Reply #4: Her statement would be effective if she were not so nervous.

[JDPriestly]

Neither she nor Harry Reid have any speaking skills. She is very unsure of herself. I wonder whether she really remembers what happened.

Also, I think that the idea of a Truth Commission is a cop-out. It is a way to trivialize crimes. We need full-fledged trials. Let the Justice Department appoint a Special Prosecutor. Of course, as we saw with the Plame matter, the Special Prosecutor and the Grand Jury become the keepers of the secrets. We don't get the facts. We do not get to see the results of investigations. We only get to see the evidence that is specifically relevant to the charges that are brought.

If we have a Truth Commission, the "truth" gets lost in the political compromises that hold such a commission together. After all the compromises, we get a muddled, incomplete picture, a politically sanitized story of what happened.

Neither means of getting to the truth is very good. Of the two, I think trials are the best here because, from an international point of view, only trials and hopefully punishment for anyone who is convicted, will assuage the tremendous anger that must be felt against by the families and friends of those who were tortured.