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g_crush –

Looks like you've figured out that critical second step that eluded the Underwear Gnomes.

Andy,
I agree with you about Joe. I have openly admired his courage in rejecting the most extreme rhetoric out of AIPAC and the neoconservative cabal, and his willingness to reject the standard gratuitous Democrat-bashing fare found among preponderance of the DC Elite. Likewise, I praised his courage in the naming of George W. Bush in this piece as responsible for this worst of all blights upon our nation during his presidency. Perhaps I'm being too combative in engaging this issue; I trust it is at least thought-provoking, and it isn't personal.
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I am by no means in agreement with those who claim the public's alleged lack of desire for accountability is a good reason to ignore the rule of law and let the Bush administration off the hook. However, I also question those who are clamoring for Bush's head on a pike as if going after the administration legally will not have consequences beyond making Bush and his friends uncomfortable.
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Granted, I am risking the ire of my fellow commentators by suggesting that this is not a black and white issue. But I think we have a responsibility not just to agitate for a single course of action but to encourage the exploration of the pros and cons of a variety of means to reassert our core values. It may very well turn out that the best course of action is to charge Bush and the crew with war crimes, but we ought to have a richer discussion before we demand the subpoenas or condemn those who disagree. Off the top of my head some of my questions include: Where would this fit in the list of public priorities? What are the possible consequences for our foreign policy initiatives? How would this impact the office of the presidency going forward? Would this leave us vulnerable to civil sanctions in international courts? With everything else going on how will the media handle this would we end up taking our eye off of the immediate goals of saving our economy? Please, no attacks based on principals or the law comes before everything else. Indictments may indeed be the way to go -- I am just saying where is the discussion about what this path would mean to the nation and if there are other means to achieve the same goals that might produce a better overall outcome?

You all have covered the pluses and minuses of Joe's column pretty well, but I am surprised no one highlighted Joe's parting suggestion:
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If Obama doesn't want to make that statement, perhaps we could do it in the form of a Bush Memorial in Washington: a statue of the hooded Abu Ghraib prisoner in cruciform stress position — the real Bush legacy.
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I would contribute to that.

It may very well turn out that the best course of action is to charge Bush and the crew with war crimes, but we ought to have a richer discussion before we demand the subpoenas or condemn those who disagree...

I think we're jumping the gun here. The first step is to get a public airing of what went on. Everyone enjoys the presumption of innocence. It's the presumption of guilt accompanied by a shoulder shrug and an "oh well" that is unacceptable. It serves as a clear demonstration that the political class actually operates outside the law and that everyone's comfortable with that UNLESS the accusation is of influence peddling or ilicit sex.

This column would have been a lot braver 3 years ago.
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"I would say that there's some theoretical exposure here" to a war-crimes indictment in U.S. federal court, says Gene Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School. "But I don't think there's much public appetite for that sort of action."
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Why is that when it comes to the rabble, EXAMPLES MUST BE MADE! But suddenly, when it's a rich powerful white guy, we are told that the blood thirsty, paparazzi emboldening, payback seeking, 'if it bleeds it leads' American people suddenly become Blanche DuBois? There is a HUGE APPETITE for just that very thing. It would be bigger than the Super Bowl, hands down. Who will be our Robespierre? Our Marat? History shows Joe, that if the government won't hold people responsible, then the mob will, and I definitely see mobs in our future.
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I still think there's a possibility that we'll see Bush behind the plexiglass at some point. Rendition by a world power w/ the US powerless to stop it is certainly a future possibility.

