Free Republic

Representative Sara Jacobs (D-CA) on Sunday’s broadcast of CNN’s “Reliable Sources” that America needed a truth commission to establish a common narrative on racial injustice and white supremacy. Jacobs said, “We know the violence on the 6th was predicated on the idea of the big lie, the fact that this election was stolen, despite the fact that Donald Trump’s own Department of Homeland Security says it was not. You need to be able to perpetuate that kind of lie in order to get the kinds of reactions that you did. I think we need to look at far-right media, which...

 AP July 18, 1994: Rescue workers search through the rubble after the bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina.   The Iranian government directly ordered an act of terrorism in the Americas after being frustrated in its secret nuclear ambitions, a former chief of Argentine intelligence tells FOX News in an exclusive interview.Miguel Angel Toma, the former head of the Argentina's intelligence service, tells FOX News' Dan Senor that the Iranian government directly ordered a terror bombing on a Buenos Aires Jewish community center in 1994. The interview will air on Saturday at 9 p.m. ET on...

(snip) "No. I fought against waterboarding," the Arizona Republican said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "I have spoken out as forcibly as possible everywhere against what went on. It harms our image so much around the world when photographs come out. We all know bad things were done. We all know the operators were under orders to do so… I agree with the president of the United States it's time to move on, and not look back." (snip)

So there is talk about instituting a truth commission, good! I say the very first task of that commission should be to investigate who in the CIA lied and misled Congress. I think that we should follow this no matter were it leads us and if it’s all the way to the top echelons of government will so be it. We can’t just have charges of government corruption hanging about and just move on. If the CIA is lying or has lied to Congress these are criminal acts and must be investigated immediately. Ms. Pelosi says that she stands by...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama on Thursday rejected calls, including by some fellow Democrats, for a truth commission to investigate Bush-era terrorism policies, saying nothing would be gained from it.

So let’s get this straight according to Democrat partisan and Uber-Liberal Nancy Pelosi on the topic of what she knew about waterboarding and when she knew it, it's all Bush’s fault because it was the president’s policy to illegally torture and in addition to that the CIA was complicit in it because it lied to Congress about this subject? Do we have it now Ms. Pelosi?

Here's a thought. Let's look at this question strictly from political calculus. Do you think Republicans would rather that Speaker Pelosi be removed or keep her job, weakened and with little or no credibility left. I personally would pick the latter, at least as far as political advantage goes. That is at the heart of the political civil war going on the Democratic party. About three weeks ago, I wrote about the political civil war going on in both parties. At the heart of the political civil in the Democratic party is the issue of what to do about potential...

White House says Holder will decide on prosecutions; Obama opposes special commission on Bush-era policies. BY WILL DUNHAM WASHINGTON, April 26 (Reuters) - Releasing classified memos showing whether harsh Bush-era interrogation methods yielded useful information from terrorism suspects is not necessary, Republican Senator John McCain said on Sunday in a public disagreement with former Vice President Dick Cheney. After President Barack Obama released four memos this month revealing the Bush administration's legal justification for methods such as waterboarding -- a form of simulated drowning -- Cheney called for declassifying any memos showing that these techniques succeeded in producing valuable information....

WASHINGTON (AP) — A leading Democratic senator said Sunday independent investigators should determine whether Bush administration officials ought to face charges over the harsh interrogation techniques used against suspected terrorists. The White House had hoped to put the matter behind it by letting the attorney general make that call. Other liberal Democratic lawmakers appearing on the Sunday news shows joined Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., in pressuring the Obama administration to pursue investigations into the interrogations policies. But they stopped short of demanding charges against the Bush-era lawyers and other officials who devised the policies that critics have denounced as torture....

Arizona Sen. John McCain suggested today that the push to investigate and possibly prosecute Bush administration officials who crafted the legal basis for the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques," such as waterboarding, may have grown from a desire to "settle old political scores." Appearing on CBS' Face The Nation Sunday, the former Republican presidential nominee, who was himself tortured as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese, said, "Are you going to prosecute people for giving bad legal advice?" He suggested that Washington should ignore calls to investigate who was behind government lawyers writing memos which gave legal cover to the...

OBAMA KNOCKS CHENEY’S INTERROGATION MEMO SUGGESTION; GETS EARFUL FROM SPEAKER PELOSI ON “TRUTH COMMISSION” BY CARL CAMERON AND TRISH TURNER One senior Senate Democratic leadership aide tells Fox that President Obama, in a closed door meeting with bipartisan Congressional leaders Thursday afternoon, said Vice President Cheney is only telling one side of the story when he calls for the release of more interrogation memos that Cheney says show benefits gained from the use of rough tactics on high-value detainees. This, according to the source, came after House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-OH, asked Obama to release more memos, per Cheney’s...

