Wednesday, February 25, 2009

The Senate Launches Truth Commission

According to Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the Senate is launching a "truth commission" to investigate Bush-era torture. See this, this and this.

Given that torture is ineffective and harms national security, and given that it is illegal and a war crime under international laws which the U.S. is a party to, many argue that there should be prosecutions, and not more investigations.

Indeed, government investigations are almost all whitewashes.

However, Leahy previously suggested a “truth commission” could be modeled after a panel that probed apartheid in South Africa. The commission should have “subpoena power and witnesses would not face charges except if they commit perjury," Leahy told the Wall Street Journal earlier this month.

I have previously suggested such an approach with regards to 9/11 (I am obviously open to prosecutions as an alternative).

Indeed, there is no reason that 9/11 should not be added to the subjects of the commission since - at the very least - Bush officials were criminally negligent in allowing 9/11 to happen and covering up the facts.

See also this and this.

3 comments:

  1. There is no provision under the law for a truth commission! As long as you tell the truth you won't be prosecuted. No one is above the law and this is just a special exception being made for criminals who have power.
    Do some checking and you will find that the Truth Commission in South Africa allowed the whites to retain economic control of the country. Blacks are worse off than they were during apartheid.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Bush et. al. could be indicted for high treason right now, based simply on covering up the involvement of foreign governments in the 9/11 plot.

    Please complain to the new Attorney General Eric Holder, and other relevant high officials

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hey Georgie Porgie...

    http://www.opednews.com/populum/diarypage.php?did=12343

    ReplyDelete

→ Thank you for contributing to the conversation by commenting. We try to read all of the comments (but don't always have the time).

→ If you write a long comment, please use paragraph breaks. Otherwise, no one will read it. Many people still won't read it, so shorter is usually better (but it's your choice).

→ The following types of comments will be deleted if we happen to see them:

-- Comments that criticize any class of people as a whole, especially when based on an attribute they don't have control over

-- Comments that explicitly call for violence

→ Because we do not read all of the comments, I am not responsible for any unlawful or distasteful comments.