There is an intriguing post up at Crooks and Liars:

http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/bruce-fein-obama-prosecute-torture-or

The point made by Bruce Fein is that we really only have two choices: investigate, prosecute, and likely convict Bush officials that facilitated torture, or pardon those same people. The third option - to 'leave it in the past'- completely undermines the rule of law and will cause irreparable damage to our system of constitutional justice. We simply cannot leave actions with this much evidence of illegality unaddressed.

I clearly vote for prosecution, but I'm curious if those who are against prosecuting these cases would vote for pardons. Whaddaya say?

Voting for prosecution here too. Cheney should be tried.

So, what you're advocating is each time there is a regime change in the US, we prosecute all of those who have a different political viewpoint during the last administration.

Sort of like the Latin American dictators do. You know, those guys that wear the mirrored sunglasses.

Is that the kind of country you want to live in?

Deane--The way NOT to have that kind of country is to uphold the rule of law. Let the chips fall where they may. Or we will have leaders with mirrored sunglasses.

So, what you're advocating, Deane, is that if the President of the United States wants to break the law, all he needs to do is appoint a legal counsel in the Justice Department that says it's legal. Shoot, maybe Obama can start blowing away Republican senators with a 45 to break a filibuster - just as soon as he can get an opinion that it's legal.

Laws - who needs 'em?

First of all, neither Cheney or Bush broke the law in any material manner. This is nothing but liberals all tense because they weren't running things.

Heading down this path will make it impossible for the government to function.

Shall we dig Kennedy and Johnson up and prosecute them for Vietnam?

I smell the hand of Soros in this.

I smell something but it's more like BS.

You really have a paranoid fanscination with Soros. He has nothing to do with anything.

Bottom line for me is that if laws were broken, people should be held accountable. Otherwise, what's to keep the next crew from doing the same things but with different agendas?

Deane_johnson: First of all, neither Cheney or Bush broke the law in any material manner.

You are presumably not an attorney or an expert in the law and are surely biased by your hatred of all things "liberal." Bush, Cheney, and certain senior administration officials may indeed have broken the law. I don't know if they did or not, because I'm not a lawyer either. But I wouldn't be surprised if they did.

Shall we dig Kennedy and Johnson up and prosecute them for Vietnam?

LBJ should most certainly been gone after for the whole Gulf of Tonkin thing, if there was any legal grounds to do it. Since Nixon replaced him and pursued a policy of "peace by escalation" and lied worse than LBJ did, Nixon didn't really have grounds to stand on in going after LBJ.

What we need to do is elect a President and tell him to just go fishing and forget about the world problems since he won't be able to satisfy the liberals no matter what he does.

If he makes one little mistake in his pursuit of protecting the American people from the really bad guys, the liberals want his head. What a bunch of BS.

OK, Deane, so let's give Obama an assault rifle and let him have at it with Republicans in the Senate - just as soon as he gets a legal opinion that it's OK. I mean, that might be a mistake, but it sure would make things easier for Obama to solve some tough problems, wouldn't it? Glad you think the President shouldn't be prosecuted for a "mistake" like that. He's just trying to save the American economy and all that.

The fact that we as a country do not torture is one of our core values going back to Gen. George Washington in the Revolutionary war. I've heard many stories - post WWII and post Gulf War - that the enemy is more apt to surrender rather than keep fighting because they know they will not be mistreated by the U.S. IT SAVES TROOP LIVE!!!

"material manner"

Issuing orders IS material Deane.

What needs to happen is investigation of the facts.

Compelled Testimony, as in you will be in a cage until you cough it up, until you testify.

Prosecution.

We know they lied about the war.

We know they paid people to capture supposed terrorists.

We know they didn't give those people DUE PROCESS, nor did they give them HABIUS CORPUS.

That hoses up actually trying them in a just way. We lost our legal high ground when we did that.

We know they redefined torture and terrorist.

We are not sure if they had exigent circumstances.

We know there is no enduring public record avaliable for other breeches of the law. Wiretapping, etc..

The absolute minimum we require is that enduring public record, and accountability for what is in that record.

IMHO, it's perfectly valid for a court to rule their actions were ok. But we have to have that rule, because the LAW was circumvented.

