As if!

And, if you will excuse me for ranting, I consider it extreme cowardice that the house under Conyers and Pelosi have not even tried to impeach. “They don’t see the votes!” Well why the hell not? What moral fiber can the dems pretend to be using if they haven’t and won’t and cannot seem to bring themselves to act AS IF THEY WERE CONGRESS CRITTERS who actually said an OATH!

But here is what I don’t get about this. There have been several major investigations into pre-war intelligence (Silberman/Robb, Phase 1 of the SSCI, Phase II of the SSCI) Nothing ever came of those investigations NOTHING. We did not witness one person held accountable for creating, cherry picking and disseminating false pre war WMD intelligence.

Why does an investigation more likely insure prosecutions and a commission does not. If you are looking for the truth and you follow the facts or evidence what does it matter whether it is an investigation or a commission. It would seem logical that our Reps or the DOJ would follow the facts and if crimes have been committed prosecutions would follow.

Just a regular folk trying to understand
I would have expected more out of Leahy

I personally don’t like the Leahy proposal, because he explicitly discounting the idea of prosecutions. I think it is way too early for a “truth commission.” I just hope that a consensus does not develop that will protect Bush, Cheney, Rove, Addington, and all the others from prosecution.

Bob in HI

Weird.

Do you want a few high profile criminal trials, with only that evidence that is properly linked to the charges, and appropriate under the rules of evidence brought into the public view, with the possibility that one or several mid to higher level Bushies might go to jail? or….

Do you want wide ranging evidence under oath, but not constrained by the rules of trial evidence so that eventually there emerges a sworn master narrative as to what the Bushie’s were up to in those 8 years? …I think you have to make a choice, and at least ask the question, what perhaps is best for the country.

Frankly, I don’t favor trials except for those who stonewall a congressionally mandated process. If Karl Rove won’t show up, swear, tell the truth and all — yep, quickie court trial and take him behind the barn, horse whip him first, and then shoot him. But most of all, I think the country needs a master narrative with tested evidence right now, and where necessary the Legislative Branch must be pressured to embed necessary reforms in statute law.

While the wiretapping, and the torture profoundly bothers me — I don’t get the sense that right now that is what the general public finds bothersome about the Bush Era, and thus what can be built upon with something like an Ervin or Church style Special Committee. They are concerned about the lying about Iraq Intelligence prior to authorizing the invasion, about the huge costs of that war with no obvious result worth the blood of the troops, the levels of incompetence (perhaps intentional) in so much of what Bush did — in war and in other things. They want to know why the economy collapsed as it has. Wiretapping and torture are subset tactics in all of this — they are not the main act.

Watching Barak Obama over the last couple of weeks has been so enjoyable, because this guy is a master Politician, and knows what he is doing on the large stage. I really don’t want him burdened with dealing with the Bushies and all their sins — because simply by using his gifts and skills he is finally showing Americans what a Born Politician is all about, and that it is not a negative. If what I am seeing is right — he is driving the Republicans so deep into their ideological cave, they may eventually find themselves in the same cavern with bin Laden on the other side of the world. He’s a community organizer — has the wit of some street fighters about him — and moreover I think he actually enjoys the contest. Yes, he has to clean up Bush’s messes, but more to the point I think he understands it is more critical to kill and bury the ideology that allowed for Bush in the first place. I don’t think tying that to putting a few people in jail would accomplish this — but I think six months of watching a Master Pol work within the rules of the game will.

Another thought…I got to thinking the other night about Leon Panetta, the likely CIA Director. Remembered that when Panetta was first elected to Congress he was a progressive Republican — and then it hit me why he switched parties. He was mad as hell at Rumsfeld and Cheney’s high handed way of closing down OEO in the first years of the Nixon Administration, mad enough that he converted to the Democratic Party. (Young folk — OEO was Office of Economic Opportunity, the HQ of Johnson’s War on Poverty.) I remembered it all and laughed my head off — there is no one more likely to do in what remains of Dick Cheney, and with style, than Leon Panetta.