Hypocricy in America re: Torture

Earlier this week the President did a good thing. He released some documents that demonstrated that the previous administration acted, in my opinion, illegally by having the Department of Justice create documents that justified letting the CIA torture individuals. Torture is against both international and national laws so basically the previous administration was breaking the law and assumed that if they got some lawyers to write memos saying it was okay and this would excuse them. This is patently silly and only people as dumb or ethically challenged as the previous administration was could assume it was something that would fly. At least that's what I thought.

Earlier this week the President did a bad thing. He had the DOJ put out the message that they would not prosecute CIA agents who accepted this bogus logic as legally binding and tortured people. While I commend the first act it is obviously rendered moot based on the second act. President Obama had the nerve to say that he was doing it in an effort to "look forward" and not dwell in the past or something equally insulting to the American public.

This appears to mean that this administration has no more problem with hypocrisy as the last. The most "logical" argument I have heard is that maybe he is letting the little guy get away so that they will help them get the big guys. This is equally insulting. You let the little guy get way AFTER they have testified in court in the effort to get the big guy, not before they have done it. There is no reason at all that the CIA agents who committed these crimes should bother testifying to get the big guys.

Can anybody give a reason why these agents should be excused for their actions that isn't hypocritical? Why shouldn't any country use the same rationale to torture Americans who are captured? Why can't a murderer get off by getting a memo from his lawyer saying that it was okay? How is this different than some tin plated dictator like say, Saddam, giving legal authority to his torturers? I'm sure that they had some kind of rationale that justified their actions too. Might have even been "national security". Or can only the American govt use such logic to defend their actions?

Hypocrisy in America is becoming a standard.