A great deal of harm has been created by the cabal that passed it toxins thru our military chain of command for execution. Appears that the likes of Admiral Hayden are comfortable as long as it has now passed by gold plated hands. Curious comment about the validity of the oath to defend the Constitution that lets him recieve a check monthly from the Treasury. Let us avoid paying that little stipend to all flag officers that served this country. We will call it looking forward. One wonders if flag selection boards produce the same qualty results as SEC oversight.

We voted for change and we expect change. Our new president needs to ban special interest and money padding the pockets of our politicians to stop alienating the rest of us. No foreign represented special interest money should be allowed to support our politicians. They are bribes. Bribes are illegal.
The UN and the international community has long used the term "inalienable rights" to describe the illegally occupied Palestinians. That still applies.
Israel needs to be isolated, sanctioned and forced to accept the borders from 1967 and abandon the settlements to Palestinians forced into concentration camps when their homes/lands were confiscated. Israel, a nuclear armed Goliath, is committing war crimes but especially obvious in Gaza as it uses Hamas as an excuse to destroy Gaza and its people. While greed is the real reason, the natural gas and oil off the shores of Gaza that belong to Palestine. The same tactic was used by attacking Iraq and blaming Saddam Hussein, WMD, then democracy, etc., as a facade for wanting to control the oil. Israel is not a democracy, it is an apartheid state.
Bush is leaving and with good riddance after he ruined America in the eyes of the world and the economy. He has allowed himself to be led by the charlatan neoconservatives with conflicts of interest. His cowardly support of unnecessary wars has brought us down financially in the trillions of dollars. The book "Deadly Dogma" by Grant Smith is a good example of what has happened.
It is now time to enforce international laws. Create an international peace keeping force to enforce the borders of Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem and any other areas the Israelis have illegally and brutally occupied. The name Israel should be removed as it does not belong to Europeans who invaded during WW11. Jerusalem needs to be international as was intended, to represent three religions, not one. One country representing all of the people including the Palestinians forced into concentration camp ghettos as their lands and homes were stolen or destroyed. This has been the intention since the 1940s and was never the intention to become Israel.

Push the incoming President Obama to stand for change he promised and for peace with justice. In 2009, not years later as more and more children of Palestine are killed and more wars are started as a result of the horrors made by Israel. What is happening is heartbreaking and a poor example of what America is all about. Israel has to compensate the displaced Palestinians and tear down its apartheid wall and system of governing they claim as democratic but it isn't. Israel is a racist, bigoted country and the last of the colonial thefts of the land of others. But this is 2009, and we have risen above those horrors. Israel is a threat to world peace and security and no American taxpayer money should go there or to any country to force them to accept Israel. There needs to be a just peace, not a bought peace with our tax dollars. America needs the billions being sent to Israel and Egypt, Jordan and any others as bribes. Many Jewish Peace groups are speaking out similarly. The time is now to enforce peace and stop the theft of Palestine.

I don't think there is any reason to lend much credibility to what Obama may or may not have suggested, supposedly privately, to the outgoing CIA director. We simply don't know what is to come, and we don't know what we don't know -- we only know what's been reported. There very well could be additional facts that will not leave the option of not acting available. Further, it isn't Obama's decision. The AG and U.S. Attorneys decide what is investigated and prosecuted; if you believe that Obama controls that, then you make a grave accusation regarding the independence of the Department of Justice under Obama, something that is high on many lists of the most important breaches of the past eight years that must be repaired. On a comission, Bush didn't want the 9/11 Commission; Congress forced it to happen. They have every right to take a similar course on this. Obama seems to be signaling with his language that he would like them to.

To be honest, I don't quite know what exact steps so many people believe are available to the president on this matter. Can he simply create a commission with subpoena power with the stroke of his pen? Shouldn't we be a tiny bit wary of such a power if it existed?