The President has the authority we grant him. The President is not a king.

Our actions this term set precident for future ones, and define our International standing going forward.

That impacts all of us.

This just isn't "politics". This is about appropriate and just use of power. Our system of government demands we render a decision on such extreme uses of power.

...or, we say we won't, and being American means something different than it used to.

And Deane, this is not a Liberal -vs- Conservative thing. This is an American issue, with plenty of conservatives wanting a resolution.

The only people I know who are seriously advacating we don't do this are those who believe that fear trumps the law, and who buy into the ends justifying the means.

Neither of those two things are part of the definition of this nation. ---Unless, we don't follow through on this.

"One little mistake" is a whole lot different from a contrived effort to do these things. We are not talking about a bad judgment call. I believe those are relegated to the ballot box.

We've done that! The Republicans really sucked, and they got hammered. Done, next.

What we have not done is review and judge the contrived efforts. That is what the world is waiting for.

We often take the position of global police --leader. If that leader is shown corrupt, we lose that higher ground, and that DOES have very significant implications for all of us and our safety.

There just isn't a whole lot of arguing about that element of it.

Deane, here it is in a nutshell, step by step.

1) Much evidence has arisen that key officials in the Bush administration authorized torture, and that underlings carried it out.

2) Torture is a crime, and there are NO exceptions in law to it being a crime.

3) The Justice Department is duty-bound to investigate possible crimes, especially high crimes such as torture. (or do you disagree?)

The options are:
A) Forbid the Justice Department from pursuing charges based on this evidence. (which is about as "political" an act as you can imagine),

B) Permit the investigation to move forward, which may or may not end in conviction(s).

If there are convictions, should there be pardons? A pardon, in effect, would say "Illegal actions were taken, but those convicted are forgiven for taking those actions (for some reason)."

Bruce Fein (a staunch conservative under Reagan, though no lapdog of Bush - here's his bio.)was the one to suggest the idea of pardons. His goal is not political, but judicial - he sees that these charges cannot go unaddressed, because doing so would severely undermine the rule of law, THE keystone principle of our constitutional republic.

Many conservatives seem of the mind that IF illegal torture did occur, those who did it should be excused because of the great service they were doing for national security. This is essentially what a pardon would do. Frankly Deane, I would think that you would be in favor of this.

So Deane, how about we investigate, see who broke the law, then call on Obama to pardon as appropriate. Since Obama truly seems to want to put this all in the past, I bet he would go for it.

Will you?

So then let's charge Clinton with murder. He left our soldiers to be slaughtered in Mogadishu while he was busy getting a blow job in the White House. At the very least, he's guilty of dereliction of duty.

How far do you want to take this?

That's a different thing.

The system worked for Clinton, BTW. He was judged, found guilty, then it was also determined removing him from office was not warranted.

We may find that key members of the Bush administration did, in fact, break the law. Heck, there is enough on record with the lies alone to determine that. But, on the torture, we've not yet determined what really happened.

At the very least, we need an enduring public record of their actions. And we may find that perhaps they did act in some fashion that was warranted. I doubt it, but that might be determined.

We must have this process, or we are not who we present ourselves as to the rest of the world, and are not the nation I grew up learning about and am proud of.

That's grave enough to warrant some consideration.

It's not a revenge thing with me. Isn't for most everybody I know that wants it all sorted out.

The revenge happened at the ballot box.

Now, it's accounting and judgement that needs to occur. We just can't let that stuff pass without those two things happening. That is how it works here.

I sense you are angry because Bush was just trying to lead. If that's true, and it turns out that the issue is him being a very poor leader, then he's gonna get a pardon, or something.

On the other hand, if the effort was contrived for personal gain, vendettas, or some other self-serving deal, then he's in serious trouble.

Comes down to the question often asked here:

Is he dumb, incompetent, or not?

The big deal for me is that he is not above the law. To deny the accounting and judgement is above the law. Most of my gripes about that administration center around that idea.

Kings and dictators are above the law. American Presidents are not.

...or maybe they are. That's the national question before us.

Missing: "The system worked for Clinton, BTW. He was judged, found guilty, then it was also determined removing him from office was not warranted."

