Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
What if Instead of the Nuremberg Trials There Was Only a Truth Commission?
Representatives John Conyers and Jerrold Nadler are officially asking Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint an independent Special Prosecutor "to investigate and, where appropriate, prosecute" participants in the Bush-era US torture system. "A Special Counsel is the most appropriate way to handle this matter," Nadler said. "It would remove from the process any question that the investigation was subject to political pressure, and it would preempt any perceptions of conflict of interest within the Justice Department, which produced the torture memos." But, as Politico reports, "Holder is likely to reject that request - his boss, the president, has indicated he doesn't see the need for such a prosecutor." The Democratic Leadership, particularly Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Diane Feinstein have pushed for secret, closed-door hearings in the Senate Intelligence Committee. Other Democrats, like Patrick Leahy, advocate establishing a Truth Commission, though that is not gaining any momentum. The fact remains that some powerful Democrats knew that the torture was happening and didn't make a public peep in opposition.
This week, Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell came out in favor of prosecutions of "the decision-makers and their closest advisors (particularly the ones among the latter who may, on their own, have twisted the dagger a little deeper in Caesar's prostrate body - Rumsfeld and Feith for instance). Appoint a special prosecutor such as Fitzgerald, armed to the teeth, and give him or her carte blanche. Play the treatment of any intermediaries - that is, between the grunts on the ground and the Oval - as the law allows and the results demand."
Wilkerson, though, understands Washington. "Is there the political will to carry either of these recommendations to meaningful consequences?" he wrote to the Huffington Post. "No, and there won't be."
As of now, Conyers and Nadler aren't exactly looking for over-flow space for their meetings on how to get criminal prosecutions going.
Officially joining the anti-accountability camp this week was The Washington Post's David Broder who wrote this gem in defense of the Bush administration: "The memos on torture represented a deliberate, and internally well-debated, policy decision, made in the proper places - the White House, the intelligence agencies and the Justice Department - by the proper officials." (For a great response to this, check out Scott Horton). Broder is urging Obama to "stick to his guns" in standing up to pressure "to change his mind about closing the books on the ‘torture' policies of the past." Don't you love how Broder puts torture in quotes? I really wonder how Broder would describe it if he was waterboarded (and survived). Can't you just imagine him making the little quote motion with his hands? Broder's Washington Post column was titled "Stop Scapegoating: Obama Should Stand Against Prosecutions:"
[Obama was] right to declare that there should be no prosecution of those who carried out what had been the policy of the United States government. And he was right when he sent out his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, to declare that the same amnesty should apply to the lawyers and bureaucrats who devised and justified the Bush administration practices.But now Obama is being lobbied by politicians and voters who want something more - the humiliation and/or punishment of those responsible for the policies of the past. They are looking for individual scalps - or, at least, careers and reputations.
Their argument is that without identifying and punishing the perpetrators, there can be no accountability - and therefore no deterrent lesson for future administrations. It is a plausible-sounding rationale, but it cloaks an unworthy desire for vengeance.
Obama has opposed even the blandest form of investigation, a so-called truth commission, and has shown himself willing to confront this kind of populist anger.
Thank goodness we have a president who opposes "even the blandest form of investigation"-how uncouth such savagery would prove to be. While the elite Washington press corp works hard to make sure things don't get too uncomfortable at the wine and cheese cocktail parties, some liberal journalists are also making the case against a special prosecutor (or at least the immediate appointment of one). Last week it was Elizabeth de la Vega, who made an interesting case for waiting to prosecute while evidence is gathered:
We must have a prosecution eventually, but we are not legally required to publicly initiate it now and we should not, as justifiable as it is. I'm not concerned about political fallout. What's good or bad for either party has no legitimate place in this calculus. My sole consideration is litigation strategy: I want us to succeed.
