Obama indicates he doesn't back lawmakers' calls to probe Bush abuses

As Democratic leaders struggle over what to do about the Bush administration's past abuses, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy joined those advocating a “truth and reconciliation commission” that would seek facts, not jail time.

“We could develop and authorize a person or group of people universally recognized as fair minded, and without axes to grind,” Leahy said during a speech at Georgetown University's Law Center on Monday. “Their straightforward mission would be to find the truth” about controversies such as torture of detainees and warrantless wiretaps.

“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,” the Vermont Democrat said.

Later Monday, asked whether he would support Leahy's plan, President Barack Obama declined comment, saying he was unfamiliar with it. He then reiterated his ambiguous response from the campaign, that no one is above the law but that he favored looking forward, not backward.

“What I have said is that my administration is going to operate in a way that leaves no doubt that we do not torture that we abide by the Geneva Conventions and that we observe our traditions of rule of law and due process as we are vigorously going after terrorists that can do us harm,” Obama said at his first prime-time news conference as President.

"My view is also that nobody is above the law, and if there are clear instances of wrongdoing than people should be prosecuted just like any ordinary citizen. But generally speaking I am more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards.”

Leahy is expected to introduce a bill soon that would create his proposed truth commission. Last month, Leahy's counterpart in the House, Rep. John Conyers, sponsored similar legislation to create a blue-ribbon panel of outside experts to probe the “broad range” of policies pursued by the Bush administration “under claims of unreviewable war powers.”

But Conyers also has called for the appointment of an independent counsel to launch a criminal probe into the Bush administration's policies. Leahy said his plan would be designed to meet public demands for accountability but not lead to prosecutions of any sort.

The dilemma of how to proceed on Bush administration crimes became more acute in the last two months when President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney admitted publicly that they had personally authorized the waterboarding of at least three suspected terrorists and allowed interrogators to use harsh methods against 33 other suspects.

Though Bush and Cheney continued to insist that their actions did not violate anti-torture laws, waterboarding – a technique that makes the victim believe he is drowning – has been regarded as torture at least since the Spanish Inquisition and has been treated as a serious war crime by the U.S. government in the past.

As recently as the 1980s, a Texas sheriff was prosecuted by the Justice Department for using waterboarding to extract confessions from suspects.

Many rank-and-file Democrats and constitutional scholars have argued that criminal prosecutions of senior Bush administration officials are the only meaningful way to achieve accountability. Otherwise, they argue, the United States is making a mockery of the core American principle that “no man is above the law” as well as the nation's historic leadership on human rights.

Some human rights experts also note that U.S. commitments under international law require legal action against anyone implicated in torture, either by prosecuting those responsible in the country or by turning them over to international courts.

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Sale of '867-5309' pulls in almost $200K on eBay

If Jenny wants her number back, she's going to have to cough up some serious cash.

A New Jersey disc jockey could be walking away with $186,853.09 after the conclusion of an auction on eBay for the telephone number immortalized in the 1980's classic "867-5309/Jenny".

The winning buyer, an anonymous eBay user with a "Power Seller" rating, only made two bids on the number, which is attached to a Vonage Voice-over-IP line.

The seller, Spencer Potter, a disc jockey from Weehawken, New Jersey, has claimed that the New York-area number is one of the last working versions of the number available in the U.S. Because of the popularity of the song, released in 1981 by the band Tommy Tutone, many area codes no longer support the number.

Potter and eBay spokespeople did not return requests for comment on the sale or on the identity of the buyer.

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Obama’s envoy voices support for International Court

Ambassador Susan Rice signaled a shift in U.S. policy toward support for the International Criminal Court, a tribunal the Bush administration opposed, in her first speech to the United Nations Security Council.

The International Criminal Court “looks to become an important and credible instrument for trying to hold accountable the senior leadership responsible for atrocities committed in the Congo, Uganda and Darfur,” Rice said in a closed council meeting, according to a text provided by the U.S. mission.

President George W. Bush opposed U.S. ratification of the treaty that created the court out of concern that it didn't include adequate protections against politically motivated prosecutions. The U.S. sought and received UN immunity for its citizens from tribunal prosecution from 2002 to 2004.

