The Media Is Yet Again The Last To Get It. But Will Bush Administration Perps?

I take not one freaking iota of satisfaction in having been out well ahead of the mainstream media -- as were a goodly number of bloggers -- concerning Bush administration excesses, especially its serial abuses of power. The handwriting was on the wall, in some cases writ large in blood, but the MSM was for the most part looking the other way as it did with the Iraq war or was plain cowardly.

And so you have the sight of the Washington Post editorial board, which gradually shed its once famously liberal mufti over the last eight years, belatedly professing horror in an editorial headlined "Mad Max's Justice Department" that followed the Obama administration's release of secret memos by the Bush Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel endorsing those abuses:

"Imagine a place where soldiers are entitled to burst through doors without warrants and citizens can be locked away without trial. Imagine that the leader of this place has the power to silence dissenters and the press and has the right to keep duly elected legislators from having a voice in these matters. Imagine further that he can unilaterally rip up and disregard any treaty he dislikes and that he has been told he is on solid legal ground by a hand-picked circle of advisers.

"This is not some lawless Third World country or dusty fictional outback from a sci-fi movie but the United States of America, as described in a series of newly released Justice Department memos from the early years of the Bush administration."

A horror indeed, but one in which the WaPo and the MSM were helpmates.

And as much as it pains me to say this as someone who was a part of the MSM for 35-plus years, it certainly puts an unflattering light on some of the big-city papers that are fighting for their survival. As in, they failed their readers concerning one of the biggest stories of the millennium, so should we rue their own failure as viable enterprises that sold a tainted product?

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While the WaPo is to be commended for finally getting with the program (cue sound of one hand clapping), the editorial dares not opine what should be the upshot of the OLC memo dump other than to lamely beseech Attorney General Holder to not follow in his predecessors' footsteps and play nice.

But the memo dump, combined with the news that the CIA destroyed not just a mere handful of tapes that in all likelihood showed the torture of terror suspects but some 92 in all in an astonishing orgy of evidence shredding that violated a judge's order, further begs the question of whether perpetrators like John Yoo and Steven Bradbury at Justice and Jose Rodriguez at the CIA will be let off the hook.

There clearly is no interest at the White House in pursuing the prosecution of these perps, let alone David Addington, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff and the chief architect of the Bush torture regime, but that is not the point.

Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, convened a hearing this week on the creation of a bipartisan investigation into the abuses and knows that such an inquiry stands a snowball's chance in Guantánamo Bay unless witnesses are granted immunity.

This raises another set of troubling questions, chief among them whether justice can be served -- which is nothing less than providing Americans, and for that matter the world, with a full accounting -- if an investigation is hamstrung by handing out go-free cards.

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This brings us to the biggest go-free card of the moment, a deal hashed out whereby top Bush aides Karl Rove and Harriet Miers will waive their claim of absolute presidential immunity and provide depositions and sworn public testimony about the dismissal of U.S. attorneys but will not be asked about their conversations with The Decider.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers called the agreement "a vindication of the search for truth," but that is hyperbolic and then some. The deal, which grew out of court action to force the aides to respond to committee subpoenas, is worth applauding (cue sound of other hand clapping), but -- again -- is justice served by providing what on its face will be far less than a full accounting?

Putting it another way: Bush and Cheney gave themselves the powers of a dictatorship, and while a few aides may get sweated, the dictators themselves will be unscathed.