This week it is Mother Jones Washington editor David Corn, who comes out in favor of a congressional investigation "that placed a premium on public disclosure" or "an independent commission." Corn describes how he recently warned a Congressmember who supports the appointment of a Special Prosecutor, "That's not necessarily a good idea." Corn talks about how a coalition of groups from the Center for Constitutional Rights and the ACLU to Democrats.com and MoveOn.org have all petitioned for a prosecutor:
These liberals all want to see alleged Bush administration wrongdoing exposed. But there's one problem with a special prosecutor: it's not his job to expose wrongdoing. A special prosecutor does dig up facts-but only in order to prosecute a possible crime. His mission is not to shine light on misdeeds, unless it is part of a prosecution. In many cases, a prosecutor's investigation does not produce any prosecutions. Sometimes, it leads only to a limited prosecution.That's what happened with Patrick Fitzgerald. He could not share with the public all that he had discovered about the involvement of Bush, Cheney, Karl Rove, and other officials in the CIA leak case... A special prosecutor, it turns out, is a rather imperfect vehicle for revealing the full truth.
[...]
Prosecuting government officials for providing legal opinions that greenlighted waterboarding and the like would pose its own legal challenges. Could a government prosecutor indict the government lawyers who composed and signed the torture memos for aiding and abetting torture without indicting the government employees who actually committed the torture? (President Barack Obama has pledged that the interrogators will not be pursued.) And could a prosecutor win cases in which his targets would obviously argue that they were providing what they believed was good-faith legal advice, even if it turned out that their advice was wrong?... Several lawyers I've consulted have said that a criminal case against the authors of these memos would be no slam dunk. One possible scenario is that a special prosecutor would investigate, find out that sordid maneuvering occurred at the highest levels of the Bush-Cheney administration, and then conclude that he or she did not have a strong enough legal case to warrant criminal indictments and trials.
The bottom line: Anyone who wants the full truth to come out about the Bush-Cheney administration's use of these interrogation practices cannot count on a special prosecutor.
Corn's advice to that unnamed Democratic Congressmember wasn't exactly well received by lawyers who have been pushing for prosecutions. Perhaps the most passionate advocate for the appointment of an independent Special Prosecutor right now is Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.
"To argue that we should not have prosecutions because it won't bring out all the facts when taken to its logical conclusion would mean never prosecuting any official no matter the seriousness of the crimes," Ratner told me. "Right now is not the time to be backing off on prosecutions. Why are prosecutions of torturers ok for other non-western countries but not for the US? Prosecution is necessary to deter torture in the future and send a message to ourselves and the rest of the world that the seven or eight year torture program was unlawful and must not happen again. The purpose of prosecutions is to investigate and get convictions so that officials in the future will not again dispense with the prohibition on torture."
Constitutional Law expert Scott Horton says that the problems with a Special Prosecutor Corn lays out are "correct, but he makes the latent assumption that it's either/or. That's absurd. Obviously it should be both a commission and one or more prosecutors as crimes are identified."
Jameel Jaffer, one of the leading ACLU attorneys responsible for getting the torture memos released by the Obama administration, agrees with Horton. "I don't think we should have to choose between a criminal investigation and a congressional inquiry," Jaffer told me. "A congressional committee could examine the roots of the torture program and recommend legislative reform to prevent gross human rights abuses by future administrations. At the same time, a Justice Department investigation could investigate issues of criminal responsibility. One shouldn't foreclose the other."
Jaffer adds, "It might be a different story if we thought that Congress would need to offer immunity in exchange for testimony. But many of the key players - including John Yoo, George Tenet, and Dick Cheney - have made clear that they have no qualms about talking publicly about their actions (Yoo and Tenet have both written books, and Cheney is writing one now)."
The bottom line, Ratner argues, is that "prosecutions will bring out facts." He cites the example of the Nuremberg Tribunals:
What if we had had a truth commission and no prosecutions? Right now we have many means of getting the facts: FOIA, congressional investigations such as the Senate Armed Services Report, former interrogators, document releases by the Executive. There are plenty of ways to get information even if it does not all come out in prosecutions. Many of the calls to not prosecute are by those, particularly inside the beltway, who cannot imagine Bush, Cheney et al. in the dock or by those who accept the argument that the torture conspirators were trying their best. This is not a time to hold back on the demand that is required by law and fact: appoint a special prosecutor.
David Swanson, who for years has pushed for prosecutions of Bush administration officials, was one of the organizers of the petitions calling for the appointment of a Special Prosecutor. "My top priority is not ‘truth,'" he said. "My top priority is changing the current truth, which is that we don't have the nerve and decency to enforce our laws against powerful people."
- Posted in
48 Comments so far
Show AllI am with Swanson, Jaffer, and Ratner.
