Tell John Conyers that it's time to stand up for the country and the Constitution
by Weldon Berger | April 11, 2008
The news that senior Bush administration officials not only approved the use of torture but actually micromanaged the application of it should be the last straw for dithering Democrats in the House of Representatives.
We have known for years that the president and the vice president approved war crimes, including torture, on the basis of legal opinions provided by Justice Department functionaries authorizing the president to break any law in the name of national security. Now we know that Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and other top officials dictated specific combinations of outlawed interrogation techniques—including waterboarding and physical beatings—for specific prisoners.
One of the great tragedies of the Bush administration is the lassitude, often appearing to shade into cowardice, displayed by those in opposition to it. The Democratic leadership in Congress refuses to consider impeachment as an option for dealing with a transparently criminal president and vice president, and very few major voices on the liberal end of the spectrum have chided them for it. Liberal blogging powerhouse Atrios today called Rice and company "monsters" and "war criminals" who should all be in jail for their actions; what, then, does that make House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers and others who have the option of at least attempting to evict the monsters from the national house but have failed to act?
Maybe the personal involvement, the image of Condoleezza Rice sitting in the White House situation room discussing with Colin Powell and Dick Cheney how often Abu Zubaydah should be subjected to drowning, perhaps while watching the videos of their handiwork on the big screen TV—those infamous now-destroyed CIA videos—will be enough to motivate Conyers to finally begin hearings on whether or not the administration have committed impeachable offenses.
Pelosi can be written off as a lost cause: as we've noted in the past, she is herself complicit in the administration's crimes, albeit as a bystander, because she knew for years that their agenda included torture and she did nothing to stop it. If Conyers, though, is finally moved to act, Pelosi can do little to stop him without overtly incriminating herself.
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