The day after opening a can of worms by saying he is open to a truth commission to investigate the authors of the controversial Bush-era enhanced interrogation memos, the White House stressed Wednesday that President Obama is neither proposing nor initiating those proceedings or the formation of a truth commission. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, talking to reporters aboard Air Force One as the president traveled to Iowa, said any decision to prosecute the authors of the legal memos would come from the Justice Department and "it has to be done outside of the realm of politics." Last week,...

The Judiciary Committee chairman has not had much to say about the Obama administration’s decision to release Binyam Mohammed, the al-Qaeda jihadist who was planning to carry out mass-murder attacks in American cities, who is now free and clear to live and plot in Londonistan. Leahy did, however, make time last week to conduct a hearing on his banana-republic scheme for a “non-partisan” — also non-elected, non-accountable — sideshow that would conduct an inquisition into the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policies. His model, he has explained, is South Africa’s “truth and reconciliation commission.” Let’s roll that around the brain, shall we?...

In reporting yesterday on the fallout from Sen. Patrick Leahy’s (D-Vt.) proposal last week to create a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate the Bush administration’s alleged crimes in connection with its “war on terror,” I neglected to mention that in 2005 Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) had proposed a similar commission — which he called a “National Commission on Policies and Practices on Treatment of Detainees Since September 11, 2001.” The aim would similarly have been to get at the truth, though the amendment did not rule out the possibility of subsequent prosecutions. (To be fair, Leahy hasn’t actually proposed...

....The parallels with today are clear, and so are the lessons. Then, as in recent years, some were willing, in the name of security, to trade away the people's rights as if they were written in sand, not stone. For much of this decade, we have read about and witnessed such abuses as the scandal at Abu Ghraib, the disclosure of torture memos and the revelations about the warrantless surveillance of Americans. So what is to be done about the abuses of the Bush years? Some say do nothing, and a few Senators even tried to make Attorney General Eric...

SNIPPET: "Two of Congress's most radical members believe George W. Bush's America was the equal of apartheid South Africa. Last week, Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy proposed that Congress establish a “truth commission” to investigate alleged Bush misdeeds. In the House, Judiciary committee chairman John Conyers seconded Leahy's request." SNIPPET: "If the investigation exposes the ongoing, covert measures Bush has taken to keep America safe, Leahy will only smile as they are revealed. He has a long history of exposing the most vital secrets of our nation. At least one operative was murdered after Leahy publicly leaked a 1985 intercept that...

PRINCETON, NJ -- Earlier this week, Sen. Patrick Leahy called for a special commission to investigate possible government wrongdoing by the Bush administration in its anti-terror policies, as well as possible attempts to politicize the Justice Department through the firing of U.S. attorneys who were viewed as potentially disloyal to the administration. While Americans appear to support some kind of investigation into these matters, no more than 41% favor criminal probes.

(video) Speaking as if he had stepped out of the pages of George Orwell’s novel 1984, Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy said he wants to appoint a “Truth Commission” to investigate a whole range of decisions made during the Bush administration. He says it’s not intended to “humiliate” people, but to discover the truth. Specifically, Leahy wants to look into detainee abuse, politically-inspired actions at the Justice Department, and matters of Iraq prewar intelligence. “I’m doing this not to humiliate people or punish people,” Leahy said, “but to get the truth out.” “And after we get the Truth Commission going,” Leahy...

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) is calling for a “truth commission” to look into alleged abuses inside the Justice Department during former President George W. Bush’s time in office, including a review of Office of Legal Counsel memos that authorized “enhanced interrogation techniques” against detainees, the warrantless surveillance program and other hugely controversial policies. Leahy said such a panel would not seek to build criminal cases against Bush officials but to “get to the bottom of what happened — and why — so we make sure it never happens again.” Some Democrats have called for criminal investigations of...

MADRID, Feb 26 (Reuters) - Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon, famous for bringing criminal cases against Latin American military regimes and al Qaeda, now says the spotlight should be turned on Spain's own dictatorial past. In an interview with Reuters, Garzon called for a "truth commission" to investigate crimes against humanity committed during the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco, who ruled Spain from the end of civil war in 1939 to his death in 1975. He also warned that law enforcement must keep close watch on Islamist militant groups in Europe that are linked to Ansar al Islam, one of the...