by Frank James
Sen. Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today called for a "truth and reconciliation commission" approach to uncovering alleged wrongdoing by the Bush Administration against targets of its war on terror.
An excerpt from an Associated Press report:
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is proposing a "truth commission" to investigate abuses of detainees, politically inspired moves at the Justice Department, and other decisions made during the Bush administration.
Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said the primary goal of the commission would be to learn the truth rather than prosecute former officials, but said the inquiry should reach far beyond looking for misdeeds at the Justice Department under Bush to include matters of Iraq prewar intelligence and the Defense Department.
Leahy outlined his suggestion for a "truth and reconciliation" commission during a speech at Georgetown University Monday.
"I'm doing this not to humiliate people or punish people but to get the truth out," he said.
The panel he envisions would be modeled after one that investigated the apartheid regime in South Africa. It would have subpoena power but would not bring criminal charges, he said.
Leahy's idea, even if it had enough support to be put into action, which it doesn't, seems like the wrong model especially if he's basing it on what happened in South Africa.
In South Africa, there was consensus that apartheid was an evil system with countless innocent victims, mostly but not all black. The commission was a way to get at their stories so that they would feel that their anguish wasn't being swept aside amid the joy that was unleashed by the coming to power of Nelson Mandela.
But while it was mostly blacks who told of abuses suffered at the hands of blacks, members of black ethnic groups told of abuses at the hands of other black ethnic groups and there were even white who told of abuses committed by blacks in the African National Congress, Mandela's party, when it was operating as an insurgent group.
Perpetrators asked for amnesty and there were moments when the abuser and the victim did reconcile.
The success of the South African model was that it didn't come across as a vehicle for the victors, the ANC, to beat up the losers, the National Party, the long-time white ruling party until the end of apartheid.
But it's hard to imagine such a commission succeeding in Washington's hyperpartisan atmosphere.
Also, it's difficult to envision members of the former administration, Vice President Dick Cheney, let's say, or U.S. intelligence officers making public confessions, then requesting amnesty.
It's equally difficult to imagine many of the detainees wanting to be reconciled to their keepers and interrogators.
So this is an idea whose time will never come.
Comments
Leahy is absolutely correct about the need for a Truth Commission.
With a broad jurisdiction.
Including all the $$$ disappeared in Iraq, abuses of contractors.
Of course the misdeeds at the Dept of Justice.
Including launching investigations of private citizens who might have sent a letter critical of Ashcroft.
Many abuses to be investigated.
Posted by: ornery | February 9, 2009 9:12 PM
Sen. Leahy's got it right.
Now there's change we can believe in Inky.
Posted by: Flo | February 9, 2009 9:46 PM
Certainly there had to have been abuses. Sen. Leahy was out there unfailingly protecting the rights of terrorists everywhere, as afforded them and quite clearly delineated in the Constitution. Somebody's surely guilty of something. Surely.
Posted by: Django - N Exile In/Around the 30th Parallel | February 9, 2009 10:38 PM
Django, you sound a little guilty yourself! Stop toruturing those latinas.
Posted by: Flo | February 9, 2009 11:18 PM
Yep, that's certainly what all of those moderates voted for -- a partisan, McCarthy-style witch hunt, only instead of hunting for "commies" we're hunting for "neo-cons." Go ahead and do it, then just try to run on "hope" again.
Posted by: JB | February 9, 2009 11:59 PM
Bush and his cronies did more harm to the US than all of the terrorist attacks on us combined. They are responsible for the deaths of more of our soldiers in Iraq than there were victims of 911. They are responsible for the deaths of potentially hundreds of thousands Iraqi men, women and children. They are responsible for countless maiming of civilians in Iraq. Is there any question about the need to hold them accountable to avoid this in a future Republican administration?
Posted by: Jim Dandy | February 10, 2009 12:29 AM
Yes! From the implosion of the World Trade Centerto the 'Patriot Act Bill or "the Anti-Constitution'
to the lies about WMDs
to the 'disappeared',
to the harassment of academics
to the harassment of ALL PEOPLE
to the warrantless spying of the new FISA
to the offshoring of our economy
INVESTIGATE INVESTIGATE
INVESTIGATE
BUT START OVER ON THE SENATE COMPROMISE WITH REPUGS THAT RUINED THE STIMULUS!
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/125844/
Posted by: OUT OF THE OIL WAR--BEST STIMULUS YET | February 10, 2009 7:06 AM
Yes! From the implosion of the World Trade Centerto the 'Patriot Act Bill or "the Anti-Constitution'
to the lies about WMDs
to the 'disappeared',
to the harassment of academics
to the harassment of ALL PEOPLE
to the warrantless spying of the new FISA
to the offshoring of our economy
INVESTIGATE INVESTIGATE
INVESTIGATE
BUT START OVER ON THE SENATE COMPROMISE WITH REPUGS THAT RUINED THE STIMULUS!
http://www.alternet.org/workplace/125844/
Posted by: OUT OF THE OIL WAR--BEST STIMULUS YET | February 10, 2009 7:09 AM
By Eliot Bernstein (not verified) on 02/10/09 6:35 am Jus Cogens - Laws that cannot be broken even by Presidents, like slavery, torture, etc. Nobody is above laws. Hitler could have claimed he and Nazi criminals should not have been tried as they too were above law or following orders. These clowns all need to be tried, not just Bush, Cheney, Rummy, etc. but everyone in the House and Senate, Repub and Dem that supported torture, false wars and the ruining of America. Then a nice RICO for the financial crimes they are committing and take back the stolen american assets. Time for a Pitchfork Revolution to this CFR and Skull and Bones group of pirates and criminals. The USA will remain Nazi America until such time that we cleanse the stain through trials with prosecution no matter who is involved, NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW, there is no BUT as Obama would have it, there is no future for our children without it.
