Get Ready for the Show Trials
By: Floyd and Mary Beth Brown
FrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Republicans will
deeply regret the confirmation of Eric Holder as Attorney General.
During his confirmation hearings, Holder declared without hesitation,
"Waterboarding is torture." This should have terrified Republican
senators because it was a sure signal to the left-wing blogosphere that
they are going to enjoy four years of show trials.
Torture is
a crime and Holder will prosecute President Bush and other officials
for condoning it. Republicans should have jumped on his comments and
opposed Holder's nomination for these dangerous views on what
constitutes torture in the fight against terrorism.
Republicans
tried to pressure Mr. Holder to promise not to prosecute, but he
clearly refused saying, "No one is above the law." By "no one,” he
meant President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld,
Alberto Gonzales and any other top Bush administration officials who
authorized waterboarding. Or, as Keith Olbermann at MSNBC calls it, the
"Bush System of Torture."
All the talk of bipartisanship is a
sham, and Republicans are foolish to listen to any of the sweet talk.
President Obama agreed with Attorney General Holder when he used the
identical phrasing with ABC's George Stephanopoulos on January 11
saying, "No one is above the law." Thus far, President Obama has been
vague about investigating the Bush administration saying, “He wants to
look forward.”
But Obama told the Philadelphia Daily News that,
if there was evidence of criminality, he would ask his Justice
Department to “immediately review the information that's already there
and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued.” Once
again he reaffirmed “nobody is above the law.”
This is how the
whole scenario unfolds. First you will hear calls for prosecution from
The Huffington Post, Daily Kos, MSNBC, and other liberal ideologues of
the media.
Secondly, these calls will be reinforced by comments
from the left-wing legal authorities or so-called "experts" such as
George Washington University Law Professor Jonathan Turley, who told
Rachel Maddow of MSNBC: "These are war crimes…we were going to have a
true change, where people would be held accountable. And all this talk
about civility makes it sound like it's just simply uncivil to
investigate people for war crimes."
Law Professor Lawrence
Velvel was even blunter when he told the Los Angeles Times: “We must
insist on appropriate punishments including, if guilt is found, the
hangings visited upon top German and Japanese war criminals in the
1940s.” Hangings? Such insanity wouldn’t be taken serious under normal
circumstances.
Jonathan Turley also told Maddow: "Most
certainly. The status of George Bush is not that different from Augusto
Pinochet. They've both been accused of running a torture program.
Outside of this country, there is not this ambiguity about what to do
about a war crime. There are four treaties that make this an
international violation. So if you go abroad, and try to travel, most
people abroad are going to view you not as ‘former President George
Bush’ -- they're going to view you as a current war criminal."
Next
Congress will take action. Judiciary Chairman John Conyers announced he
will push for “a blue ribbon commission to fully investigate
Administration activities and independent criminal probes.” Conyers
calls for this official investigation in a report his committee
released titled “Reining in the Imperial Presidency: Lessons and
Recommendations Relating to the Presidency of George W. Bush.”
While
issuing the report, Conyers declared, “Even after scores of hearings,
investigations and reports, we still do not have answers to some of the
most fundamental questions left in the wake of Bush’s Imperial
Presidency,” and accused the Bush administration of a slew of “crimes”
including allegations of torture and inhumane treatment, extraordinary
rendition, warrantless domestic surveillance, the Valerie Plame Wilson
leak and the U.S. Attorney General scandal."
Conyers is acting
with Nancy Pelosi's full support. According to the Los Angeles Times,
she herself is actively “pushing for an investigation into the Bush
administration's handling of the Justice Department.” In justifying
these “investigations,” Pelosi declared, “I think that we have to learn
from the past, and we cannot let the politicizing of, for example, the
Justice Department, go unreviewed.”
And the bottom line is
this: The lunatic left will not rest until President Bush is behind
bars, or worse. For some activists taking vengeance on the former
president and his administration is their number one priority. “Arrest
Bush” signs were everywhere on the Washington mall the day Barack Obama
took the oath of office.
In the end, Mr. Holder will succumb to
pressure and appoint a special prosecutor to focus exclusively on
Bush's “crimes.” That will take these issues off Holder's desk, and
ensure years of investigation. The truth is the Obama administration
would like nothing better than to prosecute, convict and imprison
President Bush and members of his administration.
We have implemented a new commenting system. To use it you must login/register with disqus. Registering is simple and can be done while posting this comment itself. Please contact gzenone [at] horowitzfreedomcenter.org if you have any difficulties.
blog comments powered by
|
|