rssPressure Mounts to Investigate Bush Officials
Monday, November 17, 2008 at 6:03 am
- 7 Comments
The pressure is ratcheting up on President-elect Barack Obama to do something as soon as he takes office about the Bush administration’s years of law-breaking.
The lawyer and writer Scott Horton, in an excellent feature in the December issue of Harper’s, lays out the Obama administration’s options. Horton points out that there is a long litany of potential crimes the new administration could go after -– from using the Justice Dept. for political purposes to issuing no-bid military contracts to corrupt companies.
But the most obvious crime that’s prime for prosecution is officially sanctioned torture.
Advocates like Glenn Greenwald, writing in Salon, have harsh words for former Clinton Justice Dept. officials like Robert Litt, now advising Obama not to prosecute Bush officials and risk appearing vindictive and divisive. Litt and others, including influential Obama advisers like Cass Sunstein, have suggested they don’t want Obama to squander the good will he’s generated from both sides of the aisle.
As I wrote earlier, lots of others have been offering the same sort of advice. Meanwhile, some law professors, like George Washington’s Jonathan Turley, who even supported the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, have made a persuasive argument that we can’t tolerate law-breaking by public officials.
But I think Horton, who’s a master of the law and history on this subject, may have the best answer: a commission created by the president that would investigate what happened and recommend prosecution if the facts warrant it. The commission should be nonpartisan –- made up of career prosecutors, lawyers and assistants, rather than political officials and operatives like the 9-11 commission, which lost credibility when its conclusions were watered down and subsequently attacked from all sides.
Last week, human-rights advocates from UC-Berkeley and the Center for Constitutional Rights made a similar recommendation in a new report about the impact of Bush administration interrogation tactics on Guantanamo detainees.
If the new president authorized and supported it, the commission’s recommendations would be far harder to ignore than were, say, those of the 9-11 commission. If prosecution is ultimately warranted, the president would be under considerable pressure to follow through.
What’s more, it would look like an impartial administration of justice. Not like a new administration launching a retributive, divisive and partisan attack.
As I wrote last week, closing Guantanamo Bay is a good first step, but it doesn’t go far enough. The new Obama administration is going to have to take more affirmative steps to end U.S.-sponsored abusive detentions and interrogations around the world, and to send a clear message that the United States, including the president, can be trusted to follow the rule of law.
Creating a commission to investigate whether the Bush administration abused that trust would go a long way toward making that message credible.
7 Comments
Comment posted November 17, 2008 @ 5:48 am
What happened during the Clinton years that didn't get out? Jamie Gorelick's Wall Memo wasn't wall decoration. It was meant to hide. Any investigation has to cover the Clinton DOJ and Bush DOJ and the US attorney offices that became complicit in covering it up. As well as other countries that were involved as bad guys or covering up.
How about Assistant US Attorney Sara Bloom on this watchdog group to expose Bush Clinton? Let her read the memos that Gorelick didn't want her to read when Gorelick became an Overseer at Harvard after DOJ. How about the LTCM bailout in 1998? How about the audits of Paula Jones and other women in Sep 1997. How did the IRS know in Sep 97 that Clinton would commit perjury n Jan 98 with Monika Lewinsky and needed to frighten Lewinsky in Sep 97?
Comment posted November 17, 2008 @ 7:16 am
I've been following Scott Horton since he started blogging at Harpers, and he is 100% correct. Criminal activity must be punished if we are to regain our self respect as a law abiding Nation. Torture, Don Siegelman (and several others), the Civil Rights division of the DOJ, the lying that sent our troops to the wrong country, and numerous other 'incidents' need to be investigated and prosecuted. Scott Horton is one of the few who have been able to make sense of the total lawlessness over the last few years, and what he proposes is moderation incarnate. I say render george and dick to the Hague if we don't have the moxie to do it ourselves, this is why we should cherish and value the mature and well considered opinions of Mr. Horton, he should be angrier than I, since he knows the details far more intimately, yet he proposes a very fair and non-partisan proffessional approach. The rest of us should grow up to his level.
Comment posted November 17, 2008 @ 8:57 am
Criminality is criminality regardless of whether it's pickpocketing in a crowd, burglarizing homes, murdering a neighbor, or committing war crimes and engaging in corruption at the highest levels of government, and a law-bound society is bound to investigate crimes and prosecute criminals. How about turning this criminal matter over to a professional prosecutor or special prosecutor. I would propose Patrick Fitzgerald, by the way.
Comment posted November 17, 2008 @ 10:26 am
“Old Atlantic” is still attempting to change the subject away from the Bush*t criminal enterprise.
Everyhting's the fault of Clinton, Clintonh, Clinotn.
Don'tt you right-wing lunatic fringers ever get tired of the lie that you're morally superior therefore exempt from the rules against lying?
Not-so-by-the-way: Clinton was ACQUITTED by the REPUBLICAN-controlled Senate of the charge of perjury. That means he DID NOT commit perjury. Grow up and learn the meaning of JUSTICE, as conducted in a democracy under law, in place of the childish, whining vengefulness that CHRIST HIMSELF prohibited.
Comment posted November 17, 2008 @ 11:06 am
JNagarya its not changing the topic, it is the topic. Clinton misdeeds were known to the Bush team in the 1990's, before they got into office again. Russia was getting low interest rate loans from the IMF and doing a full push with its files. Bush people knew that and knew some of what Russia knew about Clinton people. There were other things too.
The 1990's were a joint Republican Democrat pig out. The 2000's continued the same thing. The universities are in on it with Wall Street and the big law firms. The law, economics, business communities in academia, government, NY and DC are all wrapped into it and that is why these profs come out and say don't investigate. They are pigs in the trough too. Litt is from Clinton DOJ and he covered things up. Bush knows what they are.
Obama is tied in through his university job and his wife was given a lot of money by the university. That was to buy legal peace. These payments are all over. You want to eat Bush people at Bush DOJ, but the Clinton and Obama people know that can only happen if they are eaten too. Congress knows it as well.
Comment posted November 17, 2008 @ 8:29 pm
US Justice Robert Jackson told the defendents in Nuremburg “We will not apply a law to you that we would not apply to ourselves.”
Time to live up to Justice Jackson's promise.
Comment posted March 19, 2009 @ 2:45 pm
Old Atlantic:
Speaking of Bill Clinton:
It is opined that Bill Clinton committed racist hate crimes, and I am not free to say anything further about it.
Respectfully Submitted by Andrew Y. Wang, J.D. Candidate
B.S., Summa Cum Laude, 1996
Messiah College, Grantham, PA
Lower Merion High School, Ardmore, PA, 1993
(I can type 90 words per minute, and there are probably thousands of copies on the Internet indicating the content of this post. Moreover, there are innumerable copies in very many countries around the world.)
_________________
“If only it were possible to ban invention that bottled up memories so they never got stale and faded.” Off the top of my head—it came from my Lower Merion High School yearbook.
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