Crimes against humanity in Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Cambodia gave impetus to creation of the Hague court, whose jurisdiction took effect on July 1, 2002. The court's prosecutor last July sought the arrest of Sudanese President Umar Hasan al-Bashir for war crimes in the Darfur region of Sudan.

Rice's remarks at the Security Council meeting on international humanitarian law won praise from envoys used to seeing the U.S. isolated on issues such as the International Criminal Court's jurisdiction.

'She Was Incredible'

“She was incredible,” French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert said of Rice, who was chosen for the UN post by new U.S. President Barack Obama. “What she said on human rights and international law I could have written myself.”

Ambassador Jorge Urbina, of Costa Rica, a Security Council member, said the mere mention of the court by a U.S. envoy “raises expectations” of support for ratification of the treaty that established it.

The U.S. in 2002 vetoed a Security Council draft resolution extending a peacekeeping mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina because of a reference to the court. The U.S. abstained from a 2005 vote in the council to refer crimes committed in Darfur to the court.

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Plausible deniability: 'It?s foolproof, even though it was concocted by a fool'

From John W. Sammon's Bush Used Plausible Deniability to Escape Crimes

It´s simple. Much simpler than it sounds. I tell you to commit a scheme, an illegal plot, but don´t tell me the details of how you´re going to do it, to carry it out, so that if it comes to light, if we get caught doing it, I can claim (rightly) that I had no knowledge of it.

It´s a perfect form of dishonest honesty. During an investigation of Iran Contra, a trial, Reagan claimed he didn´t know, or couldn´t remember, anything about the plan. In truth, he couldn´t. He´d told his boys not to tell him the details.

He made them take the heat instead of him.

The power of the presidency and ignorance of orders given, after they´re given. The perfect scam. It´s foolproof, even though it was concocted by a fool (Reagan).

Plausible deniability will be used again. By the next Republican president, if there ever is one.

It´s a perfect plan, because even though the president gives the order to carry it out (a dishonest plan); in fact the president has no knowledge of how it was carried out.

Reagan used this dodge to exchange arms for hostages in Iran and also to fund Contra Rebels in South America in the Iran Contra Scandal of the 1980s.

Bush used it again, although he put a different spin on it. Instead of telling cronies to carry out a plan to attack Iraq without his knowledge, he cherry-picked the evidence to justify the attack, and then lied to the American people that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.

Bush simply threw out every bit of evidence that ran contrary to what he wanted to do (attack Iraq). He needed an excuse, because if he told you the truth, if he said, "we don´t know if there are weapons of mass destruction, but we´re invading Iraq anyway because we want to do a regime change, and we want to re-make the Middle East, and we want their (Iraq´s) oil, and we want a puppet state there."

If he told you that, he knew you might not support the war. So, he made up a lie, and did so in a way to convince himself it was the truth, believing it was in the best interest of the American people.

The perfect scam. A form of plausible deniability. If Bush can convince himself it´s the truth, then he´s not lying, even though it´s a lie.

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US soldier who abandoned unit returns from Canada

He said he fled because he doesn't think the war has improved the lives of Iraqis, and he couldn't stomach the thought of killing.

"During my training, I was ordered that, if anyone came within so many feet of my vehicle, I was to shoot to kill," said Cornell, who enlisted in 2002 but never deployed to war. "I didn't join the military to kill innocents."

The Army artillery specialist made it to Canada in 2005 and soon started a new life working at a grocery store on Gabriola Island in British Columbia.

Cornell's exile ended last week when he crossed the U.S.-Canada border into Washington state. He left voluntarily to avoid deportation.

The first U.S. service member forced out of Canada after the government denied him protective status as a war objector was 25-year-old Army Pvt. Robin Long of Boise, Idaho. He was sentenced to 15 months in prison last August after pleading guilty to desertion charges at Fort Carson, Colo.

Michelle Robidoux, spokeswoman for the Toronto-based War Resisters Support Campaign, said the group has worked with about 50 U.S. service members seeking refugee status or political asylum in Canada. The group estimates more than 200 have fled to Canada, most of them hiding out illegally.

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