Reply #2: From the speech [View All]

[Adelante]

"with respect to the consequences for those who led the nation. <>

We have something here which simply can’t be washed away and covered up. I’ve met with too many parents who’ve lost their children. I’ve met with too many foreign leaders whose faith in America has been damaged. I’ve met with too many military leaders who are struggling to come to terms with what they felt were the pressures and orders from above and what they knew in their hearts and had reservations about as a consequence and tried to resolve it.

This doesn’t…this is not an issue that’s going to go away so I think it needs to be followed step-by-step and I think the way to begin is to first finish the Senate investigation that was promised on whether or not the administration properly used the intelligence information that was available. No point in having everybody write his own memoirs on it - we’ve just had George come out with his – and…let’s get the facts out. We have a Congress in place that is not of the same party as the executive branch in the American system. That normally means that you could provide greater trust and reliance on the adversarial system of inquiry that’s in place.

Let’s have it…let’s have it done. And then let’s go back and find out about those memos written in the Executive branch. What exactly did they mean when they said…when they say the Geneva Convention was an anachronism, when they redefined the definition of torture, when they indicated that…what was going through the Secretary of Defense’s mind when he was talking about how we needed more information, not more people in Iraq? And what did he think that meant to the people on the ground? Where did the abuses at Abu Ghraib come from? What are the secret findings that are out there in the intelligence community? Why are these rumors still surfacing of people being beaten up and abused and conduct that’s just not…and what did the President in a signing statement in the 2006 Act on Military Commissions and the 2005 Act on detainee treatment? What have been the actual consequences of those signing statements?

These are legitimate matters of public inquiry and in our political system, we have a lot of people in office who do have political courage and I have confidence that our leaders will ask these tough questions because it’s the only way we can move our country forward and regain the trust and good faith of others in the world.