The House Intelligence Committee will continue to investigate that destruction of the CIA torture tapes despite the demand from the Justice Department to halt any independent inquiry.
The only real danger in Congress going forward would be granting immunity as it did with Oliver North. North would have been sent to jail except for the complications caused by the granting of immunity by committees investigating Iran-Contra.
This is a welcomed decision and hopefully Judge Kennedy and other courts will also reject the self-serving effort by the Bush Administration to both investigate itself and to prevent anyone else from investigating. The one thing missing is for Congress to frame the matter correctly: whether evidence of torture was destroyed and whether the crime of torturing suspects was ordered by the President.
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The Dixie Chicks do great ‘back up’ and understand what it really means to be Texans.
So, to the House Democrats this poem:
(with apologies to Matthew Arnold)
“To see if we will press our investigation at last,
To see if we will at last be true
To our own long-forgotten constituencies,
Being one with which, we are one with our selves;
Or whether we will once more fall away
Into some bondage of the minority or our fears,
Some slough of the leadership, or some fantastic maze
Forg’d by the imperious unitary executive.”
However, I would take anything John Helgerson says very seriously; his investigation rather than the DOJ’s will be the one to watch, but unlikely to confirm anything that we don’t already know.
I never thought I would say this, but the time has come to disregard anything coming out of the Attorney General’s office.
There are still a lot- a whole lot, of very good, very dedicated, very ethical people working in the Department.
But the public voice of the Department is the AG who is at the service of the President.