April 2008: BBC's Newsnight interviews US Judge Advocate Diane Beaver about the Bush administration's legallese cover-story for war crimes.

I truly loathe the notion of torturers and those who ordered torture getting away with it.

Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, called for the commission as way to heal what he called sharp political divides and to prevent future abuses.

He compared it to other truth commissions, such as one in South Africa that investigated the apartheid era.

"We need to come to a shared understanding of the failures of the recent past," Leahy said in a speech to the Georgetown University law school.

"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," Leahy said.

I'm unclear on how just saying "now we know" will stop any of it happening again. Trials and prison sentences would surely accomplish far more as a deterrent to possible future copycats - that's partly why we don't just slap the wrists of abusers or rapists and say "we know what you did!"

Leahy said he had not yet begun to promote the idea with the administration of President Barack Obama or with the Democratically controlled Congress. But he suggested it could be formed by both Congress and the White House, and said the panel must have credibility across the political spectrum.

Issues to investigate would include the Justice Department's firings of several U.S. attorneys, which Leahy said may have been motivated by a White House aim to influence elections, policies on the treatment of terrorism suspects and other areas "where (congressional) committees were lied to."

This included the war in Iraq, he said. "There were lies told to the American people all the way through."

Screw bipartisanship and "credibility across the political spectrum". When one party's senior leadership for eight years has deliberately broken international and US laws while their supporters make excuses for them, they should be treated as having given up any right to respect or to having a voice in how their crimes are handled. Unfortunately, the Democratic Party's leadership seems divided into two camps. One cannot shake off its fear of the GOP's noise machine and its fear of losing elections to do what is right. The other apparently has no intention of looking too hard into crimes they might want to commit themselves.

I firmly believe America can handle the truth - my experience as an ex-pat living here is that Americans are mainly good and just and I believe that if all the secrets are revealed in courts of law then Americans will be outraged and demand justice - but its political leadership either cannot or will not.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

John Podhoretz, son of the Godfather of the Neo-conservative movement Norman Podhoretz (now serving as foreign policy advisor to Rudy Giuliani), has stepped into his father's position as Editor in Chief of The Commentary, the neo-conservative publication. The NY Times interviewed him on the eve of his legacy ascension, and it doesn't look like J-Pod is going to be any more inclined to give up the failed neo-con policies or sneering the left:

In 1995, you were among the three founders of The Weekly Standard, which is snappier than Commentary and quickly surpassed it circulation-wise. In the '90s, the Clinton years, conservative magazines exploded. The classic rule of thumb is that if you are an intellectual ideological magazine, you do better in opposition than you do if your views are reflected by people in power.

Right. In the Bush years, left-leaning publications like The Nation and The New York Review of Books have flourished. Do you read either one? I look at The New York Review of Books. It's what it has been for 35 or 40 years, which is a highly sophisticated vehicle for anti-American self-hatred.

What do you make of writers like
Eric Alterman, who have criticized your appointment as an act of cronyism, which goes against the conservative belief that jobs should be awarded on the basis of merit and not affirmative action? That's a very personal thing. Twenty years ago, I refused to shake his hand.

Why is that? Shouldn't you make some pretense of civility toward your fellow writers? I think making a pretense of civility toward Eric Alterman is like making a pretense of civility to a scorpion.

Small magazines used to be associated with lofty ideas, but I wonder if ideas and visions have shrunk in our time into mere political agendas. If you're asking me whether there has been intellectual degeneration in our time, the answer is no. There was plenty of substandard thinking even in the precincts of Partisan Review.

So let's get this straight: the very precepts of your foreign policy have been wrong--genocidally wrong--as even one of your own members has admitted. But you don't think that you and your ilk are suffering from intellectual degeneration into mere political agendas? Boy, do I have a bridge to sell you...

Enthusiastically proclaiming you would want someone as unpopular as Dick Cheney serving in your administration? How mavericky!

Politico:

Asked whether he’d be interested in Cheney had the vice president not already have served under Bush for two terms, McCain said: “I don’t know if I would want him as vice president. He and I have the same strengths. But to serve in other capacities? Hell, yeah.”

You almost have to feel bad for McCain and the fine line he has to tread. On the one hand he has to distance himself from the miserable failure that is the Bush years; on the other hand he has to reassure the dead-enders (aka the GOP base) that he really does consider Bush/Cheney a fantastic success. It's no wonder why, then, that McCain will find himself praising the Bushies one minute, and running away as quickly as possible the other.

At least it will make for some fun campaign moments.