re: Hagel, Clark and a Bipartisan Commission on Torture and Interrogation
Two bloggers I have a fair bit of time for addressed various aspects of the truth commission issue today. Marc Ambinder started by observing that the fight between Obama and Feinstein/Rockefeller re: Panetta is almost a debate over torture oversight in reverse (something other influential bloggers tend to agree with). Marc considers the role played by two Democratic Senate Intel leaders over the past few years:
….a growing mass of evidence suggests that the intelligence oversight panels were cowed by the President at crucial junctures, intimidated by the exigencies of politics and war. And they knew. They knew that Abu Zubaida was subject to enhanced interrogation methods; that extraordinary renditions were frequently assigned; that the administration had vastly expanded the NSA’s collection of metadata inside the United States.
In trying to determine where Obama wants to take the issue Ambinder quotes the new head of the OLC, Dawn Johnson: ”Our constitutional democracy cannot survive with a government shrouded in secrecy, nor can our nation’s honor be restored without full disclosure.”
As Ambinder points out – this suggests that a truth commission is where Johnson (and perhaps Obama) wants this to go and that this direction has real consequences:
For a truth commission to fulfill its mission, commissioners would have to be empowered to look at every special program, every budget line item, every file — and then decide, on its own, how to balance national security and disclosure. For those who believe that, a truth commission would be more disruptive to the status quo and more cleansing to the moral palette than selective, patchwork prosecutions.
Andrew Sullivan, who has been persistent on the torture issue, picks up where Ambinder leaves off and weighs in supportively for a commission:
….it would be a path deliberately avoiding retribution. It would seek transparency and accountability for those acts committed by the Bush administration that crossed the line of core human rights. It would do so as a way to prove that the United States is returning to the rule of law and to the moral norms of international behavior that the US itself pioneered.
Andrew also notes, as I have in the on this blog, that this would not preclude trials:
Prosecutions will probably happen anyway as evidence of war crimes increases as the Bush administration recedes (insiders will be much less afraid of whistle-blowing, as time goes by).
Readers of this blog know that I want to see an Independent Bipartisan Commission on Torture and Interrogation that gathers all the information, makes public what it can and recommends a path forward for our country in every facet of the interrogation issue. With influential writers weighing in, we may be getting some real momentum going for a Commission.
With that hope in mind, of late I have started to consider who would be the right individual or individuals to chair such a panel. My sense is that the bipartisan pairing of former Sen. Hagel and Gen. Wes Clark would provide the type of leadership needed to steer this Commission through some tough issues. What do you guys think? Is a Commission a good idea? Would a Hagel-Clark Commission be effective?
No related posts.
It’s a sad state of affairs when we’re actually debating whether government officials should be held publicly accountable for their lawlessness over the past eight years. It’s not about retribution. It’s simply that we can’t possibly begin to right the ship of state unless we have a clear understanding of what went wrong and why. A presidential truth commission is certainly one way to establish the facts so that effective reform measures can be taken, and any competent executive would want a clear understanding of how previous administrations went wrong before new policies are adopted. But Congress has a constitutional responsibility it must fulfill as well.
It’s too easy to look at the excesses of the last eight years as an executive branch problem. But as Marc Ambinder’s piece points out, it was the failure of Congress to serve as an effective check against executive abuse that allowed us to go so far off course. It’s not just particular members but the whole system of oversight that failed, and that’s something that must be fixed if we are going to ensure that our constitutional system of government survives in a way the framers would recognize. History will show Congress did no favors to President Bush, or to the country, by giving a wink-and-a-nod to patently illegal and counter-productive intelligence programs. Congress can’t restore itself as a co-equal branch of government if it continues to let others do its work. It has the investigative tools and the responsibility to re-establish its relevance in national security matters. Assigning a select committee to investigate not just torture but all illegal intelligence activities would allow Members to start exercising those oversight muscles so they can better fulfill their constitutional obligations in the future. And there’s no reason that the two inquiries couldn’t proceed simultaneously. That’s what checks and balances are about.
Comment on January 8, 2009 @ 3:36 pm