It may come as a shock to some but O is not the "Decider" either; we are supposedly a nation of laws and O is Bush if we let O's whims overide statute.
THis is a fulcrum moment do we embrace dictatorship openly and not prosecute the top at the least or do we turn back towards democracy.
The people who wish to not prosecute are the "Good Germans"
Glenn - your 'fulcrum moment' analogy is so very accurate. If not now, when? Later, I fear, will be never.
The world's most corrupt government is not going to subject itself to a Nuremberg trial. The trial would show how complicit many Democrats were in the Dubya Regime's crimes.
Now there is a truth!
We need a "lies' commission.
We would be an insane and evil country not to demand trials and prosecution. Whoops!..................... I just lost my case.
"Representatives John Conyers and Jerrold Nadler are officially asking Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint an independent Special Prosecutor "to investigate and, where appropriate, prosecute" participants in the Bush-era US torture system."
This is rich. As Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Conyers could have, at any time after 2006, initiated impeachment proceedings against Bush. But after saying he would (in the run up to the election), once he could actually DO something about it, he declined (actually, he reneged).
Has Conyers been double dating with Kate Michelman (http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/04/10)?
--
Eric Patton
Cincinnati, OH
ebpatton@yahoo.com
The idea of prosecuting those who made the decision to have our heroes waterboard, perforate the anus of innocent Muslims and rape their young boys and girls to show the "savages" what we are made of is, frankly, a quaint idea.
Everyone in DC is doing what they believe will get them reelected...there are no principles involved here. Almost ALL Washington players answer to a higher power: ZIONISTS, because zionists control the media, thus have the key to EVERYONE'S reelection...WITHOUT EXCEPTION.
STOP MEDIA CONTROL!
www.meetyourworld.com
RedTide: thanks, your writing is lucid.
There is a remarkable parallelism between the Pilgrims leaving Holland for the New World via England and the Zionists of the 19th Century. The Pilgrims feared and not without reason that their children would want to live like Dutch children and would eventually begin to turn their backs on Pilgrimism. Circle the wagons!
Theodore Herzl, the founder of Zionism, feared that the next generation of European Jews would assimilate to such an extent that Judaism would die. He noticed the obvious namely that Marxism had a much stronger appeal on young Jews than the Torah. Apparently it was much more interesting, exciting, and fun to argue the tenets of Marxism than those of the Torah. Circle the wagons!
The early Zionists who trekked to Palestine were, on the whole, a very idealistic bunch. Most of them, in fact were socialists or communists who pooh-poohed the Torah. The Jews who had already been living for centuries in Palestine detested and feared the newcomers. Palestine would be a non-divided multi-ethnic, multi-religious land today with much fewer Jews living there if it had not been for three groups of criminals: the Russian Pogromists, the West-European Nazis and the aqually onerous Jewish "Haganah/Irgun/Stern Gang". The first two generated the mountainous, perhaps sickly paranoia among Jews, the last terrorized the Jewish idealists into silence already in the 1920's and 1930's. For example the Haganah ordered Mr. Avraham Tehomi (born in Russia!)to kill Jacob Israel de Haan a Dutch poet because de Haan had had the audacity to defend Palestinians in British courts against Zionist claims. De Haan was murdered on a street in Jerusalem. "Haganah/Irgun/Stern" and other Jewish terrorist groups were liberally funded from the Western World and not only by Zionists!
There are still some idealistic Zionist Jews in Israel. One of them who lives in Kibbutz Yakum was hiding in our apartment in Holland during WW2 and survived. Many Israelis consider him to be a traitor to Israel. Elevating all Zionists to criminals as is now done by numerous commentators in our country will drive him totally underground.
It should also be understood that the Russian Jews which emigrated to Israel are definitely among the vilest anti-Palestinians. Such super-intolerant Israelis are the nurturing ground for the Israeli spying in our country and the murder of Izak Rabin.
Although the original idealism of the Zionist settlers in Palestine is almost gone (there are today only very few kibbutzes that still operate on the communal principle and make their living primarily from agriculture)the state of Israel has brainwashed most American citizens into believing that the country is still peopled by died-in-the-wool idealists that "make the desert bloom" and must stand guard against the Arabs who intend to kill as many Jews as possible to retake the land of their ancestors. That and the fact that Jesus was an Old-Testamentary Jewish rabbi before his followers massaged him into "Christ" is the reason why most Americans are sympathetic to Israel and Zionism. Israel and not the West Bank is the real "Holy Land" for them.
