Masha Gessen writes Autocracy: Rules for Survival:
“Thank you, my friends. Thank you. Thank you. We have lost. We have lost, and this is the last day of my political career, so I will say what must be said. We are standing at the edge of the abyss. Our political system, our society, our country itself are in greater danger than at any time in the last century and a half. The president-elect has made his intentions clear, and it would be immoral to pretend otherwise. We must band together right now to defend the laws, the institutions, and the ideals on which our country is based.”
That, or something like that, is what Hillary Clinton should have said on Wednesday.
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2008—Obama May OK Torture Investigation:
Should George Bush and others in his administration be prosecuted for various actions is answered with a resounding yes! if you’re Vincent Bugliosi, author of The sProsecution of George W. Bush for Murder. And, while most other critics who favor prosecution argue that lesser charges should be brought than Bugliosi would like to see, they believe it would be mistaken to let the actions of Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and crew fade into oblivion. For one thing, the main thing perhaps, allowing these leaders to escape unscathed for their actions means we can pretty much count on a repeat – only worse – a few years or decades down the road.
It's hard to imagine anybody who's watched Torturing Democracy could suggest that nothing should happen to the characters who promoted, encouraged and even set rules for torture.
But Obama advisor and Bush enabler Cass Sunstein sees things just that way. And, apparently, so does Clinton era Department of Justice official Robert Litt. As noted in today’s Washington Post: […]
"It would not be beneficial to spend a lot of time calling people up to Congress or in front of grand juries," Litt said. "It would really spend a lot of the bipartisan capital Obama managed to build up."
Vindictive. Vengeful. Partisan. Punitive. Divisive. These words have come to describe those of us who have watched the Cheney-Bush horror show of the past eight years unfold and want to see something done about it. Our problem, we are told, is that prosecuting or attempting to prosecute anyone in the outgoing administration would be a distraction for the incoming team at a time when the new President and Congress need to focus their undiluted attention on "more important matters." [...]
On the surface, this might appear to be wise counsel. A multitude of crises certainly do require immediate attention. But treating torture, rendition, abuse of executive power and fabrication of intelligence as distractions to be abandoned leaves these matters forever unresolved. Which raises troubling questions. Will they happen again? Will they be worse next time? If our leaders and their minions were doing things we have already gained some inkling of, what else were they doing for which we haven’t yet seen the secret memos?
In other words, not investigating, not knowing, becomes the distraction.
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