Karl Rove recently described George W. Bush as a book lover, writing, \u201cThere is a myth perpetuated by Bush critics that he would rather burn a book than read one.\u201d There will be many histories written about the Bush administration. What will they use for source material? The Bush White House was sued for losing e-mails, and for skirting laws intended to protect public records. A federal judge ordered White House computers scoured for e-mails just days before Bush left office. Three hundred million e-mails reportedly went to the National Archives, but 23 million e-mails remain \u201clost.\u201d Vice President Dick Cheney left office in a wheelchair due to a back injury suffered when moving boxes out of his office. He has not only hobbled a nation in his attempt to sequester information\u2013he hobbled himself. Cheney also won court approval to decide which of his records remain private.<\/p>\n
Barack Obama was questioned by George Stephanopoulos about the possibility of prosecuting Bush administration officials. Obama said: \u201cWe\u2019re still evaluating how we\u2019re going to approach the whole issue of interrogations, detentions and so forth. … I don\u2019t believe that anybody is above the law. On the other hand, I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards. … [W]hat we have to focus on is getting things right in the future, as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n
Legal writer Karen Greenberg notes in Mother Jones magazine, \u201cThe list of potential legal breaches is, of course, enormous; by one count, the administration has broken 269 laws, both domestic and international.\u201d<\/p>\n
Torture, wiretapping and \u201cextraordinary rendition\u201d\u2013these are serious crimes that have been alleged. President Obama now has, more than anyone else, the power to investigate.<\/p>\n
John Conyers, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has just subpoenaed Karl Rove while investigating the politicization of the Justice Department and the political prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman. Rove previously invoked executive privilege to avoid congressional subpoenas. Conyers said in a press release: \u201cI will carry this investigation forward to its conclusion, whether in Congress or in court. … Change has come to Washington, and I hope Karl Rove is ready for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who blocked impeachment hearings, is at least now calling for an investigation. She told Fox News: \u201cI think that we have to learn from the past, and we cannot let the politicizing of the\u2013for example, the Justice Department\u2013to go unreviewed. … I want to see the truth come forth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Why not take it a step further?<\/p>\n
Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, who led the charge in Congress for impeachment of Bush and Cheney, has called for \u201cthe establishment of a National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation, which will have the power to compel testimony and gather official documents to reveal to the American people not only the underlying deception which has divided us, but in that process of truth-seeking set our nation on a path of reconciliation.\u201d<\/p>\n
Millions have served time in U.S. prisons for crimes that fall far short of those attributed to the Bush administration. Some criminals, it seems, are like banks judged too big to fail: too big to jail, too powerful to prosecute. What if we apply President Obama\u2019s legal theory to the small guys? Why look back? Crimes, large or small, can be forgiven, in the spirit of unity. But few would endorse letting muggers, rapists or armed robbers of convenience stores off scot-free. So why the different treatment for those potentially guilty of torture, widespread illegal spying and leading a nation into wars that have killed untold numbers?<\/p>\n
Which brings us back to George Bush and books. Ray Bradbury\u2019s novel \u201cFahrenheit 451\u201d is one of the titles in the National Endowment for the Arts\u2019 \u201cThe Big Read.\u201d This ambitious program is \u201cdesigned to restore reading to the center of American culture.\u201d Cities, towns, even entire states choose a book and encourage everyone to read it. In \u201cFahrenheit 451\u201d (the temperature at which paper spontaneously combusts), books are outlawed. Firemen don\u2019t put out fires, they start them, burning down houses that contain books. Bradbury said: \u201cYou don\u2019t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.\u201d The secretive Bush administration is out of power; the transparency-proclaiming Obama administration is in. But transparency is useful only when accompanied by accountability.<\/p>\n
Without thorough, aggressive, public investigations of the full spectrum of crimes alleged of the Bush administration, there will be no accountability, and the complete record of this chapter of U.S. history will never be written. \u00a9 2009 Amy Goodman<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Karl Rove recently described George W. Bush as a book lover, writing, \u201cThere is a myth perpetuated by Bush critics that he would rather burn a book than read one.\u201d There will be many histories written about the Bush administration. What will they use for source material? The Bush White House was sued for losing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,1616],"tags":[49],"class_list":{"0":"post-5160","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-politics","7":"category-usa-news","8":"tag-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\n Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.
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\n Amy Goodman is the host of \u201cDemocracy Now!,\u201d a daily international TV\/radio news hour airing on more than 700 stations in North America. She was awarded the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, dubbed the \u201cAlternative Nobel\u201d prize, and received the award in the Swedish Parliament in December.<\/em><\/p>\n