Truth and reconciliation commission

[zonmoy]

What do you think of the idea for our country. how far back would it have to go to get at all the truth. any other comments on the idea would be great.

[Postman]

1. Maybe they should ask these people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ty_Ziegel

I'm sure they'd be fine with an admission they lied about Iraq.

[shraby]

2. I don't like the idea because I think the

perps should be frog-marched. No reconciliation without punishment.

[zonmoy]

3. Then you might just end up frog marching the fall guys.

this scheme goes up to the most powerful people on the planet. assuming that there isn't divine (I am a maltheist so I can easily figure that an evil god would be behind it) ringleaders to it.

[shraby]

4. You could never convince me that Bushco is

composed of fall guys.

[zonmoy]

5. More like puppets for the malevolent puppet masters.

What corporations and organizations benefited the most from bush-co. those are the ones behind them particularly the ones that own those companies or control the organizations.

The nazis were propped up by a cabal of businesspeople who created them to advance their agenda's. What cabal of businesspeople are behind the rise of the bushco brand of fascism.

also what religious cabals are behind the demonetization of competing religions and manipulation to bring about their end time beliefs and beliefs that this should be a christian empire.

and any other groups that had their agendas to back bushco.

[RainDog]

6. the path starts with Reagan's administration - the neocons started there

overestimating (lying?) about the threat of the Soviet Union as they were disintegrating. they refused to listen to the CIA reports about the Soviets b/c it didn't fit with their hawkish mil/ind. complex porkish pov.

then on to Iran-Contra and the October Surprise (which was treason, btw), Iraqgate (Bush I) and the deals made with the Saudi dynasty- trading weapons in return for oil. And Bush I secretly (illegally) selling nuclear components to Pakistan.

The constant violation by the U.S. of the nuclear ban treaties that led other nations to re-arm or try to arm...

(of course, for some of us, this whole thing goes back to 1963/64 and the right wingers who wanted to fake a terror attack by Cuba as an excuse to invade, the Gulf of Tonkin, the unconstitutional spying on U.S. citizens...)

however, it will probably only go back to this Bush administration.

the telecom immunity bill was supposed to protect them from criminal charges for the spying they started BEFORE 9-11.

And the illegal access Israeli Generals had to the OSP, as Karen Kwaitkowski wrote about in... 2004?

And the spying for Israel from Feith (who was working out of Cheney's office.)

And the propaganda online to fake terror threats.

And the Air Force and the Cheney arm of the govt's attempts to steal nuclear warheads and send them to Taiwan, no doubt for yet another illegal, extra-constitutional action.

In this administration's case, American Intelligence has been compromised by the Bush administration in relation to Israel. The attack on Iraq was for them. The current calls for an attack on Iran are for them.

This fits with Baby Bush's fundamentalist pov, along with the work Perle, Feith, etc. did for Netayahu concerning "Securing the Realm" or whatever it was called, that reads like the Israeli version of the neocon manifesto.

Earlier, with Poppy Bush, the issue was his collusion with Iran and Iraq. Playing all sides by arming everyone. what a bright idea. :eyes:

[zonmoy]

8. I would think that it would go back a lot earlier than that.

at minimum I think we would have to rethink about a certain speech warning about the military industrial complex. If not to the point that our government thought that grabbing all the nazi spy masters and putting them in the cia was a good idea.

[RainDog]

9. yeah, Gehlen Org was a huge mistake

that goes back to Dulles and Angleton.

I do think there is so much "lost history," as Robert Parry labels it, that could help this nation step back from fascism and denounce the right wingers in this nation, but I would imagine Congress only wants to go back so far.

Democrats are also part of the process.. esp. LBJ and Scoop Jackson as far as these recent crimes and their precedent. I think it's imp. to bring up LBJ's war crimes too. Because it's not about partisanship, ultimately.

It's about the unconstitutional actions taken by the CIA and the executive branch over many years.

The Church Commission tried to get into some of it - how many Americans know about that? Or how many of them know about it through the frame of Fox commentator and treasonous bastard Ollie North?

While a commission is useful to get those lower in the chain of command to testify in return for immunity, those at the top of the food chain, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Addington, Yoo, Feith... these ppl need to be in jail, imo. maybe military prison.

[RainDog]

7. this is a good video talking about the issue of war crimes

Phillipe Sands, a British lawyer, talks about the need to deal with the war crimes of the Bush administration - he says the view from other western democracies is that if the U.S. doesn't deal with this, others, who honor Int'l Human Rights agreements, are required to investigate war crimes whenever someone accused of the same sets foot in one of their nations. So far an American lawyer has charged Rumsfeld with war crimes in Germany and France and the cases were referred back to the U.S. to handle... their courts are telling the U.S. to deal with this or they will.

That's what Sands is saying too. He has a book that lays out the war crimes.

In this video, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who was Colin Powell's chief of staff, also concurs with the idea that this administration must be held legally accountable for war crimes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V2XCkGjP5g

How the White House Sanctioned Torture
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuIKFxtilbc

[blm]

10. I submitted this same solution. Definitely needs to go back to the fascist agenda

that was accepted at some point after WW2 and allowed to develop into a longterm manipulation of the American people and its governing bodies.

BCCI was practically a blueprint of the strategies they employed and would have had its full airing and accountability moment for BushInc but for the generous posture Bill Clinton took throughout the 90s as he deep-sixed all those matters for GHWBush and the powerful elite involved in BCCIs illegal operations.

The American people, Republicans AND Democrats need to go forward based on the FACTS tas they exist, not the spin that has been so long used to distract from the truth.

This country would have its most positive and most powerful turn ever if we could do that.

[Peace Patriot]

11. T & R Commissions have been tried in various places, some successfully,

some with not so great results (perps free to make more trouble).

Colombia is an example of the latter. (Rightwing death squad perps continuing to run death squads and drug rings from their jail cells--hell, rightwing perps running the whole government.) (Their civil war rages on--with the fascists funded by us, to the tune of $5.5 BILLION in military aid.)

South Africa--successful. The society was able to move past apartheid, to empowerment of the black majority, without a bloody race war. (And Mandela, and TuTu, and others, have provided leadership for T&Ts elsewhere in Africa, for instance, Rwanda.)

Guatemala--mixed results. UN sponsored T&R helped end their civil war, and brought out a lot of really, really bad stuff (including Reagan complicity in the slaughter of 200,000 Mayan villagers!), but some of the perps are free. Guatemala did, however, elect its first progressive government, ever--this last year.

The key to success seems to be the WHOLE TRUTH--that is, if it is established that you are holding things back, lying, covering up, you are subject to prosecution.

I think it's an excellent idea for the Bushites, provided they give all the money back--which was/is their main goal anyway (looting). And I don't think people like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Addington, Rove, et al, are capable of telling the truth--so they would get prosecuted.

And the punishment? Give all the money back, of course--and life sentences of community service. My favorite - cleaning bedpans in veterans' hospitals (under close surveillance, with electronic anklets). (And maybe a webcam so the American people and others can watch them work--or at least a webcam set up in the Oval Office and in Congress, as a warning to our leaders of what will happen to them if they ever do shit like this again.)

We should look into T&Rs around the world. Maybe the UN has an info site. See what works, what doesn't, and what would be best here.