A Question Of War Crimes II

A reader writes:

This AP story is, to my mind, remarkably naive in the way it approaches the issues.  No one expects Obama to enter the White House and direct that prosecutions begin against his predecessors for war crimes.  That's not the way our criminal justice system works.  Nor is an Obama attorney general going to pick the issue up.  That's jumping to conclusions and preempting proper analysis, which is the style of the Bush Administration. 

What Obama needs to do is have a panel fully study and document what occurred--give it subpoena power, appoint eminently respected and nonpartisan figures to it, and issue strict orders to the intelligence community, the State Department, the Department of Defense to cooperate.

President Ford, for instance, in setting up the Rockefeller Commission to study CIA abuses, told the CIA and other intelligence agencies that they could not claim privilege against surrendering documents and information to Rockefeller. In his order he said he--the president personally--would make all those decisions, and if they wanted to claim a privilege, they would have to persuade him. (He also made pretty much clear that nothing was going to persuade him). That worked fine.

This will take several years. Let's get all the seedy, dark facts on the table and let's get some distance away from the elections, and then let's see what the public thinks about prosecutions.

 

That seems pretty much on the mark to me.