The Associated Press has been a willingly complicit enabler while in pursuit of the coveted "Judith Miller" prize during the past eight years. David Gregory was still mentioned as in the running for his foxy back-up singing for Karl Rove, but it looks as though Katy Couric blew it totally.

Former president Bill Clinton's ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith, espoused the same Cass Sunstein/Ruth Marcus "time to move on" philosophy during a book promotion-interview on "Radio Times," a local Philadelphia public radio show. He's also thrilled with Hillary's appointment. Don't buy his book.

than he was tried for, just as Bush&co has done more than we know about. I am guessing that Chuckie really has done worse things than Bush&co, but we might never know.

The jurisdiction for war crimes and crimes against humanity follows a pecking order. The first courts that have jurisdiction are the courts where the crime occurred and the courts of the country of origin of the alleged perpetrator. The Hague (in both incarnations, ICT or ICC) is last in line. For most of what happened in Liberia, the jurisdiction is currently with the ICTSL (International Criminal Tribunal - Sierra Leone), to which Sierra Leone and Liberia have ceded jurisdiction. The ICTSL is using the facilities and the Office of the Prosecutor at the ICC to do the trials, so they are involved, too. But the U.S. expressed interest in prosecuting Chuckie (country of origin of the perpetrator) so they get the jurisdiction, not the ICTSL. His father is being prosecuted by the ICTSL in the ICC.

While this seems complicated, it actually is something of a success story, since, if you recall, the prosecution of key members of the Khmer Rouge calls up the normally way-too-slow wheels of justice associated with the tribunal system as a whole, and is a good reason for why the ICC is necessary.

As ondelette brought up about the ordering of the questions on change.gov, Obama's team asnwered the first Five Questions:

Here's the transition team's answers to the five questions that received the most votes:

http://change.gov/newsroom/entry/open_for_questions_response/

Here's the tally for the votes, below. Look how the Special Prosecutor/Accountability question (which came in 6th place) actually received more votes than question number five before they closed the poll. So it was the top five question, but the Obama Transition team somehow pretended it came in sixth place and so avoided it:

http://change.gov/page/content/20081211_openforquestions

Obama purposely evaded that question even though it was the fifth top voted for question posed to him.

He hasn't even taken office and he's already side-stepping his own rules for making people believe he'll be accountable to them and their concerns. Unbelieveable!

I ain't the welcome wagon; far from it. But I would like to say welcome to this comment area. Your stuff has been very good so far --- I hope you find time to write a lot more here.

I'll wish you a happy new year in late January when the real new year starts. :-)

as proof that he intends to do NOTHING with regards to holding this administration accountable.

He's not going to do anything that might expose the complicity of Pelosi et al.

And I wish you and everyone else here a wonderful New Year!

I interpret this evasion in answering his supporter's question

as proof that he intends to do NOTHING with regards to holding this administration accountable.

-- The Call Up

Notice the count of 'like' and 'Dislike' this question. The 'dislike' on the Fitzgerald question cancels out the total in comparison to the one just above that has fewer 'Like' votes. I think it's possible that that might explain how they've numbered the Fitzgeral question below the other one.

Good point. I just did the math and you are correct.

From a strategic and perhaps cynical angle, one might wonder why they even have a dislike vote. Do we get a dislike vote at the ballot box?

Perhaps, it's so the transition team can ensure the "right" questions have the opportunity to move upwards just before the poll closes? That question certainly has a lot of "dislikes" considering how few the legalizing marijuana one has.

I think it's possible that that might explain how they've numbered the Fitzgeral question below the other one.

This makes more sense to me - without trying too hard I think I could come up with a non-response response along the lines of other things Obama says in those answers:

The President-elect will direct the Justice Department and the Attorney General to review the previous Administration's policies. While it s too early to pre-judge the outcome of those inquiries, the President-elect believes that a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law.

I think that he could still really have decided that he is not going to do jack shite about any investigation, but I think he could make placatory statements long enough to let any potential furor (if one were ever to actually emerge) die down.

I doubt he'd want to say anything as explicit as he'd have his justice department and Attorney General look into what they'd immediately recognize as obvious war crimes.

The crimes are so explicit to everyone, that to even suggest that he would have the justice department look into it would then place the burden on his justice department to lie on behalf of the previous administration if they really didn't want to open this can of worms.

But Digby, with regard to pushing Obama to pursue prosecutions, made this wryly amusing quip:

This is really worth doing. If Obama wants to do the right thing here, he needs some political support and according to the polls he doesn't have much. It could be really helpful for liberals to apply their awesome powers to choose CIA chiefs to this issue as well.

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/ask-question-by-digby-theres-been-lot.html

We have less than three weeks of time until W. Bush leaves. What pardons for torture will he issue? If he issues few or none, we will know that W. Bush and Cheney et al. live in Cuckoo Land. If he issues many pardons, we will know that these evil people actually understand reality.

Either way, we can use their own pardons against them. And, Obama is smart to keep a low profile. Plenty of the rest of us are ready to do the investigations and provide the evidence. Once we present it, then (in a year or two), Obama's people can jump onboard.

If everybody stays on course, W. Bush, Cheney, and several others will have to move to Paraguay. That would be a big victory.

Happy New Year to people of good will! A pox on all torturers!