by Mark Silva
Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, holding out for a bipartisan commission investigation of the authorization of harsh interrogation tactics know widely known as "torture,'' says he knows people are saying it's "time to turn the page.''
"I want to read the page before we turn it,'' the Vermont Democrat said in an appearance on CBS News' Face the Nation this morning.
Acknowledging that neither Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid nor President Barack Obama shows much interest in a commission modeled after the 9/11 Commission to look into the interrogations of suspected terrorists authorized by the Bush Justice Department, Leahy says he still is talking with them.
He also suggested it's ironic that ex-Vice President Dick Cheney is calling for the release of memoranda which he claims show that the tactics were effective in keeping the nation safe. Cheney is the one, who when pressed for an accounting of all the material that he had classified as vice president, claimed he wasn't part of the executive branch.
Cheney stood apart from the three branches of government, Leahy said today - as if he were some sort of fourth branch - and he'd like to see Cheney testify about what he knew about all of this, under oath. Of course, it was Leahy whom Cheney once famously told what he could do with himself. (Then again, Cheney never had a cameo appearance in Dark Knight, like Leahy did.)
But no, Leahy said, for all the hearings that the Judiciary Committee already has conducted, he has no intention of subpoenaing Cheney to testify.
"He can go on the talk shows and do a post mortem thing,'' Leahy said of Cheney in the interview with Bob Schieffer of CBS News.
Comments
For the first time in my life I agree with Leahy...as a right wing conservative myself....I would like to have special hearings over the so called "torture" of terrorists who were determined to kill as many Americans as they possibly could..Why did they want to kill us? Simply because we are Americans!!! Democrats are now trying to run for cover like the little cockroaches that they are..and claim "we didn't know anything about it." Really Pelosi???..how about testifying in front of congress and the American people?? The American people are with Cheney on this one...at least the people who believe that protecting America is important!
Posted by: Joe | April 26, 2009 12:06 PM
Bush said in 2003 anyone involved in torture must be investigated and prosecuted.
Will culture of death club members still goose step to their idols edict?
Apparently not...the members who all screamed "America does not torture" now claiming what they didn't do worked but don't rendition us to the Hague in shackles want to elevate war criminals to higher office:
"Of course, everyone’s first choice for president in 2012 is Dick Cheney. But Liz Cheney’s boffo performance yesterday in the lefties’ den, MSNBC, defending sensible interrogation policies in the war on terror, surely puts her in contention for the runner-up position." William Kristol on April 24, 2009
http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2009/04/cheney_in_2012.asp
Posted by: Not in GOP-istan | April 26, 2009 5:10 PM
Obama made a serious error in judgment by releasing this information. That is the problem we are now dealing with.
Posted by: Big Bubba | April 26, 2009 8:42 PM
What Darth and the torture merchants were really after and never got--a link between Hussein and 9/11:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/opinion/26rich.html
Posted by: dt☢ | April 27, 2009 12:15 AM
leahylevin.txt
Dear Sirs,
During 2004, I grew increasingly incensed by the way that the supposed "liberation" of Iraq (which I supported in principle) was fast turning into a brutal occupation. The absurd US Viceroy, Kissinger Associates' former MD Paul Bremer, had dismissed the entire Iraqi Police Force, and the entire Iraqi military, leaving no "eyes and ears" on the ground in Iraq. The 'remedy' to this self-created problem turned out to be massive arrests of entirely innocent people, who were "turned" into active informants ('snitches') by being shown CD Slide-shows on laptops, displaying scenes of torture and degradation and abuse by the thousands... These scenes were for the most part 'staged' so as to terrify those watching them. This was done systematically, in conformance with careful analyses of the deepest fears and aversions of of Arabs and Moslems.
Ordinarily, this should have been impossible, because -- under US Military Law -- ALL interrogations must be supervised by two Judge Advocate General officers (the US Military Justice Corps). These supervisions were ordered stood down (by who is still unclear). Whoever ordered those stand-downs can have had only one purpose -- to evade the JAG conrols on detainee abuses.
