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Proceed At Your Own Peril: Holder May Face Congressional Investigation Into His Own Role on Renditions If He Investigates Torture

holderericPete Williams is reporting that Republicans are threatening to expose Attorney General Eric Holder’s role in renditions during the Clinton Administration if he pursues an investigation into torture. Imagine that: raw political retaliation could finally give civil libertarians a full investigation of this country’s long-concealed abuses.

It is now clear that our mistake for the last eight years has been to call upon members to follow their conscience and principles. We should have expressed human rights in terms of a good way to embarrass your opponents.

Senators Lamar Alexander of Tennessee and Richard Shelby of Alabama pressed Holder on the CIA’s “rendition” program under the Clinton Administration and demanded figures, which Holder promised to supply.

When is Holder going to stop this farce and allow a disinterested special prosecutor to investigate this matter? Until then, we will continue to see political ploys in both parties continue to diminish our standing in the world. At the moment, this entire controversy is being treated as a political contest by both Democrats and Republicans.

Ironically, the muscle play may backfire. Holder and Obama have already been accused for promising Bush officials before the inauguration that they would privately block any investigation or prosecution into torture. Their actions since then have only reaffirmed those statements by Senators and CIA officials. Now, if Holder does not investigate, it will be viewed as knuckling under to avoid personal embarrassment into his own actions during the Clinton administration.

For the full story, click here.

45 thoughts on “Proceed At Your Own Peril: Holder May Face Congressional Investigation Into His Own Role on Renditions If He Investigates Torture”

  1. lottakatz:

    “Classical quotation is the parole of literary men all over the world.”

    –Samuel Johnson, as quoted in Boswell’s Life of Johnson (May 8th, 1781)

    And literary women too, it would seem. 🙂

  2. “Every thought that makes up the whole can be lifted as a sentence or two and stand alone as a wisdom unto itself.” lottakatz

    So true, and so here goes.

    “Other men are lenses through which we read our own minds. Each man seeks those of different quality from his own, and such as are good of their kind…,” “There is a power in love to divine another’s destiny better than that other can, and, by heroic encouragements, hold him to his task. What has friendship so signal as its sublime attraction to whatever virtue is in us? We will never more think cheaply of ourselves, or of life.”
    R.W. Emerson.

    Feel f r e e to contact the White House.

    The White House
    1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
    Washington, DC 20500

    or

    202-456-1111

    or

    http://www.whitehouse.gov/CONTACT/

  3. mespo, Thank you. The virtue of a quote like the one you posted is that the every thought that makes up the whole can be lifted as a sentence or two and stand alone as a wisdom unto itself. Thanks for the link.

  4. AY:

    Basking in the glow of a fine win by my Penguins over the hapless Capitols in the NHL playoffs. I wanted a blow out but an OT win will do nicely. Et tu?

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