A true cause for hope! It seems that both the American people (6 out of 10 according to a new USA Today/Gallup poll) and the most powerful Democrats on Capitol Hill agree that an investigation/independent probe into the possible crimes carried out under the Bush administration is necessary. According to the USA Today/Gallup Poll, released on February 12, the American people favor either a criminal investigation or an independent probe into possible Bush administration crimes:
62% who favor some type of investigation into the possible use of torture when interrogating terrorism suspects, 63% who do so with respect to the possible use of telephone wiretaps without obtaining a warrant, and 71% who support investigating possible attempts to use the Justice Department for political purposes.
Meanwhile, on Capitol Hill the pressure continues to mount on the Obama administration to move away from the spineless notion of ‘looking forward and not backward’ and instead, move toward Obama’s repeated claim that “nobody’s above the law, and if there are clear instances of wrong doing, that people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen.”
Importantly, the calls to investigate the Bush Administration are coming from the leadership of Obama’s very own party; starting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Nancy Pelosi has openly expressed support for House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers calls for continued committee investigation, a blue ribbon commission to fully investigate administration activities, and independent criminal probes into the Bush administration. After releasing a nearly 500-page report documenting numerous abuses and excesses of the Bush administration Conyers put it like this, “Even after scores of hearings, investigations, and reports, we still do not have answers to some of the most fundamental questions left in the wake of Bush’s Imperial Presidency.”
On January 21st—the first official working day of the Obama administration – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he would support funding and staff for additional investigations by the Senate Armed Services Committee; which released a scathing report back in December linking top Bush Administration officials, including Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary, to the abuses committed by American troops at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; Abu Ghraib in Iraq; and other military detentions centers around the world. The Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin, who issued the report, reaffirmed Reid’s position by saying that there needs to be an “accounting of torture in this country.”
In addition to the over 60% of Americans, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Conyers, and Carl Levin, the Senate Judiciary Committee chair Patrick Leahy declared on Monday, February 9th, that he too was keen on investigating the Bush administration. Patrick Leahy explained that he wanted to find a ‘middle ground’ between leading Democrats, Republicans, and the Obama administration in order to ‘find the truth’. Leahy said, “We need to get to the bottom of what
happened—and why—so we make sure it never happens again.” He proposed a “Reconciliation and Truth Commission.” Just how effective such a commission would be in extrapolating the truth about what happened during the eight dark years of the Bush administration is up for debate. Another issue up for debate is whether or not a ‘Reconciliation and Truth Commission’ would have a long-term deterrence or accountability effect on future politicians who come to power in the executive branch.
History shows that the proposed ‘truth commission’ model has indeed failed to stop the very executive branch abuses that such a commission was established to prevent. As the debate rages on and pro-investigation positions continue to gain force in the halls of Congress and popularity in the streets; the decision of whether or not such an investigation comes into fruition and has any teeth to it, is ultimately up to President Obama. Will he proceed with moral courage and take the constitutional responsibility he was elected to uphold, or will he retreat into cowardly opportunism and hypocrisy, allowing the first opportunity in his self proclaimed ‘new era of responsibility’ to wither and dissipate in the winds of political convenience.