The only way to combat nefarious Zionism in the USA is to report over and over and over again on all aspects of what Israel really is: a modern capitalist state driven by an advanced welfare-warfare system, governed by politicians who do not hesitate one nano-second to commit war crimes, and a social organization which President Carter has correctly identified as "apartheid". I consider Israel to be "the Prussia of the Near East". Actually there are some Israeli writers who know what ails Israel and report on the sick state of their country.
Nefarious Zionism in the USA cannot be neutralized by vile, insulting, puerile language and expressions such as used by nycdread.
The Pilgrims were a radical group of Puritans who practiced Puritanism not Pilgrimism. Interesting parallels you make though.
Bravo. The Israeli tail would have to wag pretty hard to move this dog.
Let's just call nycdread's statement what it is: old-fashioned bigotry. Don't dress it up by pretending to speak for victims.
OK
Thomas, you got this old lefty laughing pretty good ! Got to clean the screen.
peas in?
To nycdread;Without exception bro? With respect I would ask, have you let the Zionists in on this yet?Yes it is bleak but give peace and hope a chance.Maybe there will be some change we can use jingleing in some " proles "pockets soon.AIPAC is just a very big lobby in a huge group of very big lobbies.We need a publicly financed electoral system.Anything less and democracy is a joke.Every elected official now spends on the average 1 day a week dialing for dollars. peace
The closing statement of this article by David Swanson hits the nail right on the head. This whole thing might be hilarious if it were not so tragic and embarrassing. A country that claims to be a democracy is actually debating whether or not to prosecute one of the most criminal administrations in the history of the United States. To attempt to organize a 'truth' commission without the power to prosecute is simply beyond absurd. All this must lead people to wonder what it is that the Obama administration is so terrified of. As Jeremy Scahill points out, it could very well be that the Democrats knew that torture was going on but refused to speak out in protest against this heinous practice.
Former Green Beret Donald Duncan observes in the powerful documentary Sir! No Sir! how American advisers stood by and watched in the mid 1960s, sanctioning what the ARVN were doing, as they tortured their North Vietnamese prisoners during the Vietnam war. But Duncan said that what was worse was the cynicism used by the Americans to justify what the South Vietnamese were doing to their captors. i.e. that the ends [allegedly] justified the means, which is what led him to shortly come out against the war.
There should be much cynicism today regarding the belief that Americans are governed by two parties that seem to care not a whit for the fact that democracy, or what passes for democracy today in this country, is being erased, not with a bang, but with a whimper.
We the people must demand and continue to demand that the law be upheld and that all violators be brought to JUSTICE! Perhaps a movement could be started that lets our representatives know that any of them that opposes investigations and prosecutions of these criminals will be unceremoniously voted out of office!!!
That would be a logical, audacious first step. Second step - find qualified, intelligent, moral people to run in the primaries and make sure they have a groundswell of support.
Nine out of ten well-meaning beings, once elected, will be corrupted or ousted from THE SYSTEM. We need a new government, not new citizens to feed the cesspool. In it's current form, it's just too powerful and criminalized.
Very true: Like I have said for many,many years: The U.S.Government is nothing but a crime family and even if one is honest, it will corrupt you, because you cannot fight the whole family and remain in Congress.
Now this is more like it. Naomi Wolf, please take note.
Aloha, salud, lechiem,
- Tobias
http://www.youtube.com/user/tobiasaurusrex
It is much easier to organize people to demonstrate against the present administration for trying to help them get jobs and keep their homes than to take to the streets to demand prosecution of the terror and torture crowd. Of course, Fox news, Limbaugh, etc have quite a little to do with this attitude.
We really cannot expect the U.S., founded on genocide and slavery and party to right-wing, murderous, torturous policies since 1789 to reverse course. Better that United Statesian accept that the U.S. is a brutal, nasty power, as was every empire in the past.
eraced as needless comment
I support prosecutions but let's not forget that Bush and Cheney were not really at the top of the food chain. Bush was, more or less, just a higher-paid version of Lynddie England who was trying to please his superiors, including Cheney. And though Cheney may have been the de facto top government official, he was just trying to please his betters in the energy industry, certain services industries, and the MIC. If public pressure becomes too great to bear, the corporatist oligarchs will throw some or all of the Bush-Cheney fiends under the bus (with the necessary phone calls to their connections in the corporate media and in the government), making such reckless lawlessness as that the fiends participated in a little less likely in the future, but not closing off other avenues for continued predations by the oligarchs. What is critical for the oligarchs is that the little people continue to believe that the system works.
