[Sosfbay-discuss] Jon Turley Tells Why Leahy's Truth Commission isn't Enough

[Brian Good]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFxlzPKLuvg

	
    Leahy cites the Frank Church Commission of the 1970s and the
South African Truth & Reconciliation Commission as models.

    Olbermann notes that the latter body did not win sanctions 
against President Botha, and though the Church Commission shed 
light on abuses by intel agencies against the antiwar movement, 
it did not prevent Nixon functionaries Rumsfeld and Cheney  from 
doing it all over again and committing the very abuses now under 
consideration.  

    Turley calls the Truth Commissions proposal "shameful,"  not
suitable for a government operating under rule of law.  There's no
question that torture, a war crime, was committed.  Congress
considers this an inconvenient time to fight on principle, and they
are proposing a useless and toothless Commission to try to avoid our
obligations under treaties we helped to write.  It's not up to Obama
or Leahy; we are obligated to investigate to comply with our 
promise to the world.  

    Turley validates Olbermann's belief that addressing the crimes 
in a special Commission would endorse Bush's claims that his actions
were outside the sphere of ordinary crimes to which regular rules 
apply.   A Special Commission means Special Justice, and its failure to
prosecute known war crimes will make  the American people accessories.  
Our treaty says there are no excuses for ordering torture.  If  the 
Republicans want to embrace torture and the violation of treaties, 
let them.  Do our legislators want to launch their new administration 
as principled statesmen or as political hacks?  


    My comment:  Congress is dragging its feet on torture investigations
because Pelosi and Reid went along with it when they were briefed in 
2002.  Also, Gore convinced Clinton that rendition was acceptable
policy(1), and by 1995 the Clinton team was flying kidnapped prisoners to 
Egypt for interrogation. (2)   Michael Scheuer, who ran the extraordinary
rendition program against al Qaeda for the CIA from 1995 to 1999, told a 
subcommittee of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in 2007 that he 
warned Clinton that the countries they were flying these people to were
human rights abusers (torturers).  He said: "I have read and been told that 
Mr. Clinton, Mr. Berger and Mr. Clarke have said, since 9/11, that they 
insisted that each receiving country treat the rendered person it received 
according to U.S. legal standards. To the best of my memory, that is a lie."
(3)   Any honest investigation of torture will drag Pelosi, Reid, Clinton, 
and Gore into the light.

(1)  Clarke, Against All Enemies p. 143-4  
Gore said "That's a no-brainer. Of course it's a violation of international law, 
that's why it's a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass." 

(2)  Meyer, "Outsourcing Torture" in The New Yorker 
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/02/14/050214fa_fact6?currentPage=3

(3) House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on International

Organizations, Human Rights, and Oversight, Subcommittee on Europe,
April 17, 2007, p. 12.
http://foreignaffairs.house.gov/110/34712.pdf



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