Even if the objective is not jail time for the perpetrators, it is terribly important that the American public know the truth.

If Mr. Obama really believes in transparency, he'd support a truth and reconciliation committee, at the very least.

John Dean said on KO that if we, as a country, do not address this, the international community will, and are actually already preparing to do so. International war crimes trials are not what we need. I don't want to deal with it either, but it must be done.

So another wimp..another "when the President or any one in Congress (or any one with enough money) does it..thats means its legal" advocate..we voted in another damned "we got (double) standards here in Washington D.C....." I'm hoping off your band wagon Mr. Obama..just another crook with darker skin and a prettier line of bullshit

The powerful mobsters in Washington are STILL in Washington and are STILL powerful. Our votes made sure of this.

Obama and anyone else new to the group know all too well that the only way of remaining viable and influential among that mob is to go along with them and not make too many waves.

The fact is, a competent investigation will harm many of those people, including some just appointed by Obama (remember... Clinton and most others were too busy doing their "social" thing to read the information before sending other peoples' relations to their doom in Iraq). Just remembering this brings my blood to a boil, I'm pretty certain more folks will learn much more negative information about many of the clowns there in Washington.... many whom are still in powerful positions.

"We the Voters" have already decided to put this at rest and not bother the folks we have decided to lead us down this destructive path which, more and more, appears to be leading us and our children to destruction... IMHO

After WWII, it was not called the Nuremberg Commission.

I applaud the international community for not giving up on the rule of law. But that aside, we have the intolerable situation where an ex-president will essentially be under house arrest in Texas. He cannot go to Vermont without being arrested for war crimes. Ditto, many places in Europe.

However, the PE did not bring this on. Congress' utter lack of oversight contributed as much to the problem as Cheney's zeal. It must be up to Congress -- in coordination with the DoJ -- to call these people out. It's so big that a special prosecutir will almost certainly be necessary.

The PE must realize he, too, is doomed by the Unitary Executive theory. This is what must be stripped bare, and its darkest torture pits exposed to the sun.

I saw a piece on Nixon's impeachment over the weekend, and that man did not muster 10% of the filth the current criminal enterprise posing as a presidency has heaped upon this nation.

War crimes tribunals here, or it will be Nuremberg II, where silly things such as "statues of limitations" will be soundly ignored.

Pax,
M.

A lot of powers that be will move on this. There will be investigations.

But as TheraP says: LET US RAISE OUR VOICES.

I keep saying to myself; "trust him, wait until he takes the Oval office", but what I see so far from Obama is backtracking on taxing the wealthy and now letting the Bush gang off the hook.

Obama may be the greatest con man of the last 100 years, if not the greatest disappointment, for those who supported him with money and votes.

If he doesn't go along with investigations into the Bush gang he will never live it down. It will be a replay of Ford pardoning Nixon.

Obama's betrayed all of us who voted for him with this action. It amounts to a "Get out of jail card" for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and other crooks. Are we supposed to forget about the 4500 dead Americans? The $1 trillion price tag for the war? The lies that got us into this mess and kept us there? The politicization of the Pentagon, State Dept. and Justice Dept.? Seems like he's turned into a Washington insider overnight. Shameful. Yes We Can criticize Obama for this.

We don't need lots of Congressional investigations - they are a waste of time and not what they were in Watergate days.

We do need prosecutors and prosecutions.

We need Congress to take steps to actively inform America, shifting from the propaganda of Iraq/9-11 and we had to be tough on KSM to save America, to:

*Requiring that Torturing Democracy (not about KSM, but a cab driver named Dilawar) be shown in every school receiving Fed funding, from 7th or 8th grade up, and putting into place substantive scholarships in conjunction with an essay program for each of the grades, articulating why it is illigal and immoral for Americans to beat cab drivers to a pulpified mass of broken bone and flesh, and call it "patriotism" Bring Dilawar's family to the US, along with the men who were picked up with him and sent to GITMO to assist in coveruing up the crime, and make very public reparations for them and let the men explain how they were sent to GITMO as the "worst of the worst"

*Fund a program for Sean Baker's story to also be told, along with the immediate destruction of training tapes and the attempts to pretend his disability resulted from something other and the beating that were SOP at GITMO if you wore orange.

