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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
If Obama was to wait til his second term to begin prosecuting the Bush crimes, the backlash would still be huge. The republicans would scream bloody murder that Obama was rehashing "ancient history". The media would jump all over him for that too. It just disgusts me that Obama is such a coward, that he won't pursue criminal prosecutions for what these criminals did. As Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks said so elogently recently, we can't move forward with out Justice. We must have justice. These crimes can not go unpunished. They can't be allowed to stand. Because if we allow them to go unpunsihed, then there will be nothing to stop the next dictator that gets elected president. If America is to stand for anything, it has to stand for the rule of law and that no one is above that.
Obama said that he won't have his first term marred by "witch hunts", although he will investigate wrong-doing. You conclude that he would than prosecute officials during his second term, when the public memory of the offenses has completely faded. Do you remember the Iran-Contra scandal prosecutions? Most Americans don't. They happened so late that they were no longer relevant. Obama has said flat out that he isn't going to prosecute Bush administration offender's. I realize that he has a habit of changing his mind, but there is no reason to assume that he's going to do something in his second term that he has given no indication he intends to do.
I've seen a lot of Obama fans do this. They are certain that all of his talk is posturing in order to get elected, that once he is in office he will turn hard to the left. There is no evidence that he will do this. Nothing in his history indicates leftist tendencies. He has always been a pragmatic moderate who voted with the majority of his party.
I'd really like to know. Because if he can't, then it is a good thing that no one has been convicted of anything YET, and it would be wonderful if something could be done during the next administration.
The assumpption here seems to be that torture, rendition, arbitrary detention will end on or before inauguration day 2009.
Lets not get ahead of ourselves.
Investigate and bring as much of the Whole Truth to light as possible. Let the malefactors sweat as prosecution is pondered, delayed. Tighten up the rules, make the law and the penalties clear for future potential malefactors, and drop the whole thing like the smelly turd that it is.
While the Mainstream media does its 'best'? to COVER-UP the party dissention of Puma & the Denver Group...
America, and definitely its economy would have to be completely IGNORED by voters to see 'the chosen one' (chosen by ABC, CBS, CNN & NBC, et al.) become our next President!!!
It would be foolish of Obama to say what he plans to do about the criminals in this adminstration at this time. President Obama may appoint a real Attorney General who would take up these issues and investigate them. (Schumer did us no favors recommending Mukasey.) The criminals in this administration should be jailed, some of them for life, for what they have done. But before that happens we need a new Attorney General and President Obama. O should not tip his hand on this one now.
Will fry all the vampires anyway.
Yes. That's exactly what Ford did for Nixon -- pardoned him in advance.
Yes, a president can pardon for any crime that may have been committed. Gerald Ford did it for Nixon. Nixon had not even been charged with anything when Ford pardoned him.
I have contacted Obama, who is my Senator, on several issues in the past four years regarding holding the Bush Administration accountable for their crimes. In every response he said they he was not sent to Washington to do this. He said that the American people want him to solve other problems which he then listed and that soon Bush would be out of office and the problems he created would leave with him. I doubt that he will do anything differently if he is elected. I was most upset that as a Constitutional lawyer, he didn't seem very concerned about questions on violations of that document. This was in direct opposition to what Obama said when he was running for the Senate. At a campaign event he had expressed great outrage at the things going on in Washington and the need for accountability.
So much talk this year about telling our children yes a woman can be president, or yes a black many can be president. Wouldn't a more important lesson be that you can't get away with a crime? Or do we prefer, in the name of stability teach our children to look up to the perpetrators of evil as our nation's respected leaders? Will we tell them because these people believed they had the good of the country in mind their law-breaking and inhumane acts are ok? Are these the ideals America believes in?
Whether it's Clinton or Reagan or Carter or Johnson or ... you can't be president without a lot of blood on your hands.
Actually, that's not entirely correct. Take a look at one of those lists of all the countries the US has bombed since WWII and the dates they were bombed. You'll notice that one President's term is missing - the much-maligned Jimmy Carter.
Yup, Carter is the only post WWII President who didn't bomb anybody. Which goes a long ways towards explaining why he's so unpopular, now that I think about it. Americans talk a good game when it comes to peace, but it's all just talk with absolutely no walk to back it up.
"But before that happens we need a new Attorney General and President Obama. O should not tip his hand on this one now."
Please. People like you will still be feeding us that bullshit after four years of Obama's complicity in what this administration started.
"Let's just re-elect him. We need a second term for O, THEN he can start solving problems."
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