"Thank goodness we have a president who opposes "even the blandest form of investigation"-how uncouth such savagery would prove to be."
Take on the Israel Lobby Jeremy.
"We must have a prosecution eventually, but we are not legally required to publicly initiate it now and we should not, as justifiable as it is. I'm not concerned about political fallout. What's good or bad for either party has no legitimate place in this calculus. My sole consideration is litigation strategy: I want us to succeed."
Obviously it should be both a commission and one or more prosecutors as crimes are identified."
Special Prosecutor, commission, criminal investigation, congressional inquiry, DO IT ALL but don't let ANYONE off the hook.
One problem. Whenever a prosecutor from France, the UK or US aggused a German defendant of committing war crimes, the defendant simply pointed to the prosecutors from the USSR and said something like "So did they.".
CALL: Office of the Attorney General - 202-353-1555
OR WRITE:
U.S. Department of Justice
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001
We the People, Self-Evident
after Abu Ghraib
We are the instruments of torture
We are the whipping sting
We are the dogs of war
We are the hell they bring
We are the ones who know
We are the peasant kings
We are the instruments of torture
We are the instruments of torture
We are the final say
We knew what photos told
We saw the hooded fray
We are responsible
We turned and looked away
We are the instruments of torture
There seems to be a huge number of people of considerable influence deeply committed to protecting the Bush crime ring from ever meeting justice for any of their numerous offenses against the law and humanity. These people are as dogged as Cheney in keeping the whitewash fresh over the past 8 years, and they remain well-positioned in government and media to see their mission accomplished. Obama is perfectly comfortable with their lingering presence and the ubiquity of their arguments. He's on their side, and Holder will respond to his wishes.
Whether a special prosecutor is appointed or not is probably not especially relevant, since a Fitzgerald will be sent chasing phantoms for years by coalitions of Bush protectors and no meaningful prosecutions will be allowed to emerge from all the sturm und drang. The result will be plenty of sound and fury signifying not much.
It comes down to more than just protecting our right to torture whenever and whomever we please, with impunity. It's really about a concerted refusal to confess to the world that we're in any way guilty of anything and deserving of punishment, especially our brave and pure leaders. Justice for all Bush-Cheney's crimes will only come from without--European, Scandanavian, middle eastern, Latin American countries that assume responsibility because US agencies clearly will not. Horton, Ratner, Jaffer and Swanson are fighting the right battle, but it's like Iraq's Revolutionary Guard hoping to fend off the American invaders in 2003.
The only time I've seen the media bring up the Nuremberg Trials after the torture topic became really big was a guest's reference to it on Fox Business, in saying that Ken Lewis, CEO of Bank of America, couldn't claim he was just following Treasury's orders in not disclosing Merrill Lynch's losses to his shareholders. How lost is this country?
This shows how heavily weighted to the Right our political system is.
Imagine if a hypothetical Democratic Administration got caught committing war crimes. The prosecutions would start so fast your head would spin.
Oregoncharles
Democrats have been caught. Many of them knew this was happening. Probably most.
When are progressive going to get it. We live under one-party corporate rule! According to some dictionaries, that fascism. The true test is when we actually begin to seriously oppose them, in the streets, for example. A little taser titillation, anyone? Remember Kent State? This will be worse.
They protect each other's asses and move "forward" with the same agenda. Haven't you noticed?
Yes, some of us many years ago called exactly what you said, loudly and repeatedly. Hadn't you noticed?
My father in 1947, stated that if the Allies had lost the war, our leaders would have been the defendants at a Nuremberg-like trial.
He also stated that, sooner or later, the U.S. would regret having supported the Nuremberg trials results. Our leaders would eventually get caught at those activities we have condoned since the beginning of our country that we convicted
and executed Germans for committing.
There is no substitute for rule of law. BUT!!! That said, our ruling class(i.e. the rich, the powerful) will NEVER be prosecuted for their crimes against humanity. Thanks to our craven populace, justice will NEVER BE SERVED!!!!!!!
