Truth Commissions: Where investigations go to die.
Senator Patrick Leahy has proposed a Truth Commission to investigate the crimes of the Bush administration. While this may sound appealing on the surface, it is a very bad idea. In short, we need a federal prosecutor, not a sideshow. What is so difficult for Washington politicians, and I'm not just referring to Senator Leahy here, to comprehend about the simple rule of law? Must we don our pitchfork hats to get justice?
I appreciate the Senator's good intentions - if that's what they are. But I can't help but notice that this idea does two things that are utterly contrary to the functions, as established under the constitution of the United States, of upholding our nations laws.
- It gets Congress of the hook for its constitutionally mandated role of oversight.
- It gets the Justice Dept and the Obama administration off the hook for their constitutionally mandated function of enforcing the law.
The Senator makes assurances, in an update to his diary, that such a commission would not preclude the Justice Dept. from seeking prosecutions.
Of course, this avenue would be pursued in consultation with the Justice Department and would not rule out prosecution in appropriate cases, particularly for perjury before the commission -- or for those individuals who choose not to testify before the commission, but are implicated by others. We could certainly prosecute those people.
I'm sorry, but these assurances are not very reassuring. The Senator seems to be living in a world where we, the informed public, do not know already that prosecutions are "appropriate". The many crimes of the Bush administration are well documented. We should be taking grand jury testimony by now.
But Senator Leahy thinks that perjury charges are the best we can do?
A Commission or a Sideshow?
We are never going to get a nonpartisan, disinterested commission selected by partisan, interested members of Congress. Come on. Who would make up this commission? Half Democrats and half Republicans? The gray eminences of the ruling establishment - with intermingling ties to the defense and intelligence community? Board members of corporations? Who would chair it? Lee Hamilton?
The 911 Commission was a joke. It was a sideshow with a media cycle half life of three weeks. Do we really want a repeat of that, with the lies and disinformation being spewed daily on cable channels? We need a real prosecution, nonpartisan, out of the political theater, by the Justice Department.
This is serious. The Bush administration took our country to war on lies. Hundreds of thousands of people have died. I know we're all desensitized to that fact. But the law is not. It was a crime for a US president to lie to the public.
His administration has unquestionably violated our constitution. He admitted as much on national television.
And while I'm on the FISA thing, let me remind readers that the illegal tapping of our phones, and those of journalists and God knows who else, is not just about privacy. It is about raw political power. This is what the Founders understood when crafting the 4th Amendment. The ability to know your opponent's secrets is the ability to control your opponent. Power is what is at stake.
If Democrats had any sense, they would remeber what Nixon did with illegal wiretaps. As I wrote in my diary, Nixon's Wet Dream:
And by giving the authority to the president's men, without serious oversight or accountability, we are literally inviting a repeat of the Nixon years.
What can you do with your political enemies phone calls, private information, or emails? What did Nixon's men do? They used them for opposition research. And there are already strong indications that Bush's henchmen have done the same.
As reported at by Jeff Stein at CQ:
U.S. intelligence tapped the telephone calls of Lawrence Wright, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Looming Tower, starting in 2002.
This may well be news to many people, even though Wright revealed the taps himself in a sprawling, 15,000-word article on electronic surveillance in the Jan. 21 edition of The New Yorker magazine.
Perhaps because the article was not available online it lacked the link-juice to propel it into a frenzy over the "domestic spying" on the Web, the cable news shows and leading American newspapers.
As far as I can tell, only Pam Hess of the Associated Press picked up on Wright’s confrontation with spy chief Michael McConnell over the phone taps, and no major paper ran it.
You may not care much at the thought of your phone being tapped. Innocent people usually don't. But I can't imagine anyone passionate about politics who is okay with president Bush, or a president McCain, having the freedom to tap the phones of journalists, progressive activists, or even Democratic politicians, without detection or oversight.
The Bush administration has violated so many laws, made so many usurpations against the people, that we need multiple special prosecutors - the Iraq war, torture, spying, assertions of executive power, cronyism and war profiteering.
I'm sure I'm forgetting a few.
Obama has repeatedly said he wants to look "forward". Let me show you what the future looks like if we don't correct the past:
From my diary, The Reincarnation of George Bush
Now, as the criminal presidency of George W Bush comes to a close, we are yet again looking at the prospect of big fish taking walks.
The consequence of all this, of course, is that as long as these guys keep getting off, they will keep reemerging - albeit, sometimes in different forms.
Only recently we've been hearing utterances about a possible Jeb Bush return to the national stage. It appears he was instructed to back off, for now. But there can be little doubt that he will make a play at some point. He's a young man and the Washington press has a very short memory. He could have the presidency within 12 years.
And all the presidents men, from Elliot Abrams to Karl Rove, will not be forced to retire to the shadows in shame. They are regrouping, scheming on a return to power, and getting talk show gigs. Just like Gordon Liddy. It would appear in modern Washington, one's reputation cannot be tarred enough to prevent them from making a comeback.
Looking forward indeed. That is what the people who surrounded George Bush's presidency are doing right now. They are looking forward to their restoration to power, which they will almost certainly achieve because we failed to hold them accountable for the last time they were in power.
If our nation is not a nation of laws, then it is not a nation at all. And that would make Barack Obama the President of Nothing.