But there is a problem as to what venue this tribunal would be held in. Consider. It cannot be held in the courts, because a) under the law of the time, no statutory crime was committed, and b) I believe the Supreme Court has ruled that the Court does not have jurisdiction over the president’s role as Commander in Chief in wartime. It cannot be held in Congress, because the very leadership holding the hearings can be placed in the dock as having been briefed on the practices and having approved of them. Congressional hearings meaning losing control of the narrative, as you said.

All that is left is the Executive branch. I would not rule out the installation of an Executive Volksgerechthof style tribunal, and they could control both access and coverage of the proceedings, and they could rig the process as they wish.

However, something that the 75% of the Democrats on the extreme Left side of their party may not understand, the commencement of such a process is a bright and shining marker that will not be ignored by conservatives. The persecution/prosecution of political enemies, not for statutory crimes but for past differences in policy, means that they have no intention of ever yielding power, because they know that the same process will be applied to them, multiplied many-fold, as soon as they are out of office.

And the process of getting them out, and the nature of that application may not be in strict accord with Robert’s Rules of Order.

They will have sown the wind. And will have a bumper crop to reap.

Subotai Bahadur

I heard Mark Levin on Hannity yestersday and that man is livid. He personally would get involved, and using his Landmark goup, plans of deposing every democrat he can find under oath about what they knew, when, where, why, and how. Hannity threw in that he’d start a defense fund and contribute to it.

I think there are none so blind as those who will not see, and there are some on the left who are so blinded by their own self righteous fake moralizing that they may take themselves down with the Republic. But the Republic will survive.

No, they’ll do what they always do. They want to keep the narrative simple in which enhanced interrogation is torture carried out by evil people for evil reasons. A trial will undermine that narrative. A trial will make them have to make a definitive public statement that they prefer to see thousands of Americans and others dead rather than waterboard 14 senior members of Al-Queda.

Moral outrage is their real high. They never, ever do anything to bring close scrutiny to their premise on which they base their outrage. They buried the facts in the late-70′s so they could keep the narrative of their principled opposition to American evil in Vietnam and they will bury the facts to keep their narrative now.

Given his years of opposition to “torture” and the Left’s deep psychological need to punish those who disagree with them, Obama has to hold somebody accountable for carrying out enhanced interrogations. However, the public won’t support going after the soldiers, officers and agents who actually conducted the interrogations. Putting Bush and the other elected officials on trial would be a political nightmare which could backfire badly. To get around these problems, Obama has hit on the idea of prosecuting some largely anonymous lawyers instead.

Maybe President Obama’s fellow Dems in Congress would like to see folks from the previous administration in the dock. Maybe Obama himself privately would as well. But never forget that one of the President’s unofficial roles is that of Politician-In-Chief for his party. Obama’s first duty in that role is not to keep congressional Dems happy, but to keep them, and himself, in power, even if that means having to protect the more rabid ones from themselves.

The reason Obama was elected in the first place pretty much begins and ends with the ongoing financial/economic crisis. That remains Issue #1 in American politics; any trial of Bush administration or military officials in the midst of the crisis would be a noisy sideshow at most. Obama’s approach toward the economy isn’t exactly giving most Americans the warm-and-fuzzies as it is; the last thing he or his party needs is to invite accusations of taking his eye off that ball, or to galvanize GOP opposition even further, for the sake of a mere sideshow trial. He would have to be crazy and/or stupid to go forward with it. There are many less-than-flattering words that accurately describe Barack Obama. “Crazy” and “stupid” aren’t among them.

I believe that it is only a dishonorable discharge that revokes “all honors and awards” and since Kerry requested his medals be “reissued” (which he did) he must have “lost” them at some point. Throwing the physical medals over the White House fence (ROFLMAO) is *not* a loss of medals. The piece of paper in your service jacket is what grants you the award and you are free to go out and purchase physical replacements whenever you need whether you spilled spaghetti sauce on them at dinner or because you “lost” them. When he said he had to request they be reissued he basically told me that hidden somewhere in his unreleased records is a dishonorable discharge.

The “honorable discharge” shown on his website during the campaign was dated years later and under a program by Carter designed to review “less than honorable” discharges. The combination of that necessary review plus his loss of awards smells like a dishonorable to me. Of course he could always clear it up by actually doing what he promised to do over 4 years ago… authorizing the release of all his records but I am betting that even in Massachusetts he couldn’t get reelected if he did.

