1) The Bush Administration tried to get Mohamed to sign a similar deal to that signed by Hicks:

Mr Mohamed would have had to agree not to take part in any legal challenge relating to his "capture, detention or prosecution" against the US, or any of its allies, and any rights to compensation would be assigned to the US government.

He would also have been required to abandon a legal attempt to obtain documents which he believed could prove his innocence.

Clive Stafford Smith, Mr Mohamed's lawyer, said: "This reflects the way the US government has consistently tried to cover up the truth of Binyam Mohamed's torture.

"He was being told he would never leave Guantanamo Bay unless he promised never to discuss his torture, and never sue either the Americans or the British to force disclosure of his mistreatment.

"Gradually the truth is leaking out and the governments on both sides of the Atlantic should pause to consider whether they should continue to fight to keep this torture evidence secret."

Link: http://tinyurl.com/c6s6ku

Note how he was being told that the only way he would ever leave Guantanamo was to sign the agreement not to talk about or file charges for torture. It's a very good thing he had good legal representation through Smith and Yvonne Bradley. Their brave actions are helping a lot to bring these atrocities to light.

2) Obama claimed, during the campaign, that he would prosecute if the evidence were irrefutable. Here is his statement to Will Bunch in April, 2008:

So this is an area where I would want to exercise judgment -- I would want to find out directly from my Attorney General -- having pursued, having looked at what's out there right now -- are there possibilities of genuine crimes as opposed to really bad policies. And I think it's important-- one of the things we've got to figure out in our political culture generally is distinguishing betyween really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity. You know, I often get questions about impeachment at town hall meetings and I've said that is not something I think would be fruitful to pursue because I think that impeachment is something that should be reserved for exceptional circumstances. Now, if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law -- and I think that's roughly how I would look at it.

Emphasis added.

Link: http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/Barack_on_torture.html

It's getting harder and harder for Obama to deny that we have reached the point where "high officials knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge forefront". He can no longer insist that this was just "really dumb policy". The British investigation almost certainly will reveal new details on the depths to which the Bush cabal took this war crime spree. The longer Obama waits to start criminal proceedings here, the more credibility he loses in the world.

I'd love to see entitlement reform. The "big swinging dicks" of the investment firms have been the most entitled class in the US for quite some time. They fully believe that they are the smartest, and therefore the most entitled, people around. They believe that they are fully entitled to move their massive piles of money around in the economy, dictate the highest possible level of return, and never, ever have any risk of losing even a portion of the proceeds, let alone the original capital. They have built their fancy, innovative investment vehicles, they believe, to achieve just that end. That these very vehicles are responsible for the global economic meltdown is a concept they will never grasp, for they truly believe they are infallible.

Only when we reform this attitude of entitlement will we have any chance of restoring sanity to our economy. The best way to achieve the reform would be to strip about four orders of magnitude off the personal assets of the top thousand or so people in the financial industry. They have amassed these obscene amounts of wealth by gaming the system for so long that they have no ability at all to understand how their actions are bankrupting the planet. They will lament the unfairness of it all, but once that capital returns to the working part of the economy, everyone else will be fine. After all, if sacrifice is to be made in getting out of this mess, shouldn't the sacrifice come from the small cabal that brought on the mess and simultaneously has the resources to resolve it?

Failing the seizing of assets (Obama just doesn't have the balls for that), the next best thing is to do a reverse "shock doctrine" and impose the strictest oversight that can be constructed. Bury the bastards in paperwork and regulations and we just might, after a lot of joint sacrifice, come through on the other side without needing to enlist adnoto to organize our very own IMF riots.

I just wanted to say that name. She is one of the few who would never consider a "cease fire". She also seems entirely put off by the obsequious behavior of the rest of the press. Remember her "Where is everybody?" when she had Perino on the ropes regarding Bush's lies about torture but nobody else would join her? Linked at my name.

Easy on the grrrrrrrrrrowwwwwwllllllllllling there. We're supposed to be in a cease fire dontcha know? You could have all kinds of things firing off if you keep doing that...

how about a 90% tax on all "journalist" income over $500,000?

If the industry is only populated with those who are there to chase the story, rather than chase the dollar while keeping their overlords happy, it might just be able to rediscover the proper way to work.