Does no one have the cojones to lead?
From an interview with Jane Mayer, concerning her talks with Leon Panetta, about what the world can expect in terms of dealing with the abuses of the Bush administration:
(short version…nothing.)
Panetta told me that he did in fact at first favor some sort of “truth commission” to review the CIA’s history, but he said that once it became clear that President Obama was against the idea, he and other supporters basically backed off. He told me also that he doesn’t see much chance it will be revived at this point. In part, his support was for political reasons–he saw the commission as a way to delegate these politically toxic issues to experts outside the administration.
He mentioned former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and former Congressman Lee Hamilton as the types of nonpartisan experts he thought could be commissioners. It’s an irony that while Panetta is known for his political experience–on this issue President Obama decided against him–because he and his own political team thought a commission would just embroil Obama further in Bush’s mistakes. In particular, they didn’t want to arouse the ire of Bush and Cheney, Panetta told me. So they squelched the idea of looking back. Any serious look back at how American came to embrace torture would inevitably lead to Cheney. It would also likely end up having to reexamine the false confessions from coerced detainees that helped get us into the war in Iraq. They just see too much partisan political peril in it.</em>
So out of fear of pissing off two treasonous pricks who should be sitting in the dock at the Hague, not belching out bullshit on Fox News, Obama tucks his testicles under his ass and pussies out. Sorry about the 5,000 dead US troops killed ON A LIE, sorry about the shredding of the rule of law, sorry about the electrodes on your nuts and you crapping yourself when they drowned you, sorry about all of that. But you understand that exposing the truth, well, it wouldn’t be nice, and might cost him political capital.
I guess Mr. “Hope and Change” hopes you don’t notice he ain’t changin’ shit.
