A 'Truth Commission' Is Not Enough: Why We Must Have A Criminal Investigation Into Bush's Lawlessness

Can a jury really decide the tough questions, such as whether Alberto Gonzales' opinion, concluding the Geneva Convention Protections do not apply to prisoners of war captured for Al Qaeda or the Taliban? Of course. A jury can determine if the legal opinion was a facade to justify actions already taken -- only the legal process with grand juries and subpoenas has any hope of piercing the wall of defense that will be used to block that inquiry. Those memos were not used to interpret the law -- they were intentionally written to change the law. No Commission can hope to get facts behind these opinions as quickly as the Courts.Our criminal law has specific status that reach overseas to punish torturers. Section 2340A of our Federal Criminal Code makes it a crime for any person "outside the United States to commit or attempt to commit torture." But, say the critics of criminal prosecution, torture is too vague a word for a prosecution. Not so. Judges and juries routinely define much vaguer terms - what does "reasonable doubt of guilt" or "reasonable doubt of guilt with a degree of moral certainty." What does cruel and inhuman treatment mean? They are always past precedents to help us define these terms.

Juries determine competency in cases interpreting wills and estates, and sanity in criminal cases, with the help of experts, whom they often barely understand.

At the end of the day, I would rather have American jurors, bound by the Constitution and the law, make the decision rather than politicians or unelected blue ribbon commission members. I would rather have the judges, bound by precedent and law, determine what is, and is not legal.President Obama has said this is not the time to look back but to look forward. There was a claim that the need for bipartisanship argued against prosecution. But the illusion of bipartisanship, if it ever truly existed, has been broken.President Obama and the Congress should now name a Special Prosecutor.