John Thain claims that he told Bank of America everything before the merger, and had an agreement in writing to accelerate the bonuses. Bank of America is sticking to its claims that he suckered them. It should be pretty easy to resolve this one: if he got it in writing, produce the document.
In related news, Porter Goss says that members of Congress who are indignantly claiming they knew nothing about waterboarding, etc. were fully briefed. This may explain the lukewarm enthusiasm for a Truth Commission. Question: how do the grassroots supporters of such a commission feel about it if it brings down the Democratic Party? The Democrats who signed off on this are still in power. The Bush administration will be long gone.
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The rule of law needs to be upheld no matter whose hands are stained by complicity in war crimes, Democrat or Republican. But the proper vehicle for this is an investigation by a special prosecutor, not a truth commission that grants immunity to higher ups and leaves those who implemented the policy on the hook.
if it brings down the Democratic Party
But won't it bring down the Republican party as well? I don't think that the balance in Congress, overall, would change much. Democrats prosecuted and convicted would be replaced by Democrats, Republicans likewise.
And the precedent would be set that the US, unlike third-world dictatorships or the old Soviet Union, follows its own laws and the treaties it's signed.
Thanks for asking. Yes, we still want to get the truth about torture out, even if it's bad for Democrats. I don't really see how that would "bring[] down the Democratic Party," unless you mean "bringing down" in the sense of bringing down poll numbers rather than in the sense of institutional collapse. I think Nancy Pelosi's doing a decent job as Speaker, but the Democrats could certainly find another Speaker if it came to that. (I agree with Bruce P that a Truth Commission is only workable if you are committed in advance to the idea that no one should ever be prosecuted, and a prosecutor is what's needed here>)
Incidentally, while I accept the general point that some senior Democrats were probably told something early on that should have raised red flags, I would have to take with a grain of salt the idea that the Democrats must have been well informed because the Bush/Cheney administration was really committed to being super-candid with Democrats about this kind of thing. That plainly did not happen: it's eminently clear that the last administration was filled with a bunch of maniacal Jack-Bauer-wannabes who had no interest in cooperating with the Democratic minority.
Parties are only "brought down" when they betray what they're supposed to be fighting for. Protecting people who enabled war crimes would carry a greater risk of doing just that. If this brings down Nancy Pelosi, so be it.
But I agree, this will in no way bring down the party. I don't think we're in any danger of losing CA-8 (or any of the districts of the other Congressional leaders involved). Even if she's forced to resign, it won't reduce the majority.
"It should be pretty easy to resolve this one: if he got it in writing, produce the document." Some folks think that this is true also of Obama.
And you automatically believe anything Porter Goss says?
He's not that hard to believe when the general response to his claim is silence, apparent uneasiness, and various claims of not remembering the incident in question while not denying that it may have occurred.
I asked this question a few years ago of a friend of a friend who's been working for the CIA for years (and happens to be a Democrat, btw): do members of the House and Senate intelligence committees get the same level of intelligence the President gets? His answer was yes. Perhaps someone reading this who works in government can confirm this. I forget this fellow's actual title at the CIA, but he was senior enough in his area that he had personally briefed the President on occasion.
Being "fully briefed" doesn't mean they were told the truth; it means they were told something.
Until we know what that is, we can't determine anything.
Investigate.
Add my voice to those who want to 'read the page before we turn it,' as someone said on one of the Sunday talking-head-athons. Also wanted to agree with Sen McCain (not a relative) in his analogy to Watergate. The big question is 'what did the President know and when did he know it?' Let's have the answer to that question before we move on.
And if we find out laws were broken, then what? How do you decrease chances of it happening again? That won't happen by not prosecuting. Also, didn't the Founding Fathers say that we are a country of laws and not men?
I'd say it makes it more urgent: Not only do we have politicians who may have been part of this conspiracy, but they also feel no problems at all with lying about it, despite their being mounds of evidence to the contrary. This speaks to an amazing amount of hubris, at the least, on the part of crazy eyes Pelosi and her gang.
But, why stop with what happened under Bush? Why not have an honest look at our role in torture, starting at least with rendition? Is there any real moral difference between outsourcing torture and doing it ourselves? Is torture OK if we simply don't have to get our hands dirty ourselves? Shouldn't we also be looking into the rendition torture policies under Clinton and now advocated by Obama?
It was always beyond the realm of belief that top Democrats were not briefed. I imagine the Democrats on the relevant committees were all part of the briefings. I would have loved to be a fly on the wall during those briefings.
You are not going to see a wide ranging investigation for exactly this reason- too many now in power stand to be embarrassed by the results.
I agree with Bruce P, alkali, and Tel, that the rule of law must be upheld at all costs, including that of my life, and their lives, too.
I live in New York City. When my city is nuked because the CIA could not, with coercive interrogation methods, obtain the information necessary to prevent the attack, I will die with equanimity, even joy. I will clutch my dog-eared copy of Volume 18 of the US Code, open to Section 2340A, the anti-torture statute. And with my dying breath, I will utter:
"Long live the United States. For we did not violate the pertinent federal statute."
In other words, "When it's you who gets turned into a frog, you'll be very sorry we stopped burning witches."
