Sign the petition: Take Action: Support a Truth & Reconciliation Commission10,644 signatures so far... keep it going!I've written about Truth & Reconciliation Commissions before and since I'm lazy I'm going to reprint them now.
I have proposed the idea of a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate abuses during the Bush-Cheney Administration -- so they never happen again. These abuses may include the use of torture, warrantless wiretapping, extraordinary rendition, and executive override of laws.
Please sign this online petition, urging Congress to consider establishing a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate the Bush-Cheney Administration's abuses.
From the Summer of 2008Impeach Now or Truth and Reconciliation Commissions later
Our government, laws, and society take precedent seriously, and the Bush administration sets so many dangerous precedents that they must not stand.
And unless Congress and the American people are willing to stomach impeachment hearings during an election year then the only thing we can do is if/when Obama gets elected we need to have a Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Okay I guess we could also turn over a former American President to the World Court for war crimes. But get off your unicorn - that ain’t happening.
Humans have an innate need to punish. Humans can more easily join together to punish someone for crimes against the group than they can join together to advance the greater good. Our sense of closure and justice need to know the bad guys get what they deserve. But sometimes that might not be possible.
Having Americans know exactly and in detail what the criminal enterprise that was the Bush administration from such a commission is more valuable to history than prison time for the sorry lot.
If there are criminal trials the media will be consumed with discussions of witch-hunt and vendettas. But if people under oath begin to describe the truths of the past 8 years without fear of punishment (save for lying) the people will be struck with horror and won’t be able to turn away from this horrible crash (that we will hopefully push to the side of the highway of American history this November).
History needs to have all the facts. History needs to be impeachable especially since we know Bush probably will leave office having not been impeached.
With the facts generated from a Truth and Reconciliation Commission laid out on the table the Bush precedents will be ignored – they will be treated as aberrations from a dark period in our nations history.
I’ve been thinking about this for a while, and I am not alone. Josh over at Talking Points Memo noted in 2005 that perhaps such a commission may be needed when discussing how we got into the Iraqi war:What this country will end up needing is something like a Truth and Reconciliation Commission because what the country needs is not so much for particular people to go to jail but for the lies and the lies to cover up earlier lies to stop. The country can't get past what has happened or move forward until we can get the truth on the table, deal with it and move on.
Richard Clarke in a recent interview said this about the idea :CLARKE: Well, there may be some other kind of remedy. There may be some sort of truth and reconciliation commission process that’s been tried in other countries, South Africa, Salvador and what not, where if you come forward and admit that you were in error or admit that you lied, admit that you did something, then you’re forgiven. Otherwise, you are censured in some way. Now, I just don’t think we can let these people back into polite society and give them jobs on university boards and corporate boards and just let them pretend that nothing ever happened when there are 4,000 Americans dead and 25,000 Americans grievously wounded, and they’ll carry those wounds and suffer all the rest of their lives. Someone should have to pay in some way for the decisions that they made to mislead the American people.
With the truth out there the people who have committed these crimes against our nation will be shunned. Left out in the rain they’ll find shelter only in the most pathetic outer fringes of our society (Fox News and Texas GOP conventions).
What is truly sad is the past 8 years have generated so many crimes that would one Commission be enough, or should we have many?
Here’s a short list of what American’s deserve to know the truth and full story about, because let’s face it, something is really wrong with how our nation’s government works and it isn’t just the Bush administration.Oh I could go on and on, but this is giving me a headache.
- 2000 Florida election roll purge
- Airline stock shorting from late August to early September 2001
- Cheney Energy Task Force
- California’s “energy crisis” of summer 2001
- The anthrax investigation
- Iraqi war “marketing”
- The origins of the Yellow Cake memos
- Eli Lilly clause in the bill that created Homeland Security
- When was the PATRIOT act written?
- Jack Abramoff and the selling of legislation in general
- War Profiteering
- Government Contracts
- Katrina Profiteering
- The use of mercenaries (“contractors”) in Afghanistan, Ira, and inside America
- Valerie Plane outing
- Guantanamo Bay
- Rendition
- Torture
- District Attorney firings
- Politizing all facets of government bureaucracy
- rob 5:05 PM - [PermaLink] -
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