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Or crooks who not only started a war based on evidence that knew or should have known was false and violated international law by torturing prisoners but stole the country blind?
If you think that the Bush administration meant well but made mistakes, you favor a commission -- a friendly inquiry that uncovers why the mistakes were made.
If you think they were crooks, you favor a serious inquiry followed by criminal actions where appropriate.
Problem is, you can't know which view is correct until all the facts are known.
That is why Obama had best not decidr which view to act on at the outset of his administration. This is something he just has to be patient about.
Generally law enforcement gathers and evaluates the evidence before deciding whether a crime has been committed. So, the fair and correct thing for Obama to do is to wait to order an investigation before determining whether a mere informational commission or criminal trials are necessary.
Apologists for the Bush administration and Obama's political advisers may counsel him to go easy on the Bush administration in the hope that the Republicans will in turn give Obama a free ride for a while. Based on the past conduct of Republicans goaded on by talk show hosts like O'Reilly and Limbaugh, Obama would be foolish to believe that. It is not only best for our country but also politically wiser to allow an independent investigation to take place and require all witnesses, bar none, to testify within the limits of the Constitution. The political consequences of immediately going easy on the Bush administration with regard to their crimes is that the right-wing extremists will not respect him. They will see him as weak, a push-over with no resolve. If you know your Lakoff, you will probably agree with me that Obama will not be accepted as a leader unless he punishes those who have committed crimes and punishes them pretty severely.
Obama will also be told that, in this economic crisis, a real investigation and trial would be divisive. To the contrary, the division in the country today can be traced right smack back to the sense on the parts of many that wrongs in the past such as election tampering in Chicago in the Kennedy/Nixon election (a Republican urban myth) or a cover-up regarding the Kennedy assassination and many other assassinations and the Viet Nam War. Rigorous investigation and punishment of wrongdoing will actually bring the country together, not divide it.
And by the way, I'm not an expert on this, but in my opinion, international treaties and the Constitution trump acts of Congress, so, unless there is some legal ground for Dean's statement about laws excusing the Bush administration from prosecution for torture, I don't see how the act that Congress passed allowing the Bush administration to torture based on legal opinions by one of their own appointees would mean they could not be criminally liable for what happened.
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