JAG officers are now under standing orders to discuss this situation with no-one.
They are VERY unhappy about this state of affairs....
The US War Crimes Act [1996] enacts into US Federal Statute Law ALL the protections described by the Geneva Conventions.
In an attempt to circumvent the United States Constitution, and to provide "Get Out Of Jail Free" cards to high US Officials (not lowly and expendable soldiers and CIA operatives), John Ashcroft's US Department of Justice faked "opinions" asserting that torture and murder of detainees was "lawful."
This contention cannot possibly survive the US Supreme Court, of course (unless the US Supreme Court was first 'packed' with servile and compliant Justices. The Constitutional and moral and legal Bright Lines are so clearly drawn that they would dazzle the sight of anyone trying to overlook them...
I contacted fifteen FBI Offices so as to file formal statements drawing the FBI's attention to this appalling malpractice amounting as it does to treason to the Constitution. The reactions of the FBI Officers and Agents I spoke with ranged from furious outbursts, assertions that that "America is up to its armpits in terrorism" (truer, perhaps, than the furious outbursters might want to know) to miserable, lamentable apologies that the internal integrity of the FBI to uphold the Laws and the Constitution of the United States had been destroyed, and any attempts to address the problems were "pointless."
Eventually, one brave FBI Officer at the Washington, DC Field Office took the statement, which was confirmed in writing afterwards. This statement showed that John Ashcroft and his officials were in clear violation of the US War Crimes Act [1996]. I copied the statement to Mrs. Laura Bush at the White House. Ashcroft was the only senior Cabinet Officer dropped from President Bush's Second term.
Mrs. Laura Bush is an intelligent, feisty and principled woman, and I admire her immensely.
President George W. Bush was in a precarious situation after the "Palace Coup" which took place under the guise of the Official Conspiracy Theory that "19 Moslem Hijackers" had destroyed the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon, where over 160 US military staff were murdered, Over three thousand people were murdered in New York on "9/11", and all the murder investigations are still open. There will be many thousands more deaths from the toxic residues that swept the city.
Clearly, the Coup planners desperately needed tidily packaged "confessions" from Arab and Moslem individuals who could not possibly have been guilty of the Coup d'Etat plotters' evildoing.
Mr. Michael Heimbach of the FBI's Counter-Terrorism Staff recently publicly thanked Mr. Richard Gage, an Architect with architects and engineers for 9/11 Truth, a highly reputable organization of professionals, and his assistants, for meticulously documenting evidence showing that the WTC skyscrapers were in fact destroyed by massive sequenced detonations of explosives, rather than the relatively minor fires which have never in history brought down steel-framed skyscrapers, let alone three in one day...
Pilots for 9/11 Truth, which includes amongst its eminent members Jeff Latas, former President of the United States Air Force Accident Investigation Department, has meticulously documented the glaring deficiencies of the Official Conspiracy Theory, which is now lying on its back like Kafka's beetle, feebly waving its legs in the air. They have also meticulously analyzed and documented the actual fate of the jetliners and their hapless passengers and crew on that fateful day.
I strongly recommend that your readers study Alexander Solzhenitsyn's prescient Nobel Prize Speech, "One Word of Truth..." http://www.STARGATE.uk.net/nobel.txt
They will then be much better equipped to dare to use their own intelligence (rather than being deceived by official lies and the mendacity of some partisan "journalists", who should have known better their duty to the truth).
"One Word of Truth Can Change The Whole World."
Ad it will. Just watch...
Yours Sincerely,
Tony Hollick
www.STARGATE.uk.net/agora/
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"The Secret of Happiness is Freedom; and the Secret of Freedom is Courage."
-- Thucydides, Classical Greek philosopher and General, 2,500 years ago
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Posted by: Tony Hollick | April 27, 2009 4:34 AM
Smarmy chickenhawk Cheney is running around squealing like a stuffed pig. The man is a miserable unpatriotic coward. He's the one running for cover.
Posted by: Doug R. | April 27, 2009 8:16 AM