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• Wednesday, November 19, 2008 09:05 AM

  Scott Horton at Harper's . . .

  says that any decision about whether or not to prosecute war crimes should be neither the president's decision nor the attorney general's decision:

  http://harpers.org/archive/2008/11/hbc-90003867

  [...] But the bottom line is that there should be no call about prosecutions until there has been an investigation. The question is really how should an investigation be conducted, and who should conduct it?

  In the end any prosecution would require a special prosecutor, but who should handle the threshold inquiry into whether enough [evidence] exists to appoint one? Again, the Justice Department has resources for that purpose that cannot properly be put in play. There is one clear answer, which is for President Obama to follow the example of President Ford in his dealings with allegations of intelligence community misconduct with high-level complicity that rocked the mid-seventies. He should appoint a commission to lay bare the facts, putting what the public needs to know on the record. Only then should the call about a special prosecutor be made by the attorney general. He should have the commission’s advice and findings to draw on in the process, and he should take the decision avoiding the political tug-of-war now going down and the dark interests who are driving it.

  President Obama shouldn’t be focused on the fate of individual potential defendants. He should care about the nation’s reputation, our commitment to the rule of law, and a process that is worthy of our best traditions and aspirations.

  - - Scott Horton, at Harper's

  —sysprog Read sysprog's other letters
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