As I said, it's a bit of a slow week in DC, but I did round up a couple of our house rookies to come to Dirksen SOB (heh) to attend Leahy's hearing on a TRC. One had just been to her first hearing yesterday, and the other had never experienced the weird joy of watching sausage being made.
Say, "close Gitmo!"
Okay, that was a little flip of me to say about such a heavy subject, but the students against torture found it funny enough for the picture-taking. It was awesome to see them there--I admit I'm egocentrically partial to folks wearing jumpsuits--because even in the post-Bush Era we need visible, powerful symbols and having "the youth" (despite having met up with my old prof today, I still feel old myself) taking their spring break to hold vigils and attend this hearing, amongst other things. And they love Code Pink.
Leahy opened things up with his now-common spiel about a TRC, but I must say I liked his first graf digs:
I hope he wasn't referring to us as "extreme special interest groups." Regardless, Specter, who couldn't be bothered to stick around for the witnesses, as Ranking Member got to go next and after bragging about how he was the stalwart moderate fighting against Bush's expansion of Executive Power said:
wanted to know.
Well, that's been done. And it's being done to a greater extent. You have some rather startling disclosures with the publicity in recent days about the unusual, to put it mildly, legal opinions which were issued to justify executive action.
Yes, change we can believe in. Yet Arlen would rather let Congress step aside and not have any oversight over the Executive because, gosh, that branch will just oversee itself in all its past and current incarnations, even as Obama defends Bush-era secrets. Clearly the Legislature's responsibilities are neatly delineated by Presidential Election Cycles.
Anyway, Specter asked to enter a Politico op-ed into the record. Leahy was fine with that, despite his remarking the entire piece was full of ad hominems and more strawmen than could fit in a hay loft, and he promised a response in the record later.
Then Feingold came up, supported Leahy's idea but cautioned that we tread carefully around the issue of immunity. Good Russ. Oh, he bailed too because of a meeting with Gordon Brown or something.
Before the hearing I picked up written testimony provided by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (includes my peeps at FCNL), Open Society Institute, Human Rights Watch, and the International Center for International Justice. Sadly, the panel of witnesses physically present were all old white men, which was a shame because I especially hoped to see Lisa Magarrell from ICTJ because she wrote a book on the Greensboro, NC, experience with truth and reconciliation:
Describing Greensboro as a “sleepy little mill town”...national newscaster Walter Cronkite introduced a horrifying story, accompanied by unbelievable video footage that showed it happening: Five members of a crowd gathered to begin an anti-Klan rally organized by the Communist Workers Party (CWP) had been fatally shot by members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) and the American Nazi party.
...
Seeking to “shape the future by facing the past,” these survivors and their community supporters initiated what came to be called the Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Project (GTCRP, or the Project). The Project called for creating an independent, democratically selected Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation Commission (GTRC) to conduct an impartial investigation and to tell the community the story it uncovered in all its dimensions and meaning.
...
The Mandate of the GTRC directed commissioners to examine the “context, causes, sequence and consequence” of the events of November 3. Commissioners fulfilled the Mandate with the completed report they presented to “the residents of Greensboro, the City, the Greensboro Truth and Community Reconciliation Project and other public bodies.” The completed report, a total of 530 pages including its assortment of annexes, reflects the Commission’s assessment of the evidence gathered from three trials, internal records from the Greensboro Police Department (GPD) and federal law enforcement, newspaper and magazine articles, academic literature, and over 150 documented interviews and personal statements given in private and at public hearings.
In addition to the full report, the GTRC also made available a fifty-page executive summary and an even more accessible two-page “general summary.” The full report and the Executive Summary start with an introduction explaining the methodology used and noting the limitations that the Commission faced and that make the report’s truth “imperfect.” But the summary notes that the GTRC “looked at a much bigger picture than any court has painted or than any one group of people can tell,” adding that commissioners believe “our efforts have taken us some distance away from the half-truths, misunderstandings, myths and hurtful interpretations that have marked the story until now.”