When was Clinton found guilty? Are you referring to the impeachment trials? He was never convicted of impeachment, just charged.

Deane: You are so avoiding the question. No I don't think that Clinton should be charged with murder, because I've seen no evidence of the crime of murder being committed. Now if you want to argue that a C. in C. that orders soldiers into conflicts should be held personally responsible for their deaths, that a HUGE can of worms I don't think you really want to open.

Can you stop politicizing this, and deal with the issues?...



Wait a minute. I just figured something out. You think everything is political, don't you? The so-called "Bush bashing" over the last eight years was just the whining of a bunch of sore losers. The call for torture investigations is a political vendetta. Is that the way you see the world?

If so, then what are we to think of the Obama bashing - particularly your Obama bashing?

Deane, clearly you don't understand the difference between willfully maneuvering to break or skirt the law (i.e. torture) to suit you political beliefs and having shit happen to you during your presidency that you tried to avoid.

We know you have an extreme bias against anything "liberals" (anyone who disagrees with you) might be in favor of or that might go against your political party, but many of us do see the torture thing in a legalistic way. If people of either party willfully attempted to break the law by having their justice department produce legal opinions justifying their actions, those people should be prosecuted if they have broken a law. Too bad your political bias so clouds your judgment that you can't look at such legal issues objectively.

>>BS
Barbra Streisand

It was determined that no further action was needed with Clinton, which was the right decision.

I'm not happy about what he did, but in the overall scheme of things, it's not worth replacing a President over. He paid his price, as did we, with the 2000 election, and his record tarnished and his legal license suspended.

Patton Oswalt said (several years ago):

"If the standard for impeachment is covering up a burglary, or getting a blowjob, if that means 'you're impeached,' then shouldn't Bush have been executed by this point?"

>>BS
Barbra Streisand

How true!

impeach Sam Adams!!

trashing the troops,and hating your country is as above is one of the liberal ultra-lefty practice as usual!!!!

62, you've already exceeded your exclamation mark quota. If we have a punctuation recession, youll bear most of the blame.

"...is as above is...!!!!!!"

huh?

What we need to do is elect a President and tell him to just go fishing and forget about the world problems.



You did in 2000! The first 6 months he was on vacation NOT reading his PDB about Osama planning to use aircraft to attack America.....

Prosecute all libs who mistreated/hasseled veterans(called them names, false accusations, waved finger,etc, Pres and veeps count as vets!!!

Yeah, that's it: prosecute people for name calling. The American way!!!! Methinks a lot of Republicans would be going to jail too though...

I am getting tired of how we use the phrase "Hate America."

I don't think there is one person on this message board that actually hates America. We have strong opinions about how it should be run, but nothing I have read indicates to me flat out hatred of America by American's.

I understand it's more of a semantical ploy to emphasize a point, but it's poorly used IMHO, especially on this message board.

Agreed.

Actually, whether we agree or not, the fact that we do come here to talk about current events, (and other things) means we do not hate America.

"Hate America" is just one of the many loaded phrases that conservatives have launched in recent years to create strawmen and derail true debate about the issues.

Currently, do not the teabaggers "Hate America"? Doesn't the secessionist governor of Texas "Hate America"?

I invite a conservative to respond.

Prosecute all libs who mistreated/hasseled veterans(called them names, false accusations, waved finger,etc, Pres and veeps count as vets!!!


Prosecute former VP's and Presidents that got kids killed in Iraq....


62 you must be back on meth???

hn will Jane Fonda be prosecuted???

hn will Jane Fonda be prosecuted???



Right after YOU!

> Currently, do not the teabaggers "Hate America"?

I wouldn't say so, unless "America" is defined as governmental revenue streams.

> Doesn't the secessionist governor of Texas "Hate America"?

I can accept the claim that secessionists "Hate America." If they liked it, I can't imagine why they would want to secede.

last nite,C2c had on some loony-toon who seemed to buy into every conspiracy theory ever invented(mostly invented by thefar left)!!!I saw a sign the othe day saying that they"(anarchists) now want a Class War!!!???seems like that is "hate"!!!???

They just hate you 62!

Isn't the meth smoking getting old?