wrote:He seems to me to be the guy to say, if a crime's been commited then they will face the music. Period.

Show me some evidence for this. I am certainly not against Mr. Obama. Best president-elect we have had in many decades. But I do not see him thinking as you say. I think his attitude is "Yes, some bad thinks were done, but let's move on and do good things".

You will probably get a kick out of this:

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2007/09/fun-facts-about-invertebrates/

or clicky on siggy

Obama will have to do a careful balancing act. At a conference in Washington this week, former department criminal division chief Robert S. Litt asked that the new administration avoid fighting old battles that could be perceived as vindictive, such as seeking to prosecute government officials involved in decisions about interrogation and the gathering of domestic intelligence. Human rights groups have called for such investigations, as has House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.).

Insisting that war crimes are just "politics" -- "he said, she said" differences of opinion, and "can't we just move on" -- is to trivialise our judicial system, to ignore the unjustified deaths of thousands of people, and to neuter the rule of law.

These are jus cogens crimes; internationally and universally recognised as crimes whether or not they are banned by domestic law. They can not be ignored. Any civilised nation has a duty to prosecute them, and if they don't, others may do so.

It's not "vindictive". It's not "politics". It's necessary and should happen regardless of the political affiliations of any of the perpetrators.

Cheers,

A friend of mine linked that to my blog this morning. I had written inspired by the disgust I felt at watching Friedman flog his book on the daily show, and Stewart's complete disregard for Friedman's incredible failures on Iraq...

apparently that's from the fake NYT that circulated around yesterday...

http://www.nytimes-se.com/2009/07/04/the-end-of-the-experts/

Take a look at my blog for the Friedman article I wrote...link at sig...

We already know that the law does not apply equally to persons in the USA.

Corrupt businessmen can steal millions or billions and just get a fine if caught.

I can go to jail for stealing a hubcap.

Etc, etc, etc,

Refusal to pursue members of the Bush administration who have clealy broken laws will be a further reminder of this inequality and will breed more cynicism in the american people.

The real blockage here is that the courts and congress went along with the activities and thus are accomplices ...... they will not want to pursue convictions that will also indict them.

Let me get this straight... the Democrats only investigate for political reasons.... there are no real crimes to investigate.... Well, there probably were, but that's none of our business... if the crimes came out, they'd turn out to be justified.... but that's nobody's business, too.... Bush wasn't impeached because of democrat's complicity.... but complicity in what no one knows, because it's secret and there was a good reason for it....

The logic here is so impeccably circular one has to marvel. If Democrats aren't going after Bush, it's for the Best, but naturally, since it's them, it's because they're really weak and complicit. But if they were to investigate, it would cause great harm, and be done only for "political" purposes, but once the truth came out, everyone would see that Bush was right and the Democrats were wrong. Heads Republicans win, tails Democrats lose. Oh yeah, and Clinton caused 9/11, and Saddam did, too.

I used to wonder, who, exactly, was half-witted enough to still support Bush... could 22% of America be that dumb? This NOB post explained it for me.

Today's Contest winner, or is this more of a lifetime achievement award.....

I saw it Daily Kos and thought you'd appreciate it, particularly this part (it's Friedman's 2009 "resignation" column):

But to have been so completely and fundamentally wrong about so huge a disaster as what we have done to Iraq — and ourselves — is outrageous enough to prove that people like me have no business posing as wise men, and, more importantly, that The New York Times has no business continuing to provide me with a national platform.

http://tinyurl.com/56d5qs

Glenn Greenwald:

"In today's New York Times, Charlie Savage identifies the self-serving motive leading new Presidents to continuously uphold this lawbreaking license for their predecessors:"

Because every president eventually leaves office, incoming chief executives have an incentive to quash investigations into their predecessor’s tenure. Mr. Bush used executive privilege for the first time in 2001, to block a subpoena by Congressional Republicans investigating the Clinton administration.

The Charlie Savage quote mischaracterizes the scope and, I believe, the motivation behind that Bush claim of executive privilege. That subpoena related to information involving several cases. From AP:(click sig)

President Bush invoked executive privilege for the first time Thursday to keep Congress from seeing documents of prosecutors' decision-making in cases ranging from a decades-old Boston murder to the Clinton-era fund-raising probe.

And the intent behind it seems to have had more to do with laying the foundation of Bush's (Cheney's) imperial presidency than serial presidential back-scratching.

"I believe congressional access to these documents would be contrary to the national interest," Bush wrote in a memo ordering Attorney General John Ashcroft to withhold the documents from a House investigative committee that subpoenaed them.

The decision institutes a dramatic change in the way the administration intends to deal with Congress after years in which the Justice Department, sometimes reluctantly, shared sensitive investigative documents with lawmakers.

--snip--

More importantly, it sets a new policy in the works for months in which the administration will resist lawmakers' requests to view prosecutorial decision-making documents that have been routinely turned over to Congress in years past.

--snip--

White House counsel Alberto Gonzales recommended Bush invoke the privilege earlier this fall.

Bush's reason for claiming executive privilege was self-serving but it wasn't presidential tribute paid in return for future leniency or part of some presidential forgiveness lineage handshake extended backward to Bill Clinton.

In fact, mountain girl got it right on page 1: "Bush II did not have to investigate or prosecute Clinton's wrongdoings. The Republicans had just spent 8 years doing that."

And there were no establishment cries during those years which "venerat(ed) "centrism" and "bi-partisanship" as the highest religious concepts". During the impeachment years the "rule of law" and "no one is above the law" were echoed by Repuplican, Democrat and established media whore alike, as if they actually believed those phrases conceptually rather than selectively.

There is no evidence of a "self-serving motive leading new Presidents to continuously uphold this lawbreaking license for their predecessors".

There is evidence of a double-standard for centrism and bi-partisanship and forgiveness. The standard for Democrats is not only enforced by the Beltway media via pressure from the Republicans but also enforced from within the Democratic party itself. The Republicans are under no such constraints or pressures, and wouldn't respect them or be swayed by them in any case.