Breaking the law is not "Criminal"

Sen. Lindsey Graham said this during October of 2007:

GRAHAM: I am convinced, as an individual senator, as a military lawyer for 25 years, that waterboarding…does violate our war crimes statute and is clearly illegal under domestic and international law. … I don’t think you have to have a lot of knowledge about the law to understand this technique violates Geneva Convention Common Article Three, the War Crimes statutes, and many other statutes that are in place. So I do hope that he will embrace that.

However, more recently, Graham said the following:

GRAHAM: The reason I don’t want to go back any more than we have already done is because I know what happened. Out of fear, we overreacted. … They took a view of the law that I think was aggressive, and I would not have approached it that way. Right after 9/11, we all thought we were going to be hit again. So as we go back and try to hold people criminally liable. I think we’re doing a lot of damage to the country, because their mistakes were not criminal mistakes. They were mistakes made out of fear.

Am I to understand that if I act out of fear something is not illegal.

If a drug dealer sells drugs because he feared his family was going to starve, does that make it ok?

If a woman sells her body out of fear of not having a place to live, does that mean its legal?

If a man robs someone because he fears that he and his family will be evicted, will the judge throw the case out?

I don't think so. Wake up Graham, fear is not an excuse.