Obviously this is going to go by the wayside. Nothing is going to happen for practical political reassons. The best being stated by raydelcamino above pointing out the Democrats involvement in this and their responsibility for it too.
Our civilization won't end if this is not addressed and we won't become the barbarian state some envision as our past and future with their silly statements.
We are already the barbarian state - only barbarians kill, loot and rape.
Your superciliousness is really underwhelming!!!
I wish Obama would line them all up.
The Truth Commission would be a start though. I do note BO is gearing up to do an end run around the GOP to get his healthcare legislation passed. This will take all the support he can get. And he can't be under attack more than he already is in the media.
The health care legislation will be passed soon. I hope the Truth Commission moves forward. And the prosecutions. Obama....it's getting a little harder to advocate for ya buddy, help me out here...
Jeremy Scahill gives us a wonderful overview of the range of political and tactical approaches to prosecuting those who enabled and implemented the Bush/Cheney torture regime.
For some reason though, Jeremy skipped past what I consider perhaps the best, most definitive analysis of this historic moment. If you have not already done so, don't miss Mark Tanner's two-part series in the New York Review, April, 2009 - a magnificent piece of quality investigative journalism drawing upon the disclosures from the Red Cross Report on Guantanamo and the CIA black sites, with heavy citation to the top flight prior research of Jane Mayer, Ron Susskind, General Taguba, and others inside and outside government.
My personal bottom line in this big debate is that we should all try to both walk and chew gum at the same time. Some sort of big, bipartisan, Congressionally based investigative commission should be created to subpoena documents and witnesses, provide a forum for whistleblowers to step forward, and to grant immunity to reluctant or hostile witnesses. The purpose should not be theatrical or merely cathartic.
The main purpose should be to genuinely unearth into the light of day just how it came to be that secret legal memoes were secretly concocted behind closed doors, in a stove-piped DC beltway policy deliberation process calculated to keep honest professional critics out of the loop, resulting in torture as official US policy. The equally important, secondary purpose of such a Committee/Commission forum (as Mark Tanner so cogently urges) is to call Dick Cheney's bluff
Okay, big boy, show me the fourteen thwarted post 9/11 plots you and Little George supposedly averted - one at a time, detail by detail. Show me how waterboarding KSM 183 times and Zubaydah 137 times, produced information that helped save innocent American lives like you claim. Show me the fucking, super-classified CIA cover story catalogue of terrorist plots that would have happened if the Bushies hadn't tortured, so we can then compare the information actually gleaned from your torture techniques with how those terrorist plots (if they existed at all) were actually disrupted by CIA torture/interrogation rather than by the more conventional surveillance and law enforcement activities that were taking place at the same time. And when that's done, then let's also tally up the bum leads, wild goose chaces, fantasies, false confessions, false accusations, and disinformation that your torturers shoveled back into the homeland security counterterrorism matrix.
Here's your forum, Deadeye Dick. I dare you to prove to the American people in the light of day how torture really worked on your watch in the real world.
Parallel to the Commission-style inquiry, maybe a special prosecutor or two should be used to focus on specific aspects of torture - such as the criminal liability of the lawyer enablers as conspirators or aiders and abettors, or the liability of lower echelon CIA torturers who exceeded, rather than abided by, the shameful work product generated in the back rooms and bowels of the nation's highest legal research establishment by the likes of John Yoo, Jay Bybee, Haynes, Addington, Gonzales, et al. Frankly, I think it's pretty naive to believe that any human being named special prosecutor wouldn't be instantly villified as a partisan front if that person dared to do anything resembling a serious prosecutorial effort directed at top former Bush decision makers. There's history here. Remember Kenneth Starr?
So for my money, the big prosecutorial effort should come squarely from where the Constitution places this responsibility: on Attorney General Eric Holder, and the ordinary grand jury investigative /indictment/immunity granting process of the old fashioned federal criminal justice system. The point is to restore the rule of law, while proving that no public official stands above it. So simply do it.
President Obama should butt out, and Attorney General Holder should do his job.
From temporary neo-con exile, Dick Cheney is baiting Barack and double dog daring Eric Holder to indict him as the poster boy for harsh, enhanced interrogation tactics. I say give the sombitch is day in court.