Her voice would have been great to have, but some of the old white men did have valuable things to say. Ambassador Thomas Pickering, for example:
Some might argue that such a commission is not needed. After all, President Obama has issued a series of executive orders that chart a new course on detention and interrogation policy. As important as these orders are, something more is needed. It is not enough to say that America is discontinuing the policies and practices of the recent past. We must, as a country, take stock of where we might have been and determine what was not acceptable, what should not have been done, and what we will never do again. It is my sincere hope that this commission will confront and reject the notion, still powerful in our midst, that these policies are proper choices that could be implemented again in the future.
Such a commission will strengthen our credibility in promoting and defending our values and advancing a better, safer world. As the 9-11 Commission found, the United States must engage in a struggle of ideas around the world in order to combat extremism and ultimately prevail against terrorism. To do that effectively, the Commission found, the U.S. government "should offer an example of moral leadership in the world, committed to treat people humanely, abide by the rule of law, and be generous and caring to our neighbors"
It is far better for American foreign policy if we acknowledge willingly what went right and what went wrong than to address bits and pieces of the story as they emerge over time. It is far better for our country and our standing in the world if we critically examine our own record and take account of what happened.
Sounds like moral conflict to me. That requires transparency from government and while there are certainly extant mechanisms that can be brought to bear, those are not mutually exclusive with this commission and in fact operate under different philosophies and assumptions, and have different goals. As the Chief Counsel of the Church Committee, Frederick Schwarz observed:
The best way to get answers to these questions is to pursue the option that the Chairman of this Committee has proposed: an independent commission of inquiry established by Congress. A commission would shed much-needed light on exactly what our counter-terrorism policies have been, including information that even some members of Congress still do not have. To the extent any policies departed from the rule of law, the commission would examine the process by which these policies came into being, including who made the key decisions and whom they consulted – or did not consult. It would go beyond the symptoms – i.e., the policies themselves – and look for the root causes.
Where appropriate, it would examine the effectiveness of the policies, and it would assess their impact on our national security and foreign relations. Based on what it learned, it would make informed recommendations about the reforms that may be necessary in order to ensure that our counter-terrorism policies respect the law and keep us safe. And it would do one additional thing that neither inaction nor criminal prosecution would do: Where allegations of unlawful or inappropriate conduct prove to be unsupported, it would air the facts and clear the names of those implicated.
That last point is especially important because it addresses an objection some people, including one witness invited by the GOP, have raised about tainting people. There seems to be a conflation, deliberate or otherwise, of a commission with some sort of criminal investigation that is looking to prosecute all sorts of poor, innocent people.
Yet the point is to offer immunity for coming forward, admitting part in the immoral machinery and helping understand how our usual Constitutional and legal protections broke down. Even if you're "guilty" you can still go free, clear your name and more importantly, clear your conscience as you work to prevent abuses going forward.
It's also laughable as some opponents try to compare investigating horrible truths to the very human rights abuses we want to prevent in the future:
Much of the anger about the Bush Administration's war on terror policies, has been focused on its treatment of captured alien enemy combatants and especially its rendition policy. In an effort to "investigate" these matters, the proponents of the commission appear to be giving short shrift to the civil liberties of Americans, outsourcing law enforcement functions to private entities and even to be practicing a soft form of rendition, in that they are virtually inviting foreign courts to go after American citizens. I would respectfully suggest that this is a wrong way to proceed.
The objections generally seem to be based on American exceptionalism, and the fear that war criminals of our own might actually get some come-uppance and could actually suffer the things that we inflicted upon other people who were presumed guilty. A bit of projection?
I missed some fireworks between Leahy and the less-supportive witnesses since I had a lunch meeting and could only stay an hour. I was able to watch the first four witnesses, including Schwartz, and my compatriots told me about the later testimony and Q&A.
Apparently Pat put on his gruff prosecutor hat and was fairly combative with the Republican plants. He was even a bit rude, as they described it, and clearly annoyed that Specter and/or Cornyn invited these guys. Good. It's his committee and elections have consequences, so whine all you want about fishing expeditions to attack political opponents with oh-so-honest policy differences. As an impeached president once said, that dog just won't hunt.
ntodd
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