Dee, Bruce Fein and John Nichols on Bill Moyers explain why it is important to hold them publicly accountable for their crimes:
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BILL MOYERS: One of the fellows you're about to meet wrote the first article of impeachment against President Clinton. Bruce Fein did so because perjury is a legal crime. And Fein believed no one is above the law. A constitutional scholar, Bruce Fein served in the Justice Department during the Reagan administration and as general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission. Bruce Fein has been affiliated with conservative think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation and now writes a weekly column for THE WASHINGTON TIMES and Politico.com.
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He's joined by John Nichols, the Washington correspondent for THE NATION and an associate editor of the CAPITOL TIMES. Among his many books is this most recent one, THE GENIUS OF IMPEACHMENT: THE FOUNDERS' CURE FOR ROYALISM. Good to see you both. Bruce, you wrote that article of impeachment against Bill Clinton. Why did you think he should be impeached?
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BILL MOYERS: Bruce you wrote that article of impeachment against Bill Clinton. Why did you think he should be impeached?
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BRUCE FEIN: I think he was setting a precedent that placed the president above the law. I did not believe that the initial perjury or misstatements-- that came perhaps in a moment of embarrassment stemming from the Paula Jones lawsuit was justified impeachment if he apologized. Even his second perjury before the grand jury when Ken Starr's staff was questioning him, as long as he expressed repentance, would not have set an example of saying every man, if you're president, is entitled to be a law unto himself. I think Bush's crimes are a little bit different. I think they're a little bit more worrisome than Clinton's. You don't have to have--
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BILL MOYERS: More worrisome?
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BRUCE FEIN: More worrisome than Clinton's-- because he is seeking more institutionally to cripple checks and balances and the authority of Congress and the judiciary to superintend his assertions of power. He has claimed the authority to tell Congress they don't have any right to know what he's doing with relation to spying on American citizens, using that information in any way that he wants in contradiction to a federal statute called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He's claimed authority to say he can kidnap people, throw them into dungeons abroad, dump them out into Siberia without any political or legal accountability. These are standards that are totally anathema to a democratic society devoted to the rule of law.
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. . .
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BILL MOYERS: I served a president who went to war on his own initiative, and it was a mess, Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson. There wasn't serious talk about impeaching Lyndon Johnson or Hubert Humphrey. Something is different today.
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BRUCE FEIN: Yeah, of course, the-- difference is one thing to claim that, you know, Gulf of Tonkin resolution, was too broadly drafted. But we're talking about assertions of power that affect the individual liberties of every American citizen. Opening your mail, your e-mails, your phone calls. Breaking and entering your homes. Creating a pall of fear and intimidation if you say anything against the president you may find retaliation very quickly. We're claiming he's setting precedents that will lie around like loaded weapons anytime there's another 9/11. Right now the victims are people whose names most Americans can't pronounce. And that's why they're not so concerned. They will start being Browns and Jones and Smiths. And that precedent is being set right now. And one of the dangers that I see is it's not just President Bush but the presidential candidates for 2008 aren't standing up and saying--
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BRUCE FEIN: --"If I'm president, I won't imitate George Bush." That shows me that this is a far deeper problem than Mr. Bush and Cheney.
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BILL MOYERS: That struck me about your writings and your book. You say your great-- your great fear is that Bush and Cheney will hand off to their successors a toolbox that they will not avoid using.
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JOHN NICHOLS: Well, let's try a metaphor. Let's say that-- when George Washington chopped down the cherry tree, he used the wood to make a little box. And in that box the president puts his powers. We've taken things out. We've put things in over the years. On January 20th, 2009, if George Bush and Dick Cheney are not appropriately held to account this administration will hand off a toolbox with more powers than any president has ever had, more powers than the founders could have imagined. And that box may be handed to Hillary Clinton or it may be handed to Mitt Romney or Barack Obama or someone else. But whoever gets it, one of the things we know about power is that people don't give away the tools. They don't give them up. The only way we take tools out of that box is if we sanction George Bush and Dick Cheney now and say the next president cannot govern as these men have.

Paul Dirks -- perhaps I should have began there. It's apart of what I am getting at. I am reading so many calls for criminal investigations and perhaps what we need first is a truth and reconciliation commission. We need to have a discussion of everything that has gone on and how they square with our core principals. The we can talk about what kinds of things we can do to prevent a departure from our values from happening again and judge the pros and cons of those measures.

Dirks,
actually, the Senate Armed Services Committee conducted a thorough investigation issued a unanimous report unequivocally blaming George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld fortheir torture policies. I mean, how many investigations do we need before there is a criminal investigation? And why can't they be done at the same time? There *has* been public airing of "what went on." There are articles in the NYT, there are books, there is testimony before various Congressional committees, there is televised admissions by the principals that they authorized these illegal acts. There are documentaries read THIS one and weep: TORTURINGDEMOCRACY.ORG. No really, watch the whole thing. I see no reason to kick the can down the road once again.
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Dee,
there you go again, constructing your outrageous straw men to bash your fellow commenters by putting stupid words in their mouth.
I also question those who are clamoring for Bush's head on a pike as if going after the administration legally will not have consequences beyond making Bush and his friends uncomfortable.
Who said anything of the sort, really?
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Wvng--
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Your post seems to support my premise for a richer discussion. The consequences of the Clinton impeachment (which while supposedly was to prove the president wasn't above the law but would have been unlikely pursued if it was an ordinary American) was ridiculous and it forced us to take our eye off the ball. I believe it not only helped Bush to secure a victory in 2000, it delegitimized Clinton's focus on Al Queda because everyone in the media was talking about a "wag the dog" scenario and as a result we dismissed the danger -- until 9/11 of course.
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Perhaps if we had focused on reasserting our values after Watergate and had a rich discussion about how to prevent this from happening again bush and Cheney would have used the same "when the president does it it's not a crime" defense that Nixon started.

Note that it took eight years for the general public to acknowledge that the Republicans "might not be doing the best job". This is the public that went with George Dubya and thousands dead in Iraq because Clinton dropped his pants. These are the people that flip through their daughter's People Magazine looking for blurred shots of a topless Britney Spears all the while nodding in agreement at O'Reilly's pronouncements of the decline of American morals. Do you really think the AMERICAN PUBLIC in the 24 hour if-it's-on-tape-it's-what-people-want-to-see news era have the interest or attention span to involve themselves in a public political trial of folks that they secretly agree with because we all know life if a comic book version of a John Wayne meets Dirty Harry movie?
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If the Obama years lead us to a more enlightened path then maybe the public will demand a higher standard... and even if that becomes true it takes very little to knock the legs out again.

The most despicable act of this horribly despicable administration? Hmm. Should be a contest on this. The list of items would be long indeed. What will happen? Nothing. John Yoo, the despicable Justice Dept. atty already has a cush job at prestigeous Berkeley. Addington, no doubt will enjoy similiar rewards for his service to our country beyond his warped legal positions, and having stepped in to serve the Vice after the departure of the convict Libby. Cheney and Bush will reap gazillions in speaking engagements. The Bush Foundation will build the $500 million Bush library and foreign policy institute in Dallas. Nobody who served in the despicable regime will suffer loss, all will enjoy reward. Obamad, for his part, will be occupied cleaning up the mess and probably doesn't give a rat's ass about these fools, other than they are around him.

*Obama
*not around him

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I'm going with cincy on this one. There is a HUGE APPETITE among the unwashed for big fat circus trials, bigger than OJ!!!! Bigger than William Kennedy Smith!!! Bigger than Sam Shepard!!! What makes anyone think that people won't turn in to see Bush and Rummy and Cheney in chains?
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It's the DC elite that wants to make sure that their friends and cocktail buddies continue to push their own shopping carts around the neighborhood Safeway.
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The problem with that is, they tend to show up in high government positions in the next Republican administration.
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Pretty good, for the most part. But this:
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Since we live in an advanced Western civilization, there needs to be legal justification when we torture people
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made me do that thing they do in cartoons where a character shakes his head real fast and his jowls go "flobbidyflobbidyflobbidyflobbidy."

James Los Angelos--there you go again, constructing your outrageous straw men to bash your fellow commenters by putting stupid words in their mouth.
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Perhaps I should have been more literal because I wasn't trying to bash anyone, I was talking about a call in general whether its maddow or greenwald or the occasional commentator -- there is definitely a cohort of folks who desire that the Bush administration be held criminally accountable. I was simply asking if we could have a broader conversation about whether that's the best means for addressing the need to reassert our values and prevent a departure from them in the future. If talking about exploring the pros and cons is an attack then its all a moot point because diversity of thought and a desire for discussion need not apply here.
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BTW -- labeling someone by saying they usually do anything to dismiss what they have to say is the real straw man in this conversation.

There's even a huge appetite for those of us who wash every day. No offense James or Cincy.

Another off topic reminder that I'm talking to James Fallows at Virtually Speaking tonight at 9pm eastern. You can listen to the simulcast at the web site.

jayackroyd, here's a great compendium of Bush lowlights.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/01/08/damage/index.html

Upon further review:
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"But I don't think there's much congressional appetite for that sort of action, nor does it exist among the newsers that rode shotgun with the administration."
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Ah, better...

"But I don't think there's much congressional appetite for that sort of action, nor does it exist among the newsers that rode shotgun with the administration."
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Well, they don't even understand their own jobs. Bush, Cheney, Addington and Yoo's crimes were crimes against the world, not just US law. Turn them over to the Hague.

Dee, your last sentence simply makes no sense.
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It is a habit of yours to start your post off with finger-wagging and tut-tutting and that kind of takes the edge off any argument you may make about the issue at hand. It's pretty off-putting.
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I thought we *were* having that discussion right now that you are asking for. Yet you tut-tut those of us who are trying to have the discussion. It isn't just ocurring here,it's a national discussion. The DC elite is trying to tamp it down, don't you see that?
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Also, as I said, there is irrefutable evidence of wrongdoing, and public admissions of responsibility by the prinicipals. There is eyewitness testimony under oath. There are dead people, okay? Hundreds of them. There are victims still alive and able and willing to testify. What more do you want? to sweep this under the rug? That seems like enough to open a criminal investigation and call for testimony; that's hardly asking for anyone's "head on a pike." In case you forgot, that's the way we *do* it here in America.
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Okay James let me say this slower. I am not talking about whether they did anything wrong although I was willing to include that in this discussion after the suggestion by Paul Dirks that we were jumping the gun and assuming the administration's guilt. My post was about having a conversation about 1) whether pursuing criminal charges was the only avenue to ensure that we reassert our values and prevent a departure from our values from happening in the future and 2) that if we pursued criminal charges were there any consequences that might make that path unwise. Lastly, I suggested that we have a richer discussion of what means for addressing this issue were at our disposal and what would be the pros and cons of each. Now I have tried to be polite but I don't appreciate being called stupid. especially by someone who has demonstrated an inability to comprehend simple concepts. And when you talk about DC lites h9w many do you know?

There you go again, Dee. No one called you stupid. That's an inaccurate statement that goes nowhere. I don't know where you get these wild accusations. If you want a "richer" discussion, then great, why not make your case and can the finger-wagging and tut-tutting and name-calling? Just state your case like the rest of us do. You don't need to start off your argument by bashing people, and tut-tutting. It's offputting.

I wash. Just not today.