Senator Leahy, now you're talking. Everyone on CD, get behind Leahy, please. Send this article to everyone on your list. Let's see if the new admin responds or if it's been all a bunch of rhetoric.

Good for Leahy. Let's hope that if this happens that the political spectrum of which Leahy speaks includes the true progressives in Congress, such as Kucinich, Lee, Woolsey, Watson, Sanders, and other members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. They'll prevent a cover-up or whitewash.

Would prosecutions follow from such an commission's investigation?

Or will Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Gonzales, Pelosi, and the others get immunity in return for testifying?

It's a noble cause, but,I fear, an impossible one. Given the state of our country's economy today and the ignoble, cowardly democrats facing the dastardly determined self-seving REpublicans fiercely striving to defeat and thwart all possible positive moves made by the new administration, there's little progress to show. Our wounds are deep and require a lot of healing. I am not sanguine about anything positive or progressive taking place soon. Predator hawks are still seeking prey.

""We need to come to a shared understanding of the failures of the recent past," Leahy said in a speech at Georgetown University. "Rather than vengeance, we need a fair-minded pursuit of what actually happened," he said. "And we do that to make sure it never happens again."

Vacuities accompanied by an oxymoron. JUSTICE demands indictment and punishment, which the head of the JUDICIARY COMMITTEE appears to have unlearned. As the constitutional scholar on the MSNBC, whose name escapes me for the moment, continually says, it's absurd to talk about prevention of future crimes if past crimes & criminals pay no penalty.

Coupled with the hissings of Wormtongue Specter, we see the banality of evil on full display, along with the absence of courage of any conviction.

"Some Republicans and intelligence officials have resisted any suggestion of broad inquiries into accusations against the Bush administration, saying it would be a distraction or weaken morale in the fight against terrorism."

Quite true here. And believe it or not, a direct admission of the use of distractions that are not welcomed by those most likely to be inquired about for their parts in what went on in w and dick's place. Which then makes me think of what distractions these people(republicans) would appove.
Also, not only would it reveal once and for all what really happened on September 11, 2001 and why and who was really behind it but it would pop that big old bubble called the 'war on terrorism' which is a blanket term for having leeway to do as the neocons would please. This 'war on terror' is the very reason why our country is crashing because trying to use the military to fight big battles as in say a war like WWII which had a very defined enemy, terrorists are just criminals that don't need a military gunning down of innocent people just to catch one person if they did commit a crime against people. And just as milton friedman's 'unfettered market' attracted criminals because of no regulation or oversight, fighting a war on terror would be the same when it comes down to the 'unfettered surveilance' of all citizens then for other reasons besides terrorism the innocents will be under surveilance for most any abstract reason.
Hopefully such a commission will appear but it must not be hampered by a bunch of paranoid a$$e$ like the neocons or republicans because in all most likely hood they are the ones to be scrutinized and rightfully so.

I applaud this suggestion of Senator Leahy and believe that it MUST be done if our nation is to be thought of as a respecter of the law. I have emailed the Senator and the President ( his web site) strongly urging that this be done.

Despite the naysayers (GOP and Intel folks) this is the only way to deter future abuses.

"Most people would sooner die than think, in fact they do so." Bertrand Russell

I see that our Israeli controlled congressional trators are still spending our tax money to make sure that the truth never sees the light of day.

Egypt hinders investigations into Gaza war
Mon, 09 Feb 2009 09:48:46 GMT

Egypt has refused entry into the Gaza Strip to members of an international committee in charge of investigating Israeli war crimes.

The article: "Some Republicans and intelligence officials have resisted any suggestion of broad inquiries into accusations against the Bush administration, saying it would be a distraction or weaken morale in the fight against terrorism."

The fight against terrorism? One must ask who are the terrorists here. The ones who resist invaders or the ones who torture and use high-tech weapons of mass destruction?

The article continues: "'If every administration started to reexamine what every prior administration did, there would be no end to it. This is not Latin America,' the Judiciary committee's top-ranking Republican, Senator Arlen Specter, told reporters last month."

