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Conservative columnist George Will has joined many who are calling for a commission to investigate the use of enhanced interrogation techiniques. "We ought to have a commission. Fred Hiatt in The Washington Post suggests this morning, Sandra Day O'Connor and David Souter, bring them down, set it up and answer some factual questions," said Will.

I wrote a short piece last week in which I tried to remind Congress that we need to have hearings on the financial meltdown for obvious reasons:

Just a reminder.

I know we've asked for a Truth Commission on torture over and over again, but what about the financial catastrophe the world just experienced? When will hearings be held to uncover the facts that led us and the world to financial ruin? I know we have many basic facts of what happened, but when will an actual hearing take place? If nothing is officially uncovered then how can we stop another one from taking place?

Bill Scher of CFAF heard a little birdy and it sounds quite promising on that front now:

Word is circulating in Washington that members for the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission will be named this week.

The commission is supposed to resemble the 1930s Pecora commission that dug into the culprits behind the Great Depression and laid the groundwork for major bank reform. But that will only be true if the commission is run by aggressive seekers of truth, independent of the financial industry, willing to use their subpoena power, knowledgeable enough to have warned us of impeding crisis in the first place despite market cheerleading from the political and media establishments.
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Speculation from Reuters last week on who might be named was not terribly encouraging, though most of the names floated clearly were coming from conservative circles, as Republican leaders will pick four of the 10 members.

Cut...OK, here's where we come in. Updated: No members of Congress can be on the commission, but
I think an Alan Grayson or Henry Waxman type would be good choices for the commission. . We do need a panel of brilliant minds that has real progressive representation, but what we also need are people that have an appreciation for the "dramatic." That is, they should know how to ask questions with their allotted time in such a way that it will be highly informative and entertaining at the same time. These are the moments that can really educate Americans, but the commission needs members that understand how to use their valuable time---not to pontificate---but to educate and uncover. And it needs to be riveting while getting to the truth of this mess.

Please ask Speaker Pelosi and Harry Reid to make sure they put together a great panel. Nancy was almost scheduled to do a live chat on C&L last week, but because of my family issues, we are rescheduling. However, I think if we let her know how strongly we feel about the new Pecora Commission and ensuring that progressives are solidly represented, she'll come through.

Here's her contact info.

Harry Reid is another story. Here's Reid's office info, so please let him know too.

Continue reading »

Just a reminder.

I know we've asked for a Truth Commission on torture over and over again, but what about the financial catastrophe the world just experienced? When will hearings be held to uncover the facts that led us and the world to financial ruin? I know we have many basic facts of what happened, but when will an actual hearing take place? If nothing is officially uncovered then how can we stop another one from taking place?
Being too big to fail should never happen again. If it's too big to fail,( Citi Group) then it shouldn't exist.

The S&L scandal wasn't a blip on the radar and more will come if nothing is exposed. How many times will a Senator like John McCain be given a new lease on life to remake himself after a financial scandal? It's just a matter of time. Greed by the CNBCers will always be too much for them to handle, but they will never have to pay for it. You know who covers the bill.

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On John King's State of the Union John Boehner feels that Nancy Pelosi should apologize for accusing the CIA of lying to Congress, but he doesn't support having a Truth Commission to get to the bottom of it. He suggests that she should take whatever evidence she has that the CIA lied to her to the Justice Department and let them handle it. Just what evidence is he talking about here? He knows full well those meetings were top secret, they weren't allowed to take notes and that there is no evidence for her to bring them.

I was waiting for him to start crying again when he was going on about how wonderful our CIA is. Boehner seems to have a bad case of do as I say, but not as I do syndrome with his defense on why it was alright for him to question the integrity of the NIE report he didn't like. That's just completely different from what Nancy Pelosi did don't you know. Now the CIA is beyond reproach.

If any of these Republicans actually want to get to the truth, they'd be supporting an investigation to get to the bottom of what happened. I don't think the Congress is capable of investigating itself so in all honesty a special prosecutor as opposed to a Truth Commission would be preferable, but the Republicans will be screaming bloody murder if that happens as well, mark my words. And they would not be gathering all of their evidence from Nancy Pelosi. Since they're not in favor of bringing all the facts to light it appears they're just using Pelosi for a political punching bag.

KING: I want to turn your attention to the big controversy in town, especially in the capital building this week. And that is what did Speaker Pelosi know and when did she know it, about the enhanced interrogation tactics, water-boarding, slamming people against walls and things like that in the days after 9/11.

