Monday, January 26, 2009

The Best Disinfectant

Sen Sheldon Whitehouse, the wonderfully named Senator from RI, gave a barnburner of a speech the other day on the Senate floor, calling for investigation (and presumably) prosecution of the enablers and enactors of torture.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-Rhode Island, a former federal prosecutor and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said in a floor speech, “As the President looks forward and charts a new course, must someone not also look back, to take an accounting of where we are, what was done, and what must now be repaired.”


There's a lot of sentiment to just let this all slide. This is, in my opinion, the absolute worst thing we can do. I'm not one of the big 'tough on criminals' crowd, but if government officials break the law and go unpunished, it damages all of us and sets a precedent for future government officials to do the same.

Some elected reps may be less than enthusiastic for the investigation as they signed off on or just turned a blind eye to the crimes committed in our name. Well, tough shit. Elections have consequences and so to the actions of elected officials; if they acquiesced out of fear or apathy, then they should be exposed and suffer the consequences. We don't elect them to take the safe path, we elect them to do the right thing; when they don't, they should be publicly pilloried and take the consequences (of which they've speaking much lately, in another context!)

As the saying goes "sunlight is the best disinfectant." A wound uncleaned and untreated will fester and corrupt (see the Republicans since the Nixon and Reagan gangs went unpunished). Sometimes sunlight works best, sometimes 10-30 at Leavenworth works too.

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