The ruling elites always find justifications for criminal acts of one of their own, but cry, "Let's build more prisons!" if the offender is from the working classes.

Leahy proposes another WhiteWash since he is as guilty as all the rest. I've said for many years, we have a criminal government, one that makes the Mafia envious, as various Mafiosi have candidly admitted. Doesn't Leahy know that Pelosi said enforcing the law is off the table, that upholding you oath of office isn't expected at all. Someone better inform him quick before anyone gets any ideas that change is occurring.

U.S. Citizen

I like Senator Leahy but this is just more "circling the wagons". Apartheid was a continuing, systemic evil. We need a truth commission on the corporatocracy in this nation which is more comparable to South Africa's systemic evil.

Regarding the crimes of the Bush administration, there is enough evidence to indict officials for lying about WMD and invading Iraq even if they existed since there was no imminent threat, torture of prisoners, violation of the fourth amendment and politicization of the Justice Dept. We need an independent counsel, not a special prosecutor, to investigate what happened and determine whom to prosecute and the best way to proceed with prosecution.

It's fine with me if Congress wants to pursue its own investigation but we did this with the Church Commission when Nixon was allowed to escape free of prosecution. Were we doomed to make the same mistake because we don't know history? Or are we just insane because we want to do the same thing and expect different results? By the way, I would consider Gary Hart and John Dean to co-chair Congress' investigation.

Aside from protecting the administration, perhaps Leahy wants to protect the complicit Dems and others who might also be susceptible to charges.

Nurmberg type trials would be ideal (it would show the rest of the world that we live by the standards we expect of others), but the Truth Commission is minimally necessary for at least 3 reasons:

1. For the sake of the victims of such abuse to know who did what, when and where.

2. For the sake of history to officially document who did what, when, and how not from "anonymous highly placed sources" but from people (after being properly immunized from prosecution) who would go on the record with specificity over what took place.

3. For the sake of further legislation to protect the innocent victims and punish the perpetrators of such acts.

Poet

I'm no lawyer, but it strikes me as complicit to ignore crimes.

I say it's about damn time! Go Leahy! I'm behind you. I don't believe this country will heal until that cesspool is dredged and cleaned out good.

Spectre learned how to cover things up when he was on the Warren Commission.

Establishing a Commission instead of doing it in Committtee is the traditional way of brushing such matters under the table while still earning brownie points with your constituents back home. No doubt this stirring speech at Georgetown University will make it into the annals of American history as one of the greatest during the last few hours, which is just about how long anybody's going to remember it, THE WHOLE OF THE POINT.

I should know, I've been listening to this two-faced hypocrit up here in Vermont since at least 1978. Leahy was "9/11"ing, invading and "warring on terror" with "the best" of them, including his boss Ted Kennedy. Just replay that ridiculous excuse for a debate in the Senate that ended up endorsing whatever "The President" decided to do, and handed over the entire treasury to let him do it.

What was it that Goebbels said about lies?

When people like Scott Horton advocate a multi-phase process BEGINNING with a fact-finding commission, he presumes that this approach is as valid and functional as a trial court or a special prosecutor. That is, advocates of a commission obviously are imagining a commission organized on principles of probity, integrity, and a dispassionate resolve to obtain and disclose the comprehensive truth of the matter-- the truth, the WHOLE truth, and nothing BUT the truth-- without fear or favor.

In your dreams! FWIW, here's a digest of my criticisms expressed at various blogs over the months:

____________________________________________________________

Is there a more worn-out and lame dodge to whitewash scandal, high crimes, and malfeasance than the “(truth) commission”?

Amerika has the equivalent of a Senior Tour for such burlesques; an elite bipartisan boatload of Esteemed Wise Persons deemed by their almost-peers (for they are themselves peerless) and the corporate media shills to have Impeccable Credentials and Sterling Reputations. They are venerated for being High-Minded and Highly-Principled; they are reputedly persons of Keen Insight and Unimpeachable Integrity.

