Leahy said the commission, whose membership could either be congressional or presidential appointees, would have subpoena power and could grant witnesses immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony about how some of the Bush administration's most controversial policies were formed.
"As to the best course of action for bringing a reckoning for the actions of the past eight years, there has been heated disagreement,"- Leahy said. "There are some who resist any effort to investigate the misdeeds of the recent past.
"Indeed, some Republican senators tried to extract a devil's bargain from the Attorney General nominee in exchange for their votes, a commitment that he would not prosecute for anything that happened on President Bush's watch. That is a pledge no prosecutor should give, and Eric Holder did not, but because he did not, it accounts for many of the partisan votes against him."
Last month, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he would support funding and staff for additional inquiries by the Senate Armed Services Committee, which recently released a report tracing abuse of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib to Bush's Feb. 7, 2002, decision to exclude terror suspects from Geneva Convention protections.
Additionally, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, a former federal prosecutor and a member of the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence committees, said during a human rights conference two weeks ago that, "we need to follow this thing into those dense weeds and shine a bright light into what was done."-
Whitehouse added: "We can paper it over if we choose, but the blueprint is still lying there for others to do it all over again. It's important that we not let this moment pass."-
On Monday, Whitehouse said Leahy "summed up a belief shared by millions of Americans: that we need to "-get the truth out' about the damage done to this country under the Bush Administration, and what we now must do to repair it."
Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland told reporters: "Looking at what has been done is necessary."- And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi expressed support for Conyers's plan to create a blue-ribbon panel.
Attorney General Eric Holder said during his confirmation hearing that "waterboarding is torture,"- but the Obama administration has hesitated to launch new investigations of the Bush administration's crimes partly out of fear that would infuriate Republicans who might retaliate by obstructing Democratic economic plans during a deepening recession.
Incoming CIA Director Leon Panetta said during his confirmation hearing last week that the Obama administration would not seek to prosecute CIA interrogators who performed brutal techniques, such as waterboarding, against detainees.
Panetta told The Associated Press in an interview after his confirmation hearing that "we just can't operate if people feel even if they are following the legal opinions of the Justice Department they could be in danger of prosecution."-
However, the authors of those legal memos, John Yoo and Jay Bybee, are under investigation by a Justice Department watchdog who is probing "whether the legal advice contained in those memoranda was consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys."-
Though Leahy shunned the notion of criminal prosecutions, his proposal for a truth commission on Monday was still met with contempt from Republicans.
"No good purpose is served by continuing to persecute those who served in the previous administration," said Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas. "President Obama promised to usher in an era of "-change' and bipartisan harmony. Unfortunately, the continued effort by some Democrats to unjustly malign former Bush Administration officials is politics as usual."
Jason Leopold has launched his own Web site, The Public Record, at www.pubrecord.orgTo comment at Consortiumblog, click here. (To make a blog comment about this or other stories, you can use your normal e-mail address and password. Ignore the prompt for a Google account.) To comment to us by e-mail, click here. To donate so we can continue reporting and publishing stories like the one you just read, click here.
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