I can't wait to see how a jury reacts to the defense that that the lawyers all acted in good faith, and everybody else was just relying upon their advice.
Bill from Saginaw
Hi Bill, great post, all true, Holder should do his job.
I wonder this though as well, some of those released from Gitmo can prove innocence of all things. Therefore they can't be kidnapped and have a subsequent false classification strip them of any rights a non-criminal non-american has.
These torture plots were devised on Federal Property by Federal Employees, the torture then carried out at Gitmo, Federal property. I think non-Americans have civil rights on US property.
Why cannot an innocent victim of the CIA/Federal Torturers sue Dick Cheney in Civil Court? Have some smart attorney sue him for a hundred million dollars.
If that is a dumb idea, pardon me. I called the USAF and asked them to bomb him but they said no.
Cordially, Joe from North San Juan
"Here's your forum, Deadeye Dick. I dare you to prove to the American people in the light of day how torture really worked on your watch in the real world."
False argument, Bill.
It is immaterial to the law whatever possible positive outcomes any acts of torture committed by the Bush admin. may have resulted in. Torture is ILLEGAL, period, and should be prosecuted. The "reasons for" or "results" cannot be mitigated by Darth Dickhead or anyone else.
THAT is what needs to be said, and ONLY that.
As always, excellent article Mr. Scahill. I’m totally in awe of American patriots with your kind of courage. You took on the bush cabal and their terrorist/defense contractors back when everyone else was lining up like the innocent citizens the Nazis slaughtered. Only thing the bush cabal was much more brutal and far less moral than the Nazis. I’m sure you must have received numerous death threats from those vile scum as I’m sure they continue today.
The key word that I clued in on the headline is truth commission. The bush administration never told the truth about anything. And because they own the MSM did not have to and were never asked to, so why should they be forced to tell the truth now.
Yes, we need to prosecute those that tortured and those that ordered the torture to take place. But when “We The People” supposedly twice elected the most incompetent, corrupt, foul, vile, leader ever to be elected in any democracy we own it to our posterity and to the world to prosecute the bush cabal for all their crimes. We also need to make sure the republicans can no longer rig the elections.
If the founding fathers were still alive bush and his administration would be shot as traders before they could be executed as war criminals.
If only more Americans were as fearless as you we would not be in this mess.
"To argue that we should not have prosecutions because it won't bring out all the facts when taken to its logical conclusion would mean never prosecuting any official no matter the seriousness of the crimes," Ratner told me.
Destroying Constitutional checks & balances and giving the executive branch freedom from prosecution is necessary for the corporate elite to establish a "world dictatorship".
Has anyone noticed how gun and ammunition sales have increased, not to mention the stock prices of these companies? Historically, political revolutions have occurred when populations realized that their governments were failing to meet the needs of the people while usurping their human and constitutional rights.
What does our future hold?
The title of the article is bad - if instead of the Nuremberg trials there had been a truth commission, we would have a much better idea of what went on in Nazi Germany. The Nuremberg trials were a travesty, but, don't take my word for it ....
"I think the Nuremberg trials are a black page in the history of the world...I discussed the legality of these trials with some of the lawyers and some of the judges who participated therein. They did not attempt to justify their action on any legal ground, but rested their position on the fact that in their opinion, the parties convicted were guilty...This action is contrary to the fundamental laws under which this country has lived for many hundreds of years, and I think cannot be justified by any line of reasoning. I think the Israeli trial of Adolf Eichmann is exactly in the same category as the Nuremberg trials. As a lawyer, it has always been my view that a crime must be defined before you can be guilty of committing it. That has not occurred in either of the trials I refer to herein."
Edgar N. Eisenhower, American Attorney, brother of President Dwight D.Eisenhower
If these acts are not prosecuted to the fullest. Some of the involved will be running for office in two to four years from now. I'm positive some will be appointed by future administrations (think Iran Contra, and they were convicted). I can just hear Rush blathering on about this or that great patriot. Then millions of misinformed listeners will run to the polls. The funny thing about Republican Democracy is that the people who need it the most understand it the least.
Bravo again to Ratner. We know crimes were committed, though we almost certainly do not know the half of it. We need trials to motivate people to speak, and we need trials to establish that a law against torture not only exists but must be complied with.