Digby says ...

8 Words of Wisdom for Week Ending 4/17/2009 #7

There was a time when the Republican congress, in the majority and in minority, was calling for independent counsels every five minutes for such threats to the nation as firing an white house employee and personal real estate dealings that took place years before the president was elected. (not to mention personal indiscretions.) The right wing noise machine would go crazy and the opposition leaders in congress would raise holy hell until the president had no choice but to ask the Attorney General to name an independent counsel just to shut everyone up for a while.

(The Independent counsel statute was created so the executive branch wouldn't have to investigate itself, the very definition of conflict of interest. After three presidencies, the statute was allowed to die --- mostly because the Republicans proved that they would use it as a retributional nuclear political weapon if they had the chance.)

In the last administration, there was enough of an outcry over the leak of a CIA operative that even the Bush administration had to have his AG appoint a special prosecutor. They appointed a non-partisan professional who managed to keep the investigation and trial buttoned up, thus showing that the right special prosecutor could run a political case without joining the partisan mudfight. Although the usual legal wingnuts tried to persuade people that the Fitzgerald investigation was a Ken Starr Chamber, everyone knew it wasn't, and it proved that it could be done if the prosecutor wasn't an ideologue and a tool.

All of these cases were brought about by public and political pressure. It occurs to me that this is the only way it can happen in our broken political system --- that a president never willingly investigates itself, of course, but also never wants to investigate its predecessor either (the Democrats usually for fear of starting an endless vendetta, the Republicans usually for fear of setting a precedent.) They must be made to do it.

There's a lot of vitriol coming from the left right now and much of it is directed at the Obama administration for not opening up investigations into the Bush administration and the use of torture. I don't think this is fair. Yes, I find torture abhorrent and would love to see Bush administration figures prosecuted. Yes, I recognize that a majority of Americans do not approve of torture. Not the point.

Presidential administrations are, for better or for worse, as much political enterprises as they are policy centers. These types of investigations and prosecutions are divisive by nature, and tend to stir up shit-storms in the press. If they were begun without popular support, it could undermine the entire Obama agenda, prolong the economic downturn and put the Republicans back in power. The country can't afford that.

What we see now is the Obama administration releasing the torture memos which should give us the ammunition we need. It is our job as the citizenry to demand action. It is our job to build popular support for investigations into the actions of the Bush administration. It is our job to make our elected officials do what we want them to do. If no investigations take place, we shouldn't blame the Obama administration, we should blame ourselves.

Source - Hullabaloo