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Eric H. Holder was sworn in today as the U.S. Attorney General as his wife, Sharon Malone,
witnessed Vice President Joseph Biden administer the oath of office in a ceremony at the
Justice Department in Washington. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Now that Eric H. Holder has made history by becoming America's first African-American Attorney General, will he now have the courage to investigate and prosecute the former president and vice president of the United States for a broad range of alleged criminal actions?
Possible charges against George W. Bush and Dick Cheney include violating their oaths of office to protect and defend the Constitution, lying to Congress, lying to the American people, illegally wiretapping American citizens, illegally kidnapping and detaining U.S. citizens and foreign nationals, illegally suspending habeas corpus, illegally authorizing torture, and (according to attorney-author Vincent Bugliosi) illegally conspiring to commit the murders of 4,000 American solders along with hundred of thousands of civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Whether or not the charges are true, the charges deserve investigation.
In essence, my question is this: Is the new U.S. Attorney General willing to establish the precedent and the principle that a president and vice president can be held criminally liable for illegal acts committed while in office?
The question arises because of the upsetting comments by former VP Dick Cheney during an interview with Bob Schieffer, aired Sunday on CBS. Cheney came within a hair's breadth of asserting that whatever he and Bush did while in office must have been legal because they were not impeached.
Logically, that's absurd.
It's like a thief saying his innocent of burglary because he never was arrested, tried and convicted. The thief may not have been found guilty in a court of law (yet), but he's far from innocent.
Let's look at the political "realism" that prevented Bush and Chaney from being impeached — despite calls for impeachment by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH).
Bush and Cheney were not impeached because key players effectively argued that (1) Americans were unwilling to go through another impeachment trial after Bill Clinton, (2) impeaching a president in a time of war would give "aid and comfort to our enemies," and (3) even if the majority Democrats and a few disgruntled Republicans passed articles of impeachment in the House of Representatives, conviction in the Senate was impossible so long as Republicans held filibuster power there.
I'm reminded of the fabricated line in the film, Frost/Nixon, in which former President Richard Nixon insisted that if the president does something, because he's the president, it's not illegal.
Well, I'm profoundly uncomfortable with the notion that any president can think he or she is above the law, that she or he will never be held accountable for their actions while in office. That notion is anathema to democracy.
Eric Holder already has repudiated the legal pretext for torture offered by the Bush administration. He has promised a complete review of all the "Bush Doctrine" legal opinions that justified a host of civil liberties violations.
I'm now asking Attorney General Holder to extend his inquiry to it's rational and patriotic conclusion. Because we are a nation of laws, the new Attorney General needs to investigate criminal wrongdoing by the previous administration.
Further, such an investigation and prosecution might well be the best guarantee to us freedom-loving Americans that the new Obama administration will not be tempted to commit similar sins.
We cannot predict the outcome from a trial of Bush and Cheney, but they still must be brought before the bar of justice.
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Comments
This is the moment we have all been waiting for and we must seize this opportunity to seek justice for all of those who have lost their lives and for our country to establish the rule of law and to ensure that no one is above the law. Call Eric Holder today at 202-514-2001 and tell him to appoint an Independent Special Prosecutor to Investigate the Crimes of the Bush Administration.
I hope that Holder does go after them.
If he does he must also go after the congressional leadership like Pelosi, Schumer et al because they KNEW and APPROVED it all.
Maybe he should also get an investigator for his possibly illegal pardons for Clinton of TERRORISTS and tax cheats.
Oh wait a minute, cheating on you taxes now gets you a raise.
We haven't been blown up since 2001. I'm glad Bush and Cheney did whatever they had to to protect America. The terrorists don't obey laws so you can't expect to beat them by presenting them before some liberal judge in the U.S. who will feel sympathy for them and set them free to blow us up again.
I think all of them should go to jail. Every single member of the previous administration. ALL OF THEM!
So leon believes you must become evil to fight evil? That's ridiculous. Two wrongs do not make a right. Two wrongs only make things worse.
Right-wing morons!
We are still in this mess because of your precious Bush/Cheney-Hitlers! Over two decades of inducing fear under the guis of rightous freedom in order to control american masses. Look at you, you are still under the hypnosis of that idiot.
I'm so thankful America and the world (Yeah, that's right, the WORLD)came to it's senses and voted for JUSTICE.
Power to the real citizens of the world.
It's fine to protect America; it's another thing to use the threat of trying individuals as terrorists as a means to coerce an individual into admitting guilt to a crime not necessarily committed. Let's face it: we were staring fascism directly in the face and the extreme right simply ignored it.
The largest threat to America is we ourselves if we do not uphold our laws for some, and all laws for others. How can anyone be above our law? Easy we let them be, and we frequently do this. It is a cultural question. Are we a nation of two cultures under one law, one set of rules for title and one for the rest of us? To me there is no threat from outside America in upholding our laws to the highest standards, in fact it shows that we do what we say, and say what we do. Most other countries place their culture above the law, and let tyranny rule. Lest we forget what tyranny is.
Torture is the least of the crimes that Bush and his cronies are guilty of. They used lies to have the US unnecessarily attack Iraq and in so doing they became responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans (more than died in the 911 attacks). They are also responsible for the deaths of reportedly over 100,000 Iraqis while destroying the infrastructure of the country. These are bad men. To call them criminals is a compliment. There have been times in the history of this planet that evil men have been placed in positions of power and their actions have caused tremendous suffering during their time in power and for years and even decades afterward. Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and others in the Bush administration and sphere are this kind of evil. They attract one another and they must be seen for what they are and brought to justice or their kind will rise again in short order.
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