I knew it, you knew it, and the American people knew it. With apologies to Bob Dole for stealing his line, thank you Mr Holder for exposing the truth that cannot be spun away.

"The Constitution is just a goddamned piece of paper."

"The best form of government would be a dictatorship, as long as I am the dictator."

There must be full investigations of ALL of the excesses and abuses of the Bush administration. Investigations must address torture and kidnapping. Investigations must address the abuse of the DOJ and other agencies in the Rove attempt to 'create a permanent republican rule'. Investigations must address all of the disregard of the Constitution and our laws.

If these are not fully and openly addressed, via DOJ investigations or other means that are not a white-wash, it can be certain that the abuses will be repeated in the future.

When Billy Bob Clinton became president, he shut down the still ongoing Iran-Contra investigations. Because those were never completed, we ended up with Cheney & Rumsfeld & Wolfowitz & others involved back in power in the government. Indeed, the lesson that Cheney appeared to learn from Iran-Contra was that it is ok to obliterate the law; just to make sure less persons knew about it.

If Obama does not back investigations, he will head us down the same slag heap that Clinton did. I wake up every morning thanking my god that John McSame is not our president. I wake up every morning thanking my god that Billary is not our president. I wake up every morning praying that Obama is not a repeat of Clinton.

...ex-CIA director Michael Hayden was "furious" about the prospect of disclosure....

Looks like Mr. Hayden better start getting his affairs in order, and start looking for a nice, quite bit of jungle---in a country that doesn't do the "Extradition Two-Step Boogie"* with the U.S. ....

*(1)They want you back, and (2)We send you back.

Bush, Cheney, Yoo, Addington, Hadley, Perle, Rove, Wolfowitz and the rest of Bushco will never see the inside of a courtroom if it's to answer for war crimes, torture or maiming and murder of innocents abroad. Not happening. Holding out hope for such proceedings is the dreaming of fools.

And unilaterally conceding the dream is the province of cynics and Village lackies.

Your point, Mr. Duncan??

Holding out hope for such proceedings is the dreaming of fools.

Realistically, I think at this point most of us are simply hoping for this stuff to be dragged out into the light of day where we can all see it.

I'm all for releasing the memos and believe it is vital that the Bush regime be held to account for its violations of human rights and civil liberties.

That said, the timing of the releases suggest that Obama's strategy is to 1/keep negatives about BushCo in the limelight, 2/reduce the amount of focus on the economy, and 3/drag the Bush abuses of the law story along so it gets lodged in the public consciousness but seems like old news that doesn't need to be rehashed by a court or Congress after a few months of strategically released information.

I hope to fucking Christ it DOES compromise "sources and methods." Anyone who engaged in torture should end up cooling on a slab, with as much public notoriety as possible, as a warning to all the pigs working in dungeons around the world: there's a day of reckoning.

I'm inclined to disagree with ghillie. As has been pointed out before, Obama is capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time, so this isn't about getting the economy out of the news cycle.
No, this is just the same clever Obama. All he has to do is drag this crap out into public view, then sit back and wait for the outcry to reach fever pitch. At that point, putting together a truth commission will just be "the people's will."
Or maybe it won't. But it's up to us, once we get the first glimpse of the truth.

That's rich about the protecting "sources and methods". Whatever idiot said that apparently doesn't realize that's the whole point. These no longer are our methods and never should have been.

Damn. That Obama is a clever son of a bitch.

I think hes gonna make it to 2016.

Michael Hayden has been toxic for the intelligence community ever since he got his commission. NSA and CIA deserved far, far better than they got. If he's upset and embarrassed, it's a sign that this is the right thing to do.

Releasing these documents would, Newsweek concluded, "remove, at long last, the veil of secrecy about how detainees in the war on terror were actually treated."

More disinformation from Newsweek or just poor conclusion. The Red Cross report has already detailed "how" detainees were treated. The unveiling of the twisted logic used to determine this treatment in secret laws and memos is what Holder is rightly doing. The evidence of the crimes are there (Red Cross), the planning and cloaking of the crimes are in these documents to be released. I believe the legal term is "premeditated".

This is awful on many grounds. One thing I worry about though is the torturers among us. Many of these people must either be back in civilian life or still working for the gov't in some capacity. They should all be offered if not mandated counseling. Anyone who enjoyed this sort of thing (and that includes the higher ups who ordered it and watched tapes) is pretty sick, and those who did it because they were following orders need serious counseling at least as much. We ought to be beefing up mental health services to deal this, along with adequate care for returning service people. Our society also needs to dial back the idea that this is cool.

I've said it before but it bears repeating.

There is no need for any kind of "commission" to "investigate" the conduct of the GWOT. All of the material facts are now known to Obama, his staff, the Congress, and its staff. Obama can declassify whatever he wants and release all of it.

The only purposes of an "investigation" would be (1) to give some kind of official imprimatur to the political opposition to the GWOT and/or (2) to lay the foundation for criminal persecutions. If those are your goals, then state them plainly and let the American people decide. Enough of this crap about "just getting the facts." We're not that stupid.

In related news: The CIA has about 3,000 documents related to the 92 destroyed videotapes that showed “war on terror� detainees being subjected to harsh interrogations, the Justice Department has disclosed.

The number of relevant documents – “roughly 3,000,� according to the letter – adds weight to the belief that CIA interrogators were in frequent communication with headquarters at Langley, Virginia, and with senior Bush administration officials who were monitoring the harsh techniques used and approving them one by one or even in combination.

The volume of communications also lends support to the suspicion that many officials were involved in the debate about what to do with the incriminating videotapes, not just one or two CIA officers acting on their own.

http://baltimorechronicle.com/2009/032209Leopold.shtml

There is no need for any kind of "commission" to "investigate" the conduct of the GWOT. All of the material facts are now known to Obama, his staff, the Congress, and its staff. Obama can declassify whatever he wants and release all of it. ... Enough of this crap about "just getting the facts." We're not that stupid.
Posted by: DBL

Yes, but as an American, these people work for me, and I'd like to know what atrocities were perpetrated in my name.

Being a poor excuse for an American, you seem to have forgotten that these fuckers work for us, and appear content to remain "that stupid."