I think we should not just say, ‘it will all go away’, but make it perfectly clear how disgusting this truly is – it needs a unified, strong rebuke.

These documents intended to embarrass for pure political gain, actually reveal the Bush Administration in this case, as well as the CIA, were actually quite professional in dealing with Terrorists, trying to stop another 9-11.

But the unethical nature of those in the Democratic Party, including Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barack Obama, etc., all seem to want to prove their superior nature, and cannot help themselves. They may not actually stop where the prior zealots ‘moved on’.

It may be a sign of ignorance, insecurity, etc., but the pure political manipulation of the DHS, led by Napolitano, is quite genuine. So is this vapid attempt to criminalize those who soundly served after the “manmade disaster” we call 9-11.

Mr. Obama has broken every promise he used to vilify his opposition with, including vapid promises about earmarks, lobbyists, presidential signing statements, lies about bows to Kings, tax cut facades, etc. He even lied about a Catepillar CEO’s comments. He is just as unethical as the former Clinton Administration, which once made it their policy to lie about the genocide in Rwanda, for mindless political image concerns. If Obama feels his popularity slipping, which it already has, he will play the vilify the opposition to the hilt. Just as Hillary did with her dishonest Vast Right Wing Conspiracy claims when her husband was busted clearly trying to rig his own sexual harassment case.

Obama’s vilification of the Bush Presidency helped get him to the Senate and to win the Presidency. It was baseless, even debased an admirable endeavor to bring liberty to the formerly oppressed millions in Iraq. But he had the overt help of a very powerful Partisan MSM, who will also play the vilification of the Bush Administration to the very end. They still play the game for the Clintons, and will stop at nothing to criminalize the opposition to the Democratic Party.

A number of factors are pushing this desire to debase the Republicans with further unethical efforts. The successful growing Democracy in Iraq, is contrary to the new President’s claims that the Surge would fail, and that we should have never bothered in the first place.

The unattractive nature of Mr. Obama’s socialist folly, the American Public’s fear of the Democrats collectivist spending, including the inability to help the Economy, are all going to call for a big distraction.

Also, we see a complete lack of Diplomatic accomplishment, with the snobbish use of ‘smart power’. They could not even get the UN to condemn the rocket launch by North Korea.

Perhaps even more motive, is the rabid Democratic Loyalists who fabricated a fantasy of ‘Bush is Evil’, to justify their ugly political bigotry. They might be sensing the Democratic Campaign themes, designed to gain power, were baseless, including their consistent undermining of an admirable endeavor in Iraq.

They need some ‘justice’, to fill in for the fact that they have no case. So, to assure the Democratic Partisan facade, Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Clinton and Crew, may just continue to do the very worst for the USA and the Free World to aid their own petty greed and self serving nature.

They already caused enormous damage by releasing these classified interrogation CIA Memos. They might as well have continue with the unethical Witch Hunting, as PBS, CNN, NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, Rollingstone, VHI, MTV, the Dailly Show, Newsweek, Time, Vogue, Cosmo, USA Today, WAPO, NY Times, etc., are eager to do the ugly job.

I read somewhere that these words came straight from a Soviet propaganda manual written by Yuri Andropov himself.

Of course Tommy sees, but there ain’t nothing Tommy can do about what he sees.

“Frank Church did subsequently gut the CIA…” and built a “wall” between the CIA and the FBI… then came Sept 11 when the CIA was not allowed to tell the FBI that the terrorists had entered the USA…

Tommy sees and says: “The rest is History.”

“An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please,
An’ Tommy ain’t a bleeding fool- you bet that Tommy sees!”

Kerry did escape although I still wonder about his silver star certificate that was signed years later. Might there be a dishonorable discharge in there somewhere ? All awards are cancelled when that happens. I still suspect it was reissued after amnesty by Carter.

Frank Church did subsequently gut the CIA so I wouldn’t say we escaped unharmed. Even worse than the consequences to southeast Asia, were the consequences to US higher education, now trickling down to elementary education. The left moved en masse into education and have dumbed down a generation of kids.

http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/tommy.html

Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Tommy, ‘ow’s yer soul?”
But it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll,