It looks like an ambitious new effort to set up an investigation of President Bush and his top aides for potential crimes committed on their watch may have a had time getting traction.
As we reported last week over at Election Central, House Judiciary chair John Conyers recently introduced a measure to create a “National Commission on Presidential War Powers and Civil Liberties.” The commission, whose members would be appointed by the resident and congress, would be designed to probe the legality of Bush administration policies on issues like torture, treatment of detainees, and extraordinary rendition.
But the president-elect appears lukewarm to the idea. Asked yesterday on “This Week With George Stephanopoulos” about the idea of a broad inquiry into those Bush administration programs, Obama said: “We need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”
He added:
Part of my job is to make sure that, for example, at the C.I.A., you’ve got extraordinarily talented people who are working very hard to keep Americans safe. I don’t want them to suddenly feel like they’ve got spend their all their time looking over their shoulders.
Here’s the video:
So it doesn’t exatly sound like Obama would be eager to sign Conyers’ bill.
And the top two House Democrats, Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer, weren’t jumping to express their support for the bill when Election Central called their offices about it last week.