Academic

STUART TAYLOR ON THE ?TRUTH COMMISSION? WE REALLY NEED. (Via TigerHawk.) Plus, from Tom Maguire:?

By Glenn Reynolds

STUART TAYLOR ON THE “TRUTH COMMISSION” WE REALLY NEED. (Via TigerHawk.)

Plus, from Tom Maguire: “I back the CW on this - Washington and the Obama agenda will freeze if Obama does not Move On. So speaking as someone with no love for either Bush or Obama’s likely agenda, I say to the Truth Commission idea, bring it on. Nancy Pelosi being sworn in to lie about what she knew and when she forgot it - she has to be less dangerous to the country that way. . . . I’m counting on my President to do the right thing.”

UPDATE: Porter Goss points up the amnesia from Democrats:

Today, I am slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as “waterboarding” were never mentioned. It must be hard for most Americans of common sense to imagine how a member of Congress can forget being told about the interrogations of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. In that case, though, perhaps it is not amnesia but political expedience.

Let me be clear. It is my recollection that:

– The chairs and the ranking minority members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, known as the Gang of Four, were briefed that the CIA was holding and interrogating high-value terrorists.

– We understood what the CIA was doing.

– We gave the CIA our bipartisan support.

– We gave the CIA funding to carry out its activities.

– On a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda.

I do not recall a single objection from my colleagues. They did not vote to stop authorizing CIA funding. And for those who now reveal filed “memorandums for the record” suggesting concern, real concern should have been expressed immediately — to the committee chairs, the briefers, the House speaker or minority leader, the CIA director or the president’s national security adviser — and not quietly filed away in case the day came when the political winds shifted. And shifted they have.

Our political class is a sorry lot, regardless of which party is in charge, but it hasn’t improved since the election. It just feels less constrained.

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on April 25, 2009 (boomark / email).