I haven't jumped into the fray until now, but I have been increasingly despondent over the increasingly astonishing prounouncements emerging from the mouths of top administration officials, including today the President himself, about the intention not to investigate or pursue charges against those responsible for torture.
I haven't entered the fray because, all appearances to the contrary, I have kept hoping that somehow this whole ugly scenario wasn't the complete shirking of duty that it appeared to be. I just couldn't believe that this guy who got my vote and my money on the strength of his apparent fealty to the Constitution, adherence to the ethical high road, and insistence on the primacy of the rule of law -- that this guy could really be planning to preside over an administration that turned a blind eye to the horrors we are learning more about every day.
The Rachel Maddow show tonight has given me hope that this may be just one more example of Obama playing chess. The revelation of the Isikoff/Thomas article (see Front Page) alone would have been uplifting. But what really cheered this lawyer's heart was Rachel's discussion with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) of the Judiciary Committee.
After the jump.
The first cheery item was that both Whitehouse and a fellow Dem Senator from the heartland, Sen. McCaskill, agree that a Bybee impeachment is probably in order.
But, cautions Sen. Whitehouse, we should exercise some patience. The DoJ's Office of Professional Responsibility has spent almost a year investigating this issue, and Sen. Whitehouse expects that the report will come out soon, will be very damning -- in fact, the word he used was "devastating" -- and that it will contain meticulously researched and compiled data supporting its conclusion.
Also, the President's Task Force is examining the matter, as is the Senate Judiciary Committee. We should let all of these processes reach fruition, says Whitehouse, then we will be in a position to put forward a thorough prosecution.
The evidence is gradually being amassed, but at this point I would take the Obama Administration's general description of themselves as interested in going forward and working on the economy and all those things as general sort of political discussion, and very appropriately so. But in the bowels of the Dept of Justice, where people actually put together indictments, they look at the evidence, and they look at the law, and we need to let that process go forward.
(Emphasis mine.)
Once this mountain of official evidence, much of it actually compiled during the Cheney Administration, is publicly released, the Obama DoJ and Congress will have the strong case that is needed to ensure that this (1) does not just devolve into a battle about political policy differences, (2) does not carry with it a threat of torpedoing everything else the Administration is trying to accomplish, and (3) has a high probability of success in the courts or in Congress or wherever remedial action is undertaken.
And it is my hope that, when that day arrives, we will hear Obama use his silver tongue to explain to the nation why, now that we know all this info, "looking forward" requires us to prosecute and to honestly admit our national culpability, because we must make sure these shameful acts are never repeated -- "never again in our names."
Wishful thinking? Maybe. But putting together Obama's history of strategic timing with FDR's famous "Make me!" story, this seems possible. And it is the first scenario that has made any sense to me in this whole sordid mess. Nothing else has seemed to ring true.