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Pelosi Should Resign - Complicity in War Crimes

By Ralph Lopez  Posted by Ralph Lopez (about the submitter)       (Page 1 of 2 pages)   No comments
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With Rep. John Conyers moving forward by appointing a Special Counsel to investigate the politicization of the Justice Department which resulted, among other things, in Gov. Don Seigelman being put in jail...

With the Wall Street Theft of the Century dead and Wall Street's Bush enablers faced with having to pay for their own gluttonous lunch or watch the economy spiral...

With Congress still shaken by the sudden unified fury across the left and right with which Americans stopped the Wall Street bailout...

And with conservatives such as John Lillpop penning articles entitled "Mr. President, Your Helicopter is Waiting"...

The atmosphere has never been better for Americans to push for getting the rest of their country back, and recovering the Constitution, our image in the world, and our national sanity.  Referring to the report just released by the DOJ's Inspector General on the firing of U.S. attorneys, Chairman Conyers said:

"although Congress will soon adjourn, I believe that this matter is too important to await our return, and will hold a committee hearing on Friday to explore the issues raised by this report."

Will Conyers finally enforce his subpoenas to Karl Rove and Harriet Miers -- which would all but guarantee Rove and Miers putting a light on the more unsavory aspects of the administration's inner workings? Bill Clinton was not impeached until December 19th of the 105th Congress. There may be an Accountability God yet.

But first, the biggest roadblock to accountability, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, must be dealt with. The most frequent response from conservatives who want impeachment is that George Bush and Dick Cheney didn't do these bad things all by themselves.  And they're right.  For the country to have a clean sweep, it's time to acknowledge the role Pelosi and other Democrats had in abiding the torture of prisoners who were so innocent they were let go.

Army Maj. General Antonio Taguba (Ret.) says:

"There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."

Gen. Taguba is referencing a report --"Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact."  According to ABC News, the report:

"...details medical evaluations of 11 former detainees held by the US military in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. None were ever charged with any crime; all have since been released."

Spencer Ackerman's article of last year "Pelosi: I Knew Very Very Little About Waterboarding Detainees" details how Pelosi had been briefed about torture...and said nothing.  Further, in an act of exquisite Washington backstabbing, Pelosi implied that Rep. Jane Harman, who took over for her in the House Intelligence Committee, and with whom it is known she does not get along, certainly knew more about these dastardly deeds than she did:

"On one occasion, in the fall of 2002, I was briefed on interrogation techniques the Administration was considering using in the future. The Administration advised that legal counsel for the both the CIA and the Department of Justice had concluded that the techniques were legal.

"I had no further briefings on the techniques. Several months later, my successor as Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee, Jane Harman, was briefed more extensively and advised the techniques had in fact been employed. It was my understanding at that time that Congresswoman Harman filed a letter in early 2003 to the CIA to protest the use of such techniques, a protest with which I concurred."

You don't "concur" with a protest someone else files on illegal behavior. You start hauling witnesses in to investigate.

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Ralph Lopez majored in Economics and Political Science at Yale University. He writes for Truth Out, Alternet, Consortium News, Op-Ed News, and other Internet media. He reported from Afghanistan in 2009 and produced a short documentary film on (more...)
 

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