Saturday, February 14, 2009

Truth Commission -- for the USA; Can Amex be far behind?

In an article by Kate Phillips in the NY Times, there's a call for a Truth Commission in the US Senate. This is the type of "thing" I'd like for American Express, so that it can clean up its past transgressions. In South Africa, the Truth Commission helped bring together (what I thought was) a hopeless country. In the less extreme, the US can resolve when and if we Americans should use torture, but only by knowing what has happened in the past. Similarly, and again in a much less extreme way, Amex could see if they/we can resolve its past transgressions and stop it from happening in the future.

The concept is that 'Senator Patrick Leahy, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman and one of several Democratic senators who challenged Bush administration policies over the last eight years, called today for a truth commission to conduct inquiries into legal oversight at the Justice Department and various other decisions about interrogation procedures and other practices. ... Senator Leahy suggested the formation of a truth commission as a compromise between those Bush critics who want to prosecute former administration officials and Bush loyalists who are opposed to any inquiries: '

"There is another option that we might also consider, a middle ground. A middle ground to find the truth. We need to get to the bottom of what happened — and why — so we make sure it never happens again.One path to that goal would be a reconciliation process and truth commission. We could develop and authorize a person or group of people universally recognized as fair minded, and without axes to grind. Their straightforward mission would be to find the truth. People would be invited to come forward and share their knowledge and experiences, not for purposes of constructing criminal indictments, but to assemble the facts.

If needed, such a process could involve subpoena powers, and even the authority to obtain immunity from prosecutions in order to get to the whole truth. Congress has already granted immunity, over my objection, to those who facilitated warrantless wiretaps and those who conducted cruel interrogations. It would be far better to use that authority to learn the truth.
There is another option that we might also consider, a middle ground. A middle ground to find the truth. We need to get to the bottom of what happened — and why — so we make sure it never happens again.One path to that goal would be a reconciliation process and truth commission. We could develop and authorize a person or group of people universally recognized as fair minded, and without axes to grind. Their straightforward mission would be to find the truth. People would be invited to come forward and share their knowledge and experiences, not for purposes of constructing criminal indictments, but to assemble the facts.

If needed, such a process could involve subpoena powers, and even the authority to obtain immunity from prosecutions in order to get to the whole truth. Congress has already granted immunity, over my objection, to those who facilitated warrantless wiretaps and those who conducted cruel interrogations. It would be far better to use that authority to learn the truth. "


(February 9, 2009, 5:30 pm) Judiciary Chairman Calls for Commission to Delve into Bush Practices

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/09/judiciary-chairman-calls-for-commission-to-delve-into-bush-practices/

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