So far, it seems more of the same from our new administration, little more than lip service about investigations and NO CHANGE. America you have been fooled again, welcome to the New Workd Order of the Elite where your children will be living in an induced depression while these spoiled ivy league guppies live high off the hog. When floods come, they will let you float to the ceilings and then ship you off with one way tickets perhaps to Gitmoschwitz. They have seized our government, remember what the constitution demands we the PEOPLE do when our government corrupts. We need to start marching on washington with our forks and demanding answers from our politicians. We must demand that they belong to no cults http://www.iviewit.tv/senatecultbill.htm or we are dooomed.
Eliot Bernstein
Iviewit
Founder and Inventor
www.iviewit.tv
iviewit@iviewit.tv
Posted by: Eliot Bernstein | February 10, 2009 7:11 AM
One of the big mistakes of the Ford presidency was that he pardoned Nixon automatically for anything Nixon might have done. I'm not saying Ford had any kind of "deal" in place to do that; he said at the time it would be better for the country if we just forgot about the whole thing and went past it.
.
He was wrong.
.
Presidents since Nixon have used what Nixon did to consolidate power for the office -- little by little, usually, and most often unnoticeably -- but the result was Bush. This cannot be allowed to happen again. For that reason, we need to have investigations, and the investigations need to have repercussions for those responsible.
Posted by: Op109 | February 10, 2009 7:23 AM
I used to think that this would only harm America. After seeing how the right has decided to do nothing but fight those evil liberals tooth and nail........I say let the trials begin. It is no longer a matter of America, it is only about the party.
Posted by: bill r. | February 10, 2009 7:44 AM
Don't stop with Bush, go back to the Clinton years.
Let's be fair. The Clintons are dirty.
Posted by: John | February 10, 2009 8:16 AM
Sic 'em Pat.
Posted by: Kenny Bunkport ☯ | February 10, 2009 10:00 AM
Don't stop with Bush, go back to the Clinton years.
Let's be fair. The Clintons are dirty.
Posted by: John | February 10, 2009 8:16 AM
While I'm not disagreeing with you that the Clinton adminstration contributed to the kind of Presidency we need to stop (one example that springs to mind was Clinton's attempts to obliterate the Right to Privacy and the need for Search Warrants with his Omnibus Terrorism Act, which -- AS LONG AS IT WAS NOT A REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT -- the Republicans fought tooth and nail as an intolerable intrusion on civil liberties), your comment brings up a couple points:
.
1: You HAD your shot when you went after Clinton repeatedly while he was in office. If you think another feeding frenzy on top of the ones that went on all during his office would help, terrific. Do it.
2: For whatever's left in terms of Statutes of Limitations for civil or criminal indictments, HAVE AT.
Posted by: Op109 | February 10, 2009 11:54 AM
Django, you sound a little guilty yourself! Stop toruturing those latinas.
Posted by: Flo | February 9, 2009 11:18 PM
----------------------
Flo,
Hola. Flo, you surely have to know that I would not do that in a thousand million years. My Latina obsession is tempered by my guitarra obsession. Wonderful relationship kind of things just flow when they are breaking down the novellas and I am softly fingerpicking through a song or two or twenty on my Martin HD-28. It sends the message that we can be spiritually connected and we can still be free, within the same space and time, the all-important 5th and 4th dimension of physics respectively (I think). Not only that, but when the Liberals come to get the Latinas for their Global Warming atrocities, I shall be the one to make the supreme, the ultimo sacrifice.
Flo, U need to, and should, write a book. I have some ideas for your book.
Regards.
Posted by: Django - N Exile somewhere in/around the 30th Parallel | February 10, 2009 12:05 PM
If there's an investigation, the first person that should be investigated is "Leaky" Leahy, who should have been jailed years ago.
After that, investigate how Obama's Treasury Secretary cheated on his taxes. Then investigate how Dem Senator Chris Dodd received a sweetheart mortgage deal from a government insider. Then investigate Dem Congressman Charlie Rangel, veteran tax evader and all-around crook. Then .....
Posted by: Inconvenient Truth | February 10, 2009 4:18 PM
Inconvenient Truth,
No Less Than ' Dead Solid Perfect'.
Posted by: Django - N Exile somewhere in/around the 30th Parallel | February 10, 2009 5:19 PM
Bush should not get immunity. He and Cheney (and others complicit in crimes) should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. In the US and in The Hague. Bush and the republicans are looking more and more like the Taliban - now we are facing terrorism from within the country through the republican party (remember the comment that the repubs should emulate the "insurgency" of the Taliban and study their techniques". These people are NUTS and don't seem to care that teh country is going to hell as we're talking about this. Maybe prosecuting Bush & his co-defendants will sober them up from their 8 year bath in excess and insanity.
Posted by: Janet Greene | February 13, 2009 12:47 PM