by this apparently un-ironic caption:  "Rumsfeld tours Lithuania’s KGB Museum, a torture site during the Stalin era, in October 2005" (h/t sysprog).

"Attorney General Holder’s decision to re‐open the criminal investigation creates an atmosphere of continuous jeopardy for those whose cases the Department of Justice had previously declined to prosecute. Moreover, there is no reason to expect that the re‐opened criminal investigation will remain narrowly focused," the letter says.

"If criminal investigations closed by career prosecutors during one administration can so easily be reopened at the direction of political appointees in the next, declinations of prosecution will be rendered meaningless. Those men and women who undertake difficult intelligence assignments in the aftermath of an attack such as September 11 must believe there is permanence in the legal rules that govern their actions .... [T]his approach will seriously damage the willingness of many other intelligence officers to take risks to protect the country. In our judgment such risk-taking is vital to success in the long and difficult fight against the terrorists who continue to threaten us."

The Justice Department has put out this statement in response:

The Attorney General works closely with the men and the women of intelligence community to keep the American people safe and he does not believe their commitment to conduct that important work will waver in any way.

Given the recommendation from the Office of Professional Responsibility as well as other available information, he believed the appropriate course of action was to ask John Durham to conduct a preliminary review. That review will be narrowly-focused and will be conducted by a career prosecutor who has shown an ability to handle cases involving classified information. Durham has not been appointed as a special prosecutor; he will be supervised by senior managers at the Department.

The Attorney General’s decision to order a preliminary review into this matter was made in line with his duty to examine the facts and to follow the law. As he has made clear, the Department of Justice will not prosecute anyone who acted in good faith and within the scope of the legal guidance given by the Office of Legal Counsel regarding the interrogation of detainees.

The full letter is available in PDF form here.

On Thursday, in a new interview with the Times, the former attorney general was singing a different tune.

"Contrary to press reporting and based on the information that's available to me, I don't support the investigation by the department because this is a matter that has already been reviewed thoroughly and because I believe that another investigation is going to harm our intelligence gathering capabilities and that's a concern that's shared by career intelligence officials and so for those reasons I respectfully disagree with the decision," Gonzales said. "I respect the right of the attorney general to make this decision based upon his judgement of the facts, but again based upon what I know I disagree with the decision."

When a reporter for the Times read his original quote back to him, Gonzales replied, "[I]t's an endorsement of [Holder's] right to exercise his discretion. I'm just saying I would have exercised my discretion in a different manner, given the information I have .... So when I talk about how we expect people to abide by a certain set of rules, and if they don't they ought to be looked into, it's been looked into."

"We worked very hard to establish ground rules and parameters about how to deal with terrorists," Gonzales said in an interview with a Washington Times radio program. "And if people go beyond that, I think it is legitimate to question and examine that conduct to ensure people are held accountable for their actions, even if it’s action in prosecuting the war on terror."

Among other things, Gonzales' comments are notable for their accurate description of what's going to happen with this investigation. Many on the right have portrayed the inquiry as much broader than it actually is; in fact, it's going to focus on a limited number of cases of interrogators who crossed the lines the Bush administration laid out for them, and it won't necessarily lead to prosecutions. If this investigation ends with a conclusion that there's reason to proceed, then there'll be a fuller investigation and that will lead to the actual decision on whether or not to prosecute.

In addition, the report includes a 2002 psychological evaluation of al-Qaida suspect Abu Zubaydah, forwarded to John Yoo, then deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel and now renowned for providing much of the Bush administration's legal justification for torture. The evaluation says that Abu Zubaydah is mentally stable and a powerful figure within al-Qaida. Both assertions are diametrically opposed to the characterization of Abu Zubaydah in Ron Suskind's "The One Percent Doctrine," an authoritative account of the Bush administration's counterterrorism efforts.