*Fund a program for Maher Arar and Khalid el-Masri to tell the story of what happened to them, pass legislation apologizing and making reparations, let Arar sit with his daughter in his lap and "invite" the men like Larry Thompson and John Ashcroft who sent him to torture to show up and apologize to his family - explain to Scheuer that personal, as well as imperial, hubris has horrible costs.

*Require that troops being sent overseas and their officers take a test and pass it, emphasizing the information that Iraq was not related to 9/11 and setting forth the mission statement for why we are still there, if there really is one.

*Fund a series on - GITMO's Innocents - and start taping and playing it. Errachidi and Kurnaz make very good start points.

*Press the hell out of every single Obambi nominee on declassification, including revocation of the State Secrets invocations in the many pending lawsuits, in particular el-Masri's spun suit.

*Pass extradition legislation for war crimes

*Fund a committee to investigate and publish a report on the US war on terror and children, including the disappeared children of KSM and Sidiqqui, the child victims at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere in Iraq, the impact of kidnap for black site and GITMO rendition on families and the impact on the thousands and thousands held in Afghanistan and Iraq with no recourse and the impact on their children. But make it equally about the child victims of our soldiers' families and of the innocent victims of not only 9/11, but Bali, Mumbai, etc. Make the ripples of evil clear and unequivocal.

The only good use of "investigation" time is by decent prosecutors (although after 6 years, I don't think there are any left in-house at DOJ, bc decent people wouldn't be working voluntarily, for years, for known torturers) or in connection with programs that can be used to inform the public and counter the years of "worst of the worst" at GITMO, etc. Congress is worthless on that front and the press is equally worthless, covering the most bizarrely unlikely and unworthy assortment of topics.

Maybe someone could also introduce legislation requiring that all members of the intelligence and judiciary committees have to take regular, closed book, tests on their subject matter, with the questions and their answers put online, so that the idiots do have to either learn the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah, or illegal wiretaps and the warrant clause --- or at least have their ignorance on display in an objective manner.

There is a lot that Congress could, but won't, do to counter the years of propagandizing and the meme that all the torture conversation is about is whether or not KSM was waterboarded. Investigations including the likes of Harry Reid, Silvestre Reyes, Nancy Pelosi, etc. - those aren't just pointless, they'd be counterproductive. And a truth and reconciliation commission pretty much has a Hug & Make Up premise that never should be bought into.

If we really have such a culture of torture at the CIA that none of the operatives feel that they can operate without looking over their shoulder, waiting for the investigations to catch up to them, then the agency needs to be cratered. I don't believe that's really what is at the agency, but if it is, it is. It was interesting to watch Baer on Maddow - as an ex-operative, he didn't bleat about poor operatives, they wouldn't be able to function if torturers were charged with crimes. A lot to the contrary for that matter - which makes me tend to believe that the worst of the problems in the CIA were with the top brass, with a pretty small group of torturers in the field, some of whom would no doubt be legitimately the subject of deals and pleas, some of whom would not.

In short, thus:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-cusack/two-questions_b_156845.html

I don't want them to suddenly feel like they've got spend their all their time looking over their shoulders.

There is a good and a bad sense of "looking over their shoulders". CIA employees should be conscious of law and morality, and conscientious in their conduct. But that should not be a burdensome thing, rather an enlightening thing.

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Tenet, Gage, and others are the ones who might rightly fear the law and the judgments of society.

"I don't want them to suddenly feel like they've got spend their all their time looking over their shoulders."

Funny.... when I am doing lawful activities and have a clear conscience, I never see the need to look back over my shoulders. It is only when I believe I am doing something wrong... and someone might catch me... that I am prone to do this...