And if you turn over your right shoulder, we have a timeline I want to show you here. We now know that, in 2002 in September, Speaker Pelosi, not the speaker at the time -- she was briefed by the CIA. There was a dispute. She says she was not told there was water- boarding going on. The CIA says she was.

Last month, in April, at a news conference, she insisted she had not been told. Let's listen.

PELOSI: We were not -- I repeat -- not told that water-boarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used.

KING: But then, last week, she did concede on Thursday that one of her aides was briefed a few months after that September 2002 briefing and that the aide was told and it was relayed to her these tactics were being used. But, at that same event, she lashed out at the CIA, accusing them, accusing them of misleading the Congress.

PELOSI: Those briefing me in September 2002 gave me inaccurate and incomplete information.

KING: Where's this going? There are some who say the speaker has been dishonest. The speaker is accusing the CIA, now, of lying to the Congress. It's interesting theater here in Washington, but does it serve any policy purpose? And what's next?

BOEHNER: Lying to the Congress of the United States is a crime. And if the speaker is accusing the CIA and other intelligence officials of lying or misleading the Congress, then she should come forward with evidence and turn that over to the Justice Department so they can be prosecuted.

And if that's not the case, I think she ought to apologize to our intelligence professionals around the world.

You have to understand, John, we treat prisoners, detainees, prisoners of war better than any country in the world. And our intelligence professionals have done a marvelous job in doing their job, keeping Americans safe.

And when you think about the fact that we lost 3,000 of our citizens on September 11; we've lost nearly 5,000 of our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting for our safety and security here in America, all of -- all of this information that helps our soldiers, that helps our border security people, all comes from our intelligence professionals around the world.

And instead of criticizing them; instead of accusing them of lying, we ought to be patting them on the back and telling them, "Job well done."

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There's a new poll out from Gallup and USA Today which one is headlining as showing there's "no mandate for criminal prosecutions" and the other is headlining as showing that "most want an enquiry" into whether Bush's anti-terror policies broke the law.

Those headlines aren't mutually incompatible. There's a hard core of around 30% of Americans who still cleave to Bush as a hero, an unsung genius who can do no wrong and think that a president can just declare actions legal and be done with it. There's a slightly larger core of those who want America to return to the fold of the rule of law, presidential accountability and humanity. They've done some homework and realise that anti-terror tactics during the Bush Years were built upon the kind of deliberately twisted legal reasoning that got Nazi lawyers hanged at Nuremberg. And there's a group - the undecideds - who want to know more before they make their minds up, and would understandably prefer the evidence to come from official governmental sources rather than liberal blogs and human rights groups. They want to trust their government and want that government to bring the facts out in the open. That's just human nature and trying to spin the two different headlines about results of this poll as some liberal conspiracy is just being dishonest.

So give the people a Truth Commission. Let the evidence be made public in official hearings rather than tucked away in little-read reports from human rights groups about the Defense Department's co-operation in running CIA secret prisons or in obscure blog posts citing studies showing the military have "disappeared over 24,000 video tapes of detainee interrogations. Let's not rely on whether foreign officials and judges bow to blackmail in hoping to get details of why someone had his penis repeatedly sliced because he once read a satirical article online. Let's get those Bush officials who have admitted their administration engaged in torture up on the witness stand, under oath.

We need to send an overwhelming and clear message to Obama and those among his cabinet who don't want to see justice served. Two thirds of America want this. Give it to them if that's the people's will - that's called "moving forward". Then as the evidence unfolds we'll see how America feels about prosecutions, and about making sure such inhuman acts can never again by perpetrated wholesale by a White House under cover of blanket secrecy and legal lies. I'm betting that America will overwhelmingly want to see those guilty have their day in court.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Last night on Countdown, Keith Olbermann talked to Jonathan Turley about the possibility of a Truth Commission and his strong opposition to it and his feelings that it is just a way to make sure no one is prosecuted for war crimes in the Bush administration.

Rachel followed with an interview with Pat Leahy where he leaves open the possibility of prosecutions if anyone either refuses to testify, lies under oath, or doesn't fully disclose what they know during that testimony.

I think Leahy is sincere with him not wanting what has happened over the last eight years to go unaccounted for. I do think however that Jonathan Turley is right if we're going to ever have any real accountability for the war crimes that have been committed, someone needs to go to jail and be held truly accountable for what they've done.

I would imagine the Democrats are worried that if they go after the Bush administration the Repulicans will go into full lock down mode and obstruct everything they try to do which we really can't afford right now with the economy on the brink of another depression. My hope is if we see another pick up for Democrats in the Senate this might no longer be a concern.

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