creative commons/flickr/ by szlea

According to a report in Salon by Mark Benjamin, a brigade or so of Barack Obama's Army of Advisors has been discussing in some detail what to do about BushCo's legion of crimes. A war crimes trial? In America? Starring an ex-president and his Vader-ish Veep? Not bloody likely. The topic surfaced when Philadelphia Daily News columnist Will Bunch asked if he'd consider prosecuting BushCo "for establishing torture as American policy".

"If crimes have been committed, they should be investigated," he said. But he quickly added, "I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of the Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we've got too many problems to solve."

(emphasis added)

Heaven forfend the possibility that Republican feelings might be hurt. There would all that lovely bi-partisanship go, down the drain. All the "healing"? It would be like lancing a boil and it would hurt like hell. Nothing very positive, optimistic, or unifying about that.

On the other hand, much to my pleasant surprise, BO's AofA's are seriously considering a sort of Truth & Reconciliation Commission (http://impeachment.wordpress.com/2008/06/10/why-a-truth-reconciliation-commission-is-better-than-impeachment/) for America like the one Mandela designed for South Africa when apartheid ended.

While they have not been asked to develop a formal recommendation for Obama on the question of criminal accountability for torture, those who are weighing the issue, a group that includes some of the 300 people the New York Times recently described as Obama's "mini State Department," are moving toward consensus on some key points. Specifically, don't hold your breath waiting for Dick Cheney to be frog-marched into federal court. Prosecution of any officials, if it were to occur, would probably not occur during Obama's first term. Instead, we may well see a congressionally empowered commission that would seek testimony from witnesses in search of the truth about what occurred. Though some witnesses might be offered immunity in exchange for testimony, the question of whether anybody would be prosecuted would be deferred to a later date -- meaning Obama's second term, if such is forthcoming.

While there are certainly participants in these discussions who believe that top-level administration officials deserve to be hauled before a judge, even the harshest critics of the current administration's torture policies don't think there will be an immediate effort by the next president to prosecute anyone from the Bush administration. "I don't sense the political appetite for it," said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, who is involved in the informal discussions about what Obama could do about investigating torture. "I don't think the next president will do that no matter who he is."

No, I imagine John McCain probaby wouldn't investigate BushCo for putting in place an (unConstitutional) policy that he supports and has every intention of continuing despite his opersonal experience with it.

But the fact that a Band of Brothers is even willing to seriously discuss it is hopeful if hardly sufficient. Will we see a T&RC in our lifetime? Maybe, but the focus on torture is, legally, probably the weakest point on which to concentrate an inquiry. The bigger, more significant and more Constitutionally profound questions are those of beginning a patently illegal war and illegally spying on American citizens for years, then lying about it to Congress (lying to Congress, after all, was the excuse they used to to impeach Clinton, so even Republicans would be forced to admit it was legitimate grounds since they had used the same grounds).

In any case, once a T&RC was launched and "things" started coming out, it would be near impossible to restrict the scope of the investigation, and it is the investigation, frankly, that's important.

The nonpartisan presidential commission that [Washington advocacy director at Human Rights Watch Tom] Malinowski and other people involved in the discussions are advocating would have considerable power, granted by Congress, to force cooperation. The commission would ultimately deliver recommendations to the president that would include, among other things, whether or not Cheney deserves that walk up the courthouse steps.

The first order of business, however, would be learning the truth. "I think a lot of us feel that the American people are entitled to the whole truth," said another person who knows about the discussions. "The American people are entitled to [an investigation] from an official body that has access to the classified documents that makes as much public as it can," that person added.

The commission would focus strictly on detention, torture and extraordinary rendition, or the practice of spiriting detainees to a third country for abusive interrogations. The panel would focus strictly on these abuses, leaving out any other allegedly illegal activities during the Bush administration, such as domestic spying.

(emphasis added)

If - and it's a BIG If - Obama goes for this, he will have gone a long way toward "healing the breach in his own party, and shouldn't that come first?