What Would They Do?

by digby

Obama on torture, rendition and illegal wiretapping today:

What I would want to do is to have my Justice Department and my Attorney General immediately review the information that’s already there and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued. I can’t prejudge that because we don’t have access to all the material right now. I think that you are right, if crimes have been committed, they should be investigated.

You’re also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt because I think we’ve got too many problems we’ve got to solve.

So this is an area where I would want to exercise judgment — I would want to find out directly from my Attorney General — having pursued, having looked at what’s out there right now — are there possibilities of genuine crimes as opposed to really bad policies. And I think it’s important– one of the things we’ve got to figure out in our political culture generally is distinguishing between really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity.

You know, I often get questions about impeachment at town hall meetings and I’ve said that is not something I think would be fruitful to pursue because I think that impeachment is something that should be reserved for exceptional circumstances. Now, if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law — and I think that’s roughly how I would look at it.

Robert Parry has argued in his book Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq that Clinton would do what her husband did and let the crimes of the previous administration go because he didn’t want his first term consumed with investigations.

The book opens with a scene early in the second year of Bill Clinton’s presidency with him explaining to White House guests why he didn’t pursue geopolitical scandals that had implicated George H.W. Bush in gross abuses of power and arguably criminal acts.

President Clinton made clear he saw historical truth as less important than his hopes for Republican cooperation on his domestic agenda. But this willingness to sweep major scandals under the rug left the White House back door ajar for a restoration of the Bush Family dynasty a half dozen years later – with disastrous consequences for the American Republic.

[…]

As waiters poured coffee at the wedding reception and Clinton voiced his complaints about the media hostility, Stuart Sender saw his chance to ask Clinton why he hadn’t pursued leads about the Reagan-Bush secret initiatives in the Middle East.

“I had this moment to say to him, ‘What are you going to do about this? Why aren’t you going after them about Iran-Contra and Iraqgate?’” Sender said. “If the shoe were on the other foot, they’d sure be going after our side. … Why don’t you go back after them, their high crimes and misdemeanors?”

But Clinton brushed aside the suggestion.

“It was very clear that that wasn’t what he had in mind at all,” Sender said. “He said he felt that Judge Walsh had been too strident and had probably been a bit too extreme in how he had pursued Iran-Contra. Clinton didn’t feel that it was a good idea to pursue these investigations because he was going to have to work with these people.

I have long written here as well that I think Clinton’s decision to drop the investigations was the worst decision he made and I agree with Parry that putting his agenda before the historical truth was disastrous. Hopefully, Charlie Gibson will ask Senator Clinton about her position on this at the debate on Wednesday.

I also find Obama’s answer unsettling. I’m glad he has agreed to have his Attorney General look into the matter. But setting the bar that high — that they had to “knowingly and consciously” violate the law — means that there will be no investigation and they will probably be exonerated. The Yoo memos were written for that very reason, after all. (Powell is already using the excuse that they were operating under official DOJ legal findings.)

I don’t think it’s useful to mention the difference between lawbreaking and “really dumb policies” in the context of torture. Torture is clearly not a dumb policy, it’s an illegal and immoral policy. And at this point there’s really no doubt that the Principals sat around the white house discussing how to torture prisoners. Regardless of whether they can excuse their behavior because some authoritarian hack in the Justice Department told them it was ok — it was not ok.

Perhaps Gibson can delve into this a bit more with him as well and get him to clarify his position a bit. I don’t think we can afford to care if the Republicans perceive pursuit of these issues as a partisan witch hunt. This is really, really bad stuff. They escalated so hugely this time that they’ve actually created a national security crisis and made this country less safe as a result of their actions. This regime must be repudiated in no uncertain terms.

* And before you all start the predictable flagellation for my allegedly saying no to impeachment, please read the post I wrote about it again and you’ll see that I never said that.

UPDATE: This piece by Dan Froomkin succinctly puts the latest torture revelations together in easy to digest form.

.