In an interview with Countdown's David Schuster, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) made it so clear and simple. How can anyone disagree with a single word he says?

SHUSTER: You were the first Democrat to call for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate torture abuses.  Are you satisfied with the president‘s comments earlier today and what do you think prompted this shift in his position?

NADLER:  Well, I think, I‘m very happy with the president‘s position today.  He left the door open for the attorney general to decide whether there should be a special counsel.  And that‘s exactly where the decision should be made, not in the White House but in the attorney general‘s office.

We held hearings on the judiciary committee a year ago and two years ago, on the politicization of the Justice Department during the Bush administration.  And frankly, the president deciding that there should or should not be a special prosecutor would be making a decision that belongs to an independent Justice Department.

And so, the president sort of indicated that today.  And I‘m very glad of that.  And I don‘t know that he shifted his position.  I think he clarified it.

SHUSTER:  You are calling for Judge Jay Bybee to be impeached.  If he does not resign on his own as Senator Leahy was urging him, is impeachment a real possibility and what‘s your next step towards that end?

NADLER:  Well, I think impeachment is a possibility a little down the road.  I mean, we are—we‘re waiting first and we expect not too long ago from now, the Office of Professional Responsibility to come out with a report on whether Judge Bybee and Mr. Yoo and mister—the third one, I forget his name—violated professional ethics by writing these handbooks on how to torture people, which is what those memos were.  They were not, in my judgment, honest legal memos.  They were handbooks on how to torture people and try to get it away with it under the law.

And once that report comes out, if it indicates, as I suspect it may, that they violated—that Judge Bybee violated professional ethics, then I think that, first of all, we have to see whether a special counsel is appointed and whether is a subject of prosecution, and then the impeachment issue will come up after that.

SHUSTER:  The Democratic leadership in Congress has been pretty quiet on all of this.  Are you expecting them to weigh in on this at some point and at what point should they?

NADLER:  Well, I don‘t know what their plans are, and I don‘t know that they should at this point.  The chairman of the judiciary committee on which I‘m subcommittee chairman, Mr. Conyers, announced that the judiciary committee is going to be holding hearings in the next few weeks, I gather, on the question of torture and the question of people in the administration who arranged and suborned torture.

Now, all of these are illegal acts.  But let me say one other thing—

I don‘t think the attorney general has much choice but to appoint a special counsel, a special prosecutor because everybody now knows from the international community, the Red Cross report, from admissions that waterboarding was done, that torture—these memos make it very clear that torture was committed.  The convention against torture which the United States helped draft and sign on which—the law of the land mandates that when there is evidence of torture, that there must be an investigation, and where warranted, a prosecution.

That‘s why I have called for a special counsel to be appointed to do the investigation and to decide whether prosecution is warranted.  It must be a special prosecutor because the Justice Department itself, albeit in the prior administration, but nonetheless the Justice Department, which would normally do the investigating, was itself implicated in these crimes.  So, it has to be a special prosecutor.

SHUSTER:  If Congress, in addition to whatever the Justice Department does, if Congress has hearings and jumps into say, what these hearings that are coming up jumps into the torture memos—can these hearings be bipartisan?  And even if they can be bipartisan—in your view, can they be received that way by the public as being above partisanship?

NADLER:  Well, that‘s really up to the Republicans.  The Republicans have tended since this administration took power, to be totally partisan, to give zero votes to any proposal, to say no to everything.  And during the administration—during the Bush administration, they were totally protective of the Bush administration and of everything it did.  They didn‘t have real oversight hearings or anything else.

If they decide to be open and open-minded, they can be bipartisan.  If they decide they simply are going to be a cheering section for the now departed—thank God—Bush administration, then they won‘t be bipartisan.