Ethics

Truth Commission Dead; Special Prosecutor Possible

By Ed Brayton

Daphne Eviatar writes at the Washington Independent that Sen. Leahy's push for a truth commission to look into possible war crimes by high-ranking Bush administration officials has come up empty:

Charlotte Dennett, a journalist and former candidate for Vermont attorney general, writes in Consortiumnews.com that in a meeting with Leahy on Monday, the senator admitted that his idea for a "Commission of Inquiry" is going nowhere fast.

"We had asked for the meeting to learn why he supported a truth commission over the appointment of a special prosecutor," writes Dennett. "Halfway through the allotted 30 minute meeting (with him taking up much of the time explaining why he was not generally opposed to prosecution, since he had been a DA for eight years and had the highest conviction rate in Vermont), he told us that his truth commission had failed to get the broad support it needed in Congress, and since he couldn't get one Republican to come behind the plan, "it's not going to happen."

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on April 07, 2009 (boomark / email).