Just Another Day for the Department of Justice

[L. Coyote]

Just Another Day for the Department of Justice
BY Scott Horton - Dec 20, 2007 - http://harpers.org/archive/2007/12/hbc-90001951


Wednesday, December 19, 2007. The House Judiciary Committee convenes a hearing to look into the Justice Department’s handling of allegations of crime involving contractors in Iraq. It started with the case of Jamie Leigh Jones, and we quickly learned that this was just one of a substantial number of cases involving rape and sexual assault. The Justice Department is invited to send a witness to explain its policies and inaction. At the last minute, the Justice Department’s congressional liaison sends a poorly informed letter claiming that the cases the committee will investigate are “under investigation” though, as we learn, the Department of Justice’s “investigation” got launched just about the time the Department learned that Congress was going to take a look. The Justice Department said it would be improper for the Justice Department to respond. Mind you, the Committee’s request was not for the Department to talk about any particular case, but about how it dealt in concept with contractor crimes.

Committee chair John Conyers was outraged. And he wasn’t alone. A group of Republican representatives who participated in the hearing were equally miffed. Everyone agreed, of course, that the Justice Department shouldn’t discuss on-going investigations. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was the how the Department was addressing criminality involving contractors in Iraq generally.

But as became clear from the evidence presented at the hearing, the Department doesn’t deal with crimes involving contractors. It has a policy of official indifference to them. So here we see a clear-cut case where the Justice Department has a law enforcement mandate to deal with serious violent crimes such as murder, assault and rape, and chooses to do nothing. .................

[robinlynne]

1. yep Mukasey, one heck of a choice...

[L. Coyote]

2. Hired to lower the bar, perfect pun intended.

[ray of light]

3. Conyer outraged? More like "feigning outrgage" since the guy was proimpeachment in 2004

but now won't even stand up to Pelosi, Hoyer, and Emmanuel.

Also, he has EVIDENCE given to him, and yet he hasn't acted on it.

Sorry. but at this point, Conyers and the lot of them are no-good......

[L. Coyote]

4. So for Mukasey the priorities were clear: protecting telecommunications companies who commit crimes

In any event, Filip hasn’t been fully briefed on the exact procedures used by the Bush Administration in waterboarding prisoners, so he can’t comment until after the Senate confirms him.

[L. Coyote]

5. Closer: "... the function of the DoJ under President Bush is not to enforce the law...."

continuing, "It is to commit and promote criminal conduct."

"So let’s get this right. The Department of Justice has no available resources to deal with contractor crimes. It doesn’t even have a warm body to send before a Congressional probe of the matter to state its position. But it is deploying all its available assets to justify criminal conduct, to secure immunity for persons who unapologetically broke the law based on the criminal solicitations of government officers, to cover up official criminality related to the torture and abuse of persons under detention, and to obstruct Congressional investigations into other potentially criminal acts in which it was involved. A person observing this from some detached point in space might well conclude that the function of the Department of Justice under President Bush is not to enforce the law. It is to commit and promote criminal conduct. At this point, it’s clear that breaking the law is the Justice Department’s number one, two and three priority. And law enforcement? That’s disappeared from the scene."