Who would it be this time around? George Mitchell? John Danforth? Henry Kissinger? Madeleine Albright? Lee Hamilton? Warren Rudman? Sandra Day O’Connor, perhaps, even Robert Bork? James A. Baker? Bob Kerrey, maybe, moving up from the minors?

No doubt such charlatans will put on a good show, with appropriate Mega-hyped Earnest Media Coverage. And Amerika may rest easy once again.
____________________________________________________________

I don't want to hear any talk of "Truth Commissions" or investigations into criminal malfeasance by government and corporate officials strictly for therapeutic purposes, e.g. deciding that the highest achievable duty is fulfilled by rigorously investigating and exposing the maladministration's multifarious wrongdoings just so that We the People can gain insight that will potentially improve our collective behavior.

Please!

First of all, just think of the highly-polished bipartisan hacks and frauds that would be tapped for this farce... Jesus, don't get me started!

All of these half-assed substitutes for the perfectly functional, if demanding, laws and methods for adjudicating heinous wrongdoing are mere whitewashes and smokescreens. And in flinching from the difficult quest for justice, the evils-- more sensed than revealed in mock inquisitions-- are not in the least checked or reduced.

Sorry, no matter how illustrous and profound a White Paper or Truth Commission is made to seem by proponents and pundits, it's the equivalent of one of those automobile "kiddie seats" featuring a fake steering wheel and dashboard. Beep, beep!
____________________________________________________________

[T]he Blue-Ribbon Commission has become utterly discredited, beyond rehabilitation in contemporary Amerika.

Without elaborating upon the taxonomy of assumptions necessary to credit the operation and prospects of such a commission, merely consider that the infamous Warren Commission broke the mold. No one familiar with that enterprise can doubt or refute the appalling truth that no less than the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States-- back when the SCOTUS was respectable-- allowed the President and the Attorney General's office to twist his arm into lending his prestige and personal authority to a reprehensible sham.

One doesn't have to don the tinfoil chapeau to acknowledge that the commissioners and their staff were tacitly charged with building a record of testimony and evidence to conclusively establish that the president was assassinated by a Lone Nut.

I submit that the atrocious and abominable Warren Commission abolished a reasonable belief that a group of Eminent Amerikan Statesmen, Soldiers, Judges, and Government Officials can be relied upon and trusted to conduct a scrupulous and comprehensive investigation of a critical event or pattern of conduct and present, without fear or favor, the naked truth.

It is, or should be, a foregone conclusion that, on the contrary, such a fellowship of elite, socially conservative, worldly, and politic icons will follow the cues, explicit or subliminal, from the powers who charged them, and readily collude and prevaricate in the interest of rocking the ship of state as little as possible-- lest the body politic long confined to the steerage-class bowels of the ship become uncontrollably aroused, even mutinous.

· Yr Obd't Servant

theinitiate
I like this part,"there were lies told to the American people all the way through". We can't leave out the main and first thing that was done wrong,like the lie about going to war with Iraq in the first place. Like the downing st memo, the fake documents aabout Iraq buying uranium from Nigeria,all this needs the light of day shown on it. and yes, I only know the bits and pieces I've read here or from Democracy Now.
Of course, do we really think a commission will uncover AND expose all? Seriously? I'd like to be hopeful.

The TRUTH!! We can't handle the TRUTH!!

We should investigate the torture which was done against our laws in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere under the Bush administration.

The forcible rape of innocent women to break those who love them. Imagine the cruel physical rape of your girl friend or wife in front of you. You would be helpless to stop many men fucking her while she screams. They would beat her until she would pass out, then revive her to fuck her again in front of you. Objects like sticks would be forcefully shoved into her Virgina. Her blood would seep from her virgina, nose, month and ears. You would be broken to understand that you can do nothing to stop this cruelty.

The same would be done to young children by the forces of American controlled services. Children would be drowned until unconscious in front of fathers to break them. Their little fingers would be broken in doors slammed. Their childish sobs would echo in the mothers ears, as they were helpless to stop the torture of their children.