Hamas has little to do with the bombing and destruction of Iraq. Israel has broken every cease-fire truce in order to keep the kettle boiling. Apparently it is gas/oil on Gaza shores Israel is trying to steal. The thing is that the occupation by Israel is still considered illegal and the 1967 borders are still recognized internationally.
Certainly there should be a Truth Commission and some heads should roll, namely Bush, Cheney, Rummy, Wolfowitz, Perle, Wurmser, et al, any connected with the push for the unnecessary wars and increased weaponry that benefitted a few of those people as listed in "Deadly Dogma" by Grant Smith, 2006, easy read, documented, concise and to the point.

This is the time for peace and to push Israel back out of Gaza, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights with an international peace keeping force guarding the borders. Cut off all aid to Israel, a country that needs American taxpayer money far less than Americans need it. Cut aid to Egypt and Jordan as well. There is no need for America to suffer financial deficits in the trillions while those other countries are doing quite well and we are not.
Once money is stopped flowing into Israel and some firm sanctions are placed on it, we would see peace being worked on very fast.

Gazans have suffered for no reason at all. The inalienable rights of Paletinians still applies and must be honored by their occupiers.

This whole situation is not just a danger to world peace and security but it is absolutely stupid what the US has allowed Israel to do to its victims.

Thanks for the articles.

Jrogers

There is something third worldly about new governments turning around and prosecuting previous leaders for their "crimes against the people." Sounds like a parlor trick used by incoming leaders to secure the favor of the people right before they turn around and start doing the same thing.

Let Congress handle this one, they'll establish a fact-finding commission of some kind almost immediately. The President need not endorse or be involved with it.

Its very difficult to prove that anyone intentionally did anything, and legal questions still being resolved in the Supreme Court cannot be used to convict people for past actions. (We have this whole no "ex post facto" thing in our Constitution) People will have to live with the idea that mistakes were made, and the real challenge will be to drop the partisan rhetoric and objectively determine what went wrong.

Barack Obama and his team have clearly made a decision to make the most of the chance to work smoothly with the outgoing administration during a time of national crisis. This decision has helped Obama to get off to a fast start in organizing his new administration before he has even taken office; it has probably also avoided breakdowns in communications in the all-important economic areas.

These benefits come with a price, and not just the one Ricks alludes to here. That price has to do with letting misdeeds go unpunished and appearing to look past the rule of law. Obama also runs the risk, though, of sacrificing one of his most valuable political assets -- the toxic unpopularity of the outgoing President and his team -- for less than it is worth.

Does he want America looking back? To some extent, sure he does; it will be necessary to remind Americans of how the last President let the country down in order for the new President to enact his program and maintain public support during what will be a very difficult next few years. The Democrats under Roosevelt used Hoover in this way; so did the Republicans under Reagan after Carter's dismal four years, and Bush's record has more stains on it than either of the earlier failed Presidents'.

I have mixed feelings about actual criminal prosecutions over issues like detainee abuse. These would place a very heavy burden of responsibility on the people closest to the acts of abuse themselves, while making charges against senior policymakers that would be very difficult to prove in a court of law. I actually have less difficulty with the idea of prosecuting domestic abuses of Bush administration officials, particularly in cases involving the Justice Department and individual cases of corruption in defense procurement and other areas. Finally, many of the most important failings during the last eight years had to do with policy and process choices -- for example, the weakening of the Presidency in favor of the Vice Presidency that Bush allowed, the abuse of information classification and the use of Justice Department OLC in ways that followed the letter but not the spirit of the law. It is very important both that these choices be brought into the clear light of day by the new administration and that they not be reflected in Obama's own practice.

In the short term, Obama and his team have likely avoided significant difficulties with the outgoing administration. Bush, very much a product of his generation, has always been hypersensitive to personal criticism, and by not straying into anything that looks like that Obama has helped himself in the short term. He is not bound to that after Bush and his people are gone unless he chooses to be, and I sincerely hope he does not.

Obama's the same as Bush. Look at his recent statements.
Obama will:
Outlaw torture except in extreme circumstances.
Close Gitmo but it may take years and when it happens most of the prisoners will be transferred to US prisons with the same legal rights.
Stay in Iraq for 2-3 years.
Use warrantless wiretapping.

The only difference is that Obama wants to keep most of this stuff under the radar, and with the fawning press, he may be successful.

So, it's no wonder he doesn't want an investigation into the powers he intends to use...