I work in DC, and a full 10% of the victims of September 11th (300+) were graduates or employees and family of Georgetown University, where I was studying at the time. I saw the smoke from the Pentagon from the roof of my apartment, and I received a suspicious package during the Anthrax attacks (that thankfully turned out to be just a misdirected parcel). So I also know a little bit about living in a risky area.
If my city is nuked because the CIA didn't torture - killing my wife, my daughter, and myself - I will be satisfied. I don't get to choose whether or how I'm going to die. I do get to choose how I live. Torture is simply wrong, period. No exceptions, not even to save the lives of millions.
I don't normally put things in terms this severe, but this really is one of the things that separates a civilized society from a bunch of brutes and savages. If your God tells you torture is okay, then your God is wrong and unworthy of worship - and I dare Him, Her, It, or Them to strike me down. If your philosophy tells you it's okay or worth the price, then your philosophy is worthless - since it would allow someone to torture you into changing that philosophy.
Nice try, but you will not draw me into a debate over whether torture "works"--that is, whether it elicits timely truthful confessions. Whether or not torture "works" in this sense, it is illegal and immoral. Our nation recognizes it as illegal because it indisputably works to delegitimize those who practice it, recruit and incite enemies, encourage retribution in kind, and facilitate tyranny. It is immoral because it violates every known conception of human dignity, both of the torturer and the victim. But even if you have no such principles, your principle of self preservation should fear granting any institution of fallible human beings impunity in the exercise of violence.
Nobody cares about "confessions" - that implies that we are trying to prosecute past crimes - I care about useful intelligence that will allow use to disrupt future attacks. The Dems (and you) never left the 1990s law enforcement mentality. Yes, the FBI, after years of work and millions of dollars, were able to enable prosecutions of the low-level stooges who blew up the WTC the first time. Fat lot of good it did on 9/11. We don't need KSM to confess - he already did that long before he was taken into custody (some might call it boasting) - we needed to know what he knew about the future. And we got it, and it saved lives, so screw you, Pelosi and the rest of the hand-wringers. At least 9/11 taught Bush some lessons - you and your ilk are apparently incapable of learning.
BTW, John Hussman today on the BofA/Merrill deal:
Dr. Hussman goes on to estimate the cost of protecting the bondholders of poorly run banks:
I agree with the other commenters that the critical thing is to establish the rule of law and the Constitution for those in power. Anyone who that brings down, so be it, but I don't see how it will be a major problem for the Democratic Party as a whole.
The best possible (highly unlikely) outcome would be one that makes a future president wince when he thinks about using the DOJ for political purposes or repeating any of the other crimes of the Bush administration.
"The best possible (highly unlikely) outcome would be one that makes a future president wince when he thinks about using the DOJ for political purposes or repeating any of the other crimes of the Bush administration."
I just wanted to correct the typo in your comment. Obama is the president now - it's his administration that is trying to use the DOJ for political purposes.
Call me a contrarion, but I don't believe this is about punishing those who broke the law. I believe this is about protecting your own and managing precedent. If we go after the President's lawyers or the Congressional leaders who were briefed, then the current batch of Presidential lawyers or Congressional leaders will be reticent to voice an opinion on the next national security matter, for fear of being prosecuted when the administration changes in the future.
It's easy to sit on the sidelines (as all of us are doing now, and as the Democrats did for six of Bush's eight years) and call upon our leaders to do what's right and not what's easy. It's a different matter altogether to actually be in charge and decide to hamper yourself or your colleagues for the greater, moral good.
I'm not suggesting we shouldn't expect it of our leaders, but we certainly shouldn't be surprised when they have trouble doing so. And now that both parties have some butts in the leadership chair, I'm not surprised to see general agreement on the "go slow" approach.
I think anyone who was briefed about it and could have done something about but did not do anything about it, is culpable to some degree. Like the witness to a crime who does nothing.
It's silly to say that someone who knew about it is "just as guilty" as the person who does it, but I certainly wouldn't mind complicit Congressional Democrats get in hot water.
I think there are very many Democratic voters in our country who are dismayed by the way that Congressional Democrats nodded and smiled at everything Bush wanted in the "war on terror", and do not mind seeing consequences for that.
PS Isn't it actually illegal for a Congressperson to DO anything about the contents a top-secret briefing? in the sense of taking it to the media or to anyone who doesn't have a top-secret clearance? I think this may have been strategic on the part of the Bush admin, on FISA and torture and other abuses, to rope Democrats into being complicit.
Yes, the good old hyper-competent Bush administration defense.... These briefings were required by law and are there to get feedback and allow adjust the law if they felt it was needed. They chose not to act, either by objecting int he meetings or by proposing legislation. That they deny it now is a reflection of the dishonorable, dishonest and arrogant members of Congress we now have in power.
I believe that in the case of the war in Iraq, a couple of Congresspersons wrote private memos to the President expressing displeasure with the Top Secret information, so that they'd be on record, even though they couldn't go to the media.
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I could be wrong about that, but I think I remember reading it...
I have read that Jane Harmon objected, but she is the only one, and I don't even know for sure whether or not it was true.
Congresspersons and their staff leak classified information to the media all the time. The reason for the memos, as Porter Goss pointed out, was so they had some cover if the political winds ever changed. It had nothing to do with influencing policy.