Leahy, investigate thyself.

Leahy Proposes Panel To Investigate Bush Era
U.S. Attorney Firings Among Issues
By Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 10, 2009; A04

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday called for a “truth commission” to investigate controversial actions of the Bush administration, including the politically inspired firings of U.S. attorneys, the treatment and torture of terrorism suspects and the authorization of warrantless wiretapping.

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said his proposal is meant to launch a fact-finding inquiry into key decisions of George W. Bush’s presidency, including intelligence matters before and during the Iraq war and scandals at the Department of Justice. He said such a commission would not seek to prosecute former administration officials but would have the power to subpoena them to testify.

“Rather than vengeance, we need a fair-minded pursuit of what actually happened,” Leahy said as he outlined his proposal during a speech at Georgetown University. “Sometimes the best way to move forward is getting to the truth, finding out what happened, so we can make sure it does not happen again.”

Leahy likened the proposed commission to the “truth and reconciliation” panels that investigated the apartheid regime in South Africa and the 1979 Ku Klux Klan massacre in Greensboro, N.C. He said the commission could be made up of “a group of people universally recognized as fair minded and without axes to grind.”

George W. Bush = Apartheid.

Dick Cheney = KKK.

Yeah, no axes to grind there…

While we’re on the topic, perhaps Sen. Leahy can investigate himself and fellow House and Senate Democrats, because many of them as members of the House and Senate Select Intelligence Committees were informed of and, one assumes by their years of silence on the matter, agreed to the government’s decision to both warrantless wiretapping (what is oft erroneously termed domestic wiretapping) and harsh interrogation methods. Also, the senator should investigate himself for years of leaking classified intelligence to the media (he was even stripped of intelligence duties in the 1980s before his rebirth as head witch-hunter).

Next, Leahy’s committee could investigate Leon Panetta, President Obama’s pick for the director of CIA. Panetta, it seems, agreed to outlaw torture except when the government decides it “absolutely necessary to find out what information that individual has,” which is a nice way of saying that his CIA actually won’t outlaw torture. (The WSJ rightly termed this the “Jack Bauer exception.”)

Perhaps Leahy could investigate former President Bill Clinton, who instituted rendition as a U.S. policy? And while he’s investigating Clinton for rendition, he could also investigate Clinton for firing every U.S. attorney (whereas Bush only fired some).

Finally, Sen. Leahy needs to investigate Attorney General Eric Holder and President Obama himself, because according to The Washington Post, Obama and Holder “invoked the same ‘state secrets’ privilege as its predecessor [Bush] in federal court in San Francisco yesterday in opposing the reinstatement of a lawsuit that alleges that a Boeing Co. unit flew people to countries where they were tortured as part of the CIA’s ‘extraordinary rendition.’”

This puts Obama’s CIA in the same place as Bush’s CIA. It would seem that it’s far easier to criticize intelligence gathering as a candidate than it is as a president, whom the public holds accountable for their safety. This, in part, explains why Obama wants little to do with Leahy’s ridiculous fishing expedition.