Color me stupid and maybe ignorant but where was the outrage and demand from the republicans after 9/11 when Vice President Cheney and President Bush threw out all the Geneva Conventions and Army Field Manuals and wrote their own rules for questioning detainees? Who can forget water boarding that both Bush and Cheney have bragged about and written about since they have left office.
To the point that a conservative Mayor of London actually wrote that President Bush should not come to London on his book tour as he might be arrested as General Pinochet was for the crimes he committed while in office in South America. That Britain might have to apply the same rules to President Bush that were used on Pinochet an old friend of President Nixon and DR Kissinger, that we helped put into power in 1973.
The republicans all but demanded we NOT investigate the Bush administration for their abuses of power when President Obama took office and he all but jumped at the chance to move the nation forward and that we would not "look back".
As soon as the new republican controlled House gets sworn into power next week, the witch hunt literally begins, I suggest then that Attorney General Eric Holder puts a member of the Justice department and a grand jury and start issuing subpoena for all of the Bush people involved from Judge Bybee all the White House staff, Sec of defense Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzalez, the Generals, the CIA personnel and their civilian contractors both interrogators and shrinks, go after them all.
I have been mad since the only people held accountable for abuse has been low level Army personnel such as the MPs at Abu Graib, they demoted General Karpinski to Colonel and retired her, LTG Sanchez was denied a promotion to his 4th star and MG Miller was retired as a 2 star and not promoted but they were hardly punished for their part in the torture of detainees.
No one was held accountable for using LSD on Jose Padilla while he was in a Navy brig in South Carolina and if I remember right when the Federal Judge asked for the DVDs of the interrogations he was told they had been destroyed. Again no one was held accountable.
I don't want any federal official to break the law either in a Republican administration nor in a Democratic led administration, but if the "gloves are going to come off" let's take them all off and let's clean up all of our dirty linen.
Rep. Rogers to Interrogate White House Over Interrogations
The war on terror didn't much factor into the 2010 midterm elections. But if Rep. Mike Rogers has his way, Congress is going to start paying a lot more attention to the way the Obama administration is prosecuting that war. The Michigan Republican, who since last year has been howling about the president's alleged law enforcement-approach to battling extremists, is set to chair the House Intelligence Committee when Congress convenes for its next session. In the new role, Rogers will no longer be just the nagging voice at the end of Washington newspaper articles about administration anti-terror policies. He'll be leading the charge against those policies.
"We went from an intelligence-based approach to a law enforcement-based approach, and we really never asked the question, 'Are we safer?'" Rogers told Fox News.
As a former FBI agent and Army officer, Rogers has some unshakable views about combatant interrogation. He says he by no means supports torture, but argues that the United States has made it too easy for its enemies to clam up by broadcasting its playbook -- the Army Field Manual -- to the world. That manual limits interrogators to 19 techniques, which Rogers said are too restrictive.
"Remember, an FBI agent can use certain psychological techniques against a gangster in New York City that the Army Field Manual would not allow a CIA case officer to use on a foreign terrorist sent here to blow up Americans," he said. "There's a contradiction here that we have to get to the bottom of."
Rogers has some specific targets in mind in seeking a course correction. Among his first orders of business in 2011 will be to try to disband the High-Value Interrogation Group -- or HIG -- the specialty team of interrogators President Obama assembled to fly around the world and question suspected terrorists after they're captured.
If this is a road the republicans want to go down I suggest we go down it all the way, I really wish the Department of Justice would uphold the rule of law in this nation, even if it does lead into the Oval Office, despite President Nixons now infamous words "when the President does it, it is not illegal" yes if it violates the laws of this nation then yes it is illegal even if the President orders it done or does it himself.
Part of the oath of office is to "uphold all laws" even the President can not order laws to be broken. I say to Congressman Rogers if this is what he wants I hope he is ready for all of these doors to be opened, I am. I have been waiting since 1975 for some one to open the doors on the laws the DOD, the CIA and the Army broke in this program and caused the premature deaths and disabilities of 7120 enlisted Army personnel in this Vietnam Veterans of America, et al. v. Central Intelligence Agency, et al. Case No. CV-09-0037-CW, U.S.D.C. (N.D. Cal. 2009)