That’s welcome news for all of us who’ve been eager to learn more about just what went on in the CIA and how it could have led to policies like “extraordinary rendition” — i.e., transfer to torture — and the now-notorious interrogation abuses at Abu Ghraib, Bagram and Guantanamo Bay.

So now that there’s been a thorough review of Pentagon policies by the Senate Armed Services Committee (though its final report was never released publicly), and now there will be a critical review of what happened in the intelligence agencies.  So where’s the Senate Judiciary Committee?

As I reported earlier today and yesterday, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has been going around talking and holding hearings about the possibility of creating a broad bipartisan truth commission, one reminiscent of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, or here in the United States, the 9/11 Commission. But as Leahy is rapidly learning, he’s facing mighty opposition — not only among Republicans but even among Democrats, few of whom bothered to even show up to his hearing yesterday to lend their support.

So why not just pull his own committee together to conduct an investigation of what happened at the Justice Department: who wrote what memos, at whose request, and what did they say? (Although as I’ve written before, some Office of Legal Counsel memos have been released, but many critical documents concerning detainee treatment have not.)

While the Bush administration was apparently misusing the Justice Department to carry out unlawful policies, Leahy — who chairs the Judiciary Committee — didn’t do very much to investigate. Sure, some questions came up during various confirmation hearings and when the committee questioned Inspector General Glenn Fine about his reports of politicized hiring at the Justice Department or the role of the FBI. But why no comprehensive hearings hauling in the former attorneys general and their staff, and OLC lawyers like John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Stephen Bradbury, to reconstruct how the torture and other abuse of detainees came to be legally-authorized U.S. policy?

Leahy presumably would have the power to obtain all those OLC memos still being withheld, and to get some concrete answers.  Combine the outcome of that process with what Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) did with the Armed Services Committee and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif) is now pursuing with the intelligence committee, and we could have some real answers — even if the far-reaching “truth commission” that Leahy proposed never wins enough support to get off the ground.

Cheney last week even admitted he personally approved waterboarding — i.e., torture — setting the stage for President Bush to issue a pardon, insisting that in the process he’d saved American lives.

Cheney must know that claim rings hollow: even the recent bipartisan Senate Armed Services Committee Report found just the opposite, concluding that the administration’s interrogation techniques “damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority.”

Still, it was a convenient public excuse offered up to give Bush cover for issuing a pardon, not only to Cheney but to everyone involved in approving torture and other illegal interrogation methods.

Some Democrats, at least, are trying to prevent that.

On November 20, Rep. Jerrold Nadler introduced H.R. 1531 to urge Bush not to pardon himself or his co-conspirators in war crimes. The bill now has 9 co-sponsors.

Democrats.com is collecting signatures to support the bill, and circulating a petition to support another bill, sponsored by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, Sen. Carl Levin, and VP-elect Joe Biden – urging Eric Holder, as the future Attorney General, to open an investigation.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he was “stunned” by the news, while Sen. Carl Levin, (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the lower-than-expected withdrawal number is indication that the surge didn’t work.

Levin’s full statement:

This small reduction in troop levels in Iraq and the continued apparent rejection of any timetable for further reductions is simply a continuation of the Bush administration’s open-ended commitment in Iraq. It takes the pressure off of the Iraqi leaders to take the political steps essential to ending the conflict.

Iraqi politicians have failed to take advantage of the reduction in violence to reach a political settlement, which was the stated purpose of the surge. Saying the surge has worked when it hasn’t accomplished its stated purpose sends the wrong message to the Iraqi government.

In the meantime, the U.S. taxpayers continue to pay for reconstruction projects and economic development projects and even for the salaries of the so-called Sons of Iraq militia — at the same time that the Iraqi government has a surplus of $80 billion in oil revenues that should be used to pay for their own reconstruction and development.

The good news is that Bush will be in charge of such decisions for just four months more. The bad news is that Democrats haven’t been any better at pulling the troops home even as they’ve controlled the purse-strings with their congressional majority.

Can you say: war without end?