These are the practices for which the American justice system should bring the criminal leadership to account so that the Obama administration stops this practice which is happening right now.

If these criminals are not brought to justice, the rape of children and innocent women will continue under the Obama administration.

Can you image what is happening right now under the direction of the sadistic US military governments of Afghanistan and Iraq? If not you are blind because you are a coward.

Regarding : "If every administration started to reexamine what every prior administration did, there would be no end to it. This is not Latin America," the Judiciary committee's top-ranking Republican, Senator Arlen Specter, told reporters last month.

I think Senator Specter really is afraid an investigation into past wrongdoing will lead to his own role on the Warren Commission that whitewashed the assassination of John Kennedy, which was a seminal event that led to today's malaise. Specter was the guy who spoon fed the committee members.

Bring America Back !!!! This is a giant jog forward by Sen Leahy, for his Judiciary Committee has met with refusals for information from the Bush Cabal, from Abramoff documents to emails to the Attorney General appointment abuses. !

** It is well blogged below--especially by 'samosamo' that past investigative commissions have been whitewashes, coverups, complete frauds, so there are many pitfalls to avoid before one can come up with a truly independent minded staff and committee==for example, anyone who voted for the Iraq war in Congress or Senate should probably be totally prevented from serving on such a Bush Truth Commission since they voted for The Big Lie in the first place !!!! Anyone who had anything to do with the 9/11 Commission or its Report should be strictly forbidden from serving on any Truth Commission. The 911 Commission was a total cover up job and falsification.

**One main problem I have with Sen Leahy's verbal approach is his use of the term "post 9/11"-----inasmuch as Sept 11, 2001, was the crime of the century and greater than Pearl Harbor==all of the post 9/11 events, crimes, treason were but offshoots of That Infamous Day !!!

9/11 was and is the mother of all attacks, the be-all and end-all of each and every problem we have with Government and Society to this day. It is and should be the main focus of the Truth Commission Investigation with no holds barred. That is the only way we will ever prevent the same again in the future.
There has never been an independent investigation of the Events leading up to and happening on 9/11 !!! Using the vernacular "post-911" gives false credence to the Neocon Party Line that a cave dwelling boogieman and 19 of his airline pilot school flunkouts pulled off the technical genius that was 9/11.

****The real terrorists of 9/11 were occupying Building #7, World Trade Center, up to that day. Building 7 is the Smoking Gun as any Truth Movement member knows full well !!! Those are the true Experts which should serve on any Truth Commission Panel

****To ignore the intentional demolitioning of Building 7, and the Twin Towers on 9/11 is like Alice following the White Rabbit down the hole to Wonderland. That's what the so called 9/11 Commission did and that's why it's report is about as good as a Mad Hatter tea party !!

That's exactly what the Neocon's would have us do again and again !!!

Leahy has the right idea, but the new administration looks like it wants to keep the Bush-Cheney crimes secret:

Glenn Greenwald

Monday Feb. 9, 2009 15:32 EST
Obama fails his first test on civil liberties and accountability -- resoundingly and disgracefully

"Two weeks ago, I interviewed the ACLU's Ben Wizner, counsel to 5 individuals suing the subsidiary of Boeing (Jeppesen) which had arranged the Bush administration's rendition program, under which those 5 plaintiffs had been abducted, sent to other countries and brutally tortured. Today the Obama administration was required to file with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals its position in this case -- i.e., whether it would continue the Bush administration's abusive reliance on the "state secrets" privilege to prevent courts from ruling on such matters, or whether they would adhere to Obama's previous claims about his beliefs on "state secrets" by withdrawing that position and allowing these victims their day in court.

Yesterday, enthusiastic Obama supporter Andrew Sullivan wrote about this case: "Tomorrow in a federal court hearing in San Francisco, we'll find out if the Obama administration intends to keep the evidence as secret as the Bush administration did." As I wrote after interviewing Wizner two weeks ago: "This is the first real test of the authenticity of Obama's commitment to reverse the abuses of executive power over the last eight years." Today, the Obama administration failed that test -- resoundingly and disgracefully:

Obama Administration Maintains Bush Position on 'Extraordinary Rendition' Lawsuit

The Obama Administration today announced that it would keep the same position as the Bush Administration in the lawsuit Mohamed et al v Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc.

