How about just exiling him to one of the many tin-pot dictatorship countries he helped keep afloat
... or should we just be happy that he's gone, never to return..
Today, the Senate judiciary committee will consider whether to create a "truth commission" to investigate alleged abuses and crimes committed on the watch of George W. Bush. Here's hoping the committee gives up the idea.
Yes, this is dissatisfying. No one should be above the law, especially those in government. But the political fallout of a congressional investigation would exceed its utility.
When asked whether he supported a truth commission, President Barack Obama said: "I am more interested in looking forward than in looking backward." Democrats in Congress should point in the same direction.
It's not that there isn't stuff worth looking into. We learned this week that the Central Intelligence Agency destroyed 92 tapes of prisoner interrogations. The agency didn't want people to see those prisoners being waterboarded, a form of torture in the minds of everyone except those in the previous administration who said it was just an "enhanced interrogation technique."
How can you tell when something is true and something is a lie? One way, George Orwell taught us, is to look at the words being used. People speaking the truth tend to use Anglo-Saxon words such as "water" and "board." People seeking to deceive lean heavily on the French/Latin side of the language: "enhanced," "interrogation" and "techniques." The former administration is guilty by vocabulary.)
We also learned that a raft of Justice Department opinions on the legality of the anti-terrorism measures made early in the Bush presidency had been rescinded in later years, because they were clearly flawed. One legal opinion said the government could suspend free speech, because the country was in a state of war.
So what is to be done?
Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, wants to "develop and authorize a person [or] a group of people universally recognized as fair-minded, without any axe to grind" to investigate "not for purposes of constructing criminal indictments, but to assemble the facts."
That's not nearly enough for a coalition of human-rights groups; it has called on Attorney-General Eric Holder in a petition "to appoint a non-partisan independent special counsel to immediately commence a prosecutorial investigation into the most serious alleged crimes" of Mr. Bush and his cronies. (Too much Latinate English there, too.)
... or should we just be happy that he's gone, never to return..
Today, the Senate judiciary committee will consider whether to create a "truth commission" to investigate alleged abuses and crimes committed on the watch of George W. Bush. Here's hoping the committee gives up the idea.
Yes, this is dissatisfying. No one should be above the law, especially those in government. But the political fallout of a congressional investigation would exceed its utility.
When asked whether he supported a truth commission, President Barack Obama said: "I am more interested in looking forward than in looking backward." Democrats in Congress should point in the same direction.
It's not that there isn't stuff worth looking into. We learned this week that the Central Intelligence Agency destroyed 92 tapes of prisoner interrogations. The agency didn't want people to see those prisoners being waterboarded, a form of torture in the minds of everyone except those in the previous administration who said it was just an "enhanced interrogation technique."
How can you tell when something is true and something is a lie? One way, George Orwell taught us, is to look at the words being used. People speaking the truth tend to use Anglo-Saxon words such as "water" and "board." People seeking to deceive lean heavily on the French/Latin side of the language: "enhanced," "interrogation" and "techniques." The former administration is guilty by vocabulary.)
We also learned that a raft of Justice Department opinions on the legality of the anti-terrorism measures made early in the Bush presidency had been rescinded in later years, because they were clearly flawed. One legal opinion said the government could suspend free speech, because the country was in a state of war.
So what is to be done?
Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, wants to "develop and authorize a person [or] a group of people universally recognized as fair-minded, without any axe to grind" to investigate "not for purposes of constructing criminal indictments, but to assemble the facts."
That's not nearly enough for a coalition of human-rights groups; it has called on Attorney-General Eric Holder in a petition "to appoint a non-partisan independent special counsel to immediately commence a prosecutorial investigation into the most serious alleged crimes" of Mr. Bush and his cronies. (Too much Latinate English there, too.)