A source inside of the Ninth U.S. District Court tells ABC News that a representative of the Justice Department stood up to say that its position hasn't changed, that new administration stands behind arguments that previous administration made, with no ambiguity at all. The DOJ lawyer said the entire subject matter remains a state secret.

This is not going to please civil libertarians and human rights activists who had hoped the Obama administration would allow the lawsuit to proceed."

The people who get to keep on living their lives owe it to the people who do not.
The people who are tasked to send people into battle owe it to both those who have been sent and those who they will ask to go.

You don't ask people to kill and be killed because some candy-assed lawyers find words that quibbling, power-hungry politicians and profit-lusting pirates can pass before a complacent, undiscerning public.

The people who have the ability to see the difference and appreciate the principles of freedom, also have the responsibility to keep things clean---preferrably before, but even during or after the fact.

The perpetraitors knew exactly what they were doing, and knew they ran a risk of being called to task for it.

Those responsible must be locked up to contemplate their actions.
Stolen assets must be recovered and used to heal the gashes in our national heart.

THEN, we can go on making and doing things right.

I feel that it is the way to get the dirty deeds out in the open. I for sure would rather see a firing squad!

Not going to happen. If we don't recognize this PR strategy for the left liberals by now, we never will.

1) Dem Mute Morman Mummy leadership remains silent

2) get an old hand to make noises creating the illusion that ""progressives""" need to believe that the Dems are
different from the Republicans. Like Murtha on Iraq. NOTICE HOW SILENT HE IS NOW. HE EVEN SUPPORTED THE
SURGE!!

3) Dem Mute Morman Mummy leadership remains silent.

4) repeat while we stay at war for ten more years.

----
Please read JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, or people will remain thinking that the Presidents Chosen by Wolf Blitzer will change everything, and we-- as a species will devlove into quivering lime Jello, and not even cold quiverin

Why does Leahy look like his is smirking? I thought we did away with the sly wise guy smile when we got ride of Bush?

These leaders make me sick.

Time to "EX-LAX" all the bad deeds of the previous Admin.
Go, Leahy, Go!

Blaming George Bush and the Republicans goes just so far. ... What about the Democratic Party's ongoing criminal complicity in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan?

What about the Democratic Party's priority of corporate interests over democratic/progressive interests?

Democrats in Congress bitch and moan about how the Republicans *oppose* what they're trying to do. QUESTION: In what way did the Democratic Party OPPOSE what the Republicans did for 8 years? ... ANSWER: They didn't. Far from opposing the Republicans, they "enabled" them at every turn.

Oh dear! What will Air America, The Nation Magazine, CommonDreams.org, The Huffington Post and moveon.org complain about now?

George Bush meet George Bush Lite. Otherwise known as ABB ("Anybody But Bush").

For more on Barack "ABB" Obama, see the following -- http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/feb2009/obam-f10.shtml

Joel

The phony propaganda build up to the Iraq invasion and occupation was and is so obvious that it seems redundant to make it a matter an official government record. Yet it must be done for historical purposes if no other. Bush, Cheney and all the rest must be branded and humiliated for what they did to this country, not to mention Iraq. They should be turned over and to the World Court, but if I remember correctly they early on put up a road block to that.

I was a huge Bush supporter 8 years ago, and was on the fence 4 years ago. It is just downright disgusting what his regime has down to the US. They were only good at 2 things - covering up and helping out their buds. I really hope someone looks into their lies. I know nothing will become of it, but it is just so frustrating the shape they left the country in. Granted, it wasnt all Bush, but he did not to anything to help. I just really hope Obama can make some quick changes that get things back on track.
___________________
My acne prevention site.

willsayanything

What about the energy summit at the whitehouse, the one that was none of our business?