What He Said

Following up on yesterday's torture post, I think I agree with what Paul Krugman said in today's New York Times:

Isn’t revisiting the abuses of the last eight years, no matter how bad they were, a luxury we can’t afford?

No, it isn’t, because America is more than a collection of policies. We are, or at least we used to be, a nation of moral ideals. In the past, our government has sometimes done an imperfect job of upholding those ideals. But never before have our leaders so utterly betrayed everything our nation stands for. 'This government does not torture people,' declared former President Bush, but it did, and all the world knows it.

And the only way we can regain our moral compass, not just for the sake of our position in the world, but for the sake of our own national conscience, is to investigate how that happened, and, if necessary, to prosecute those responsible.

Krugman also points out that the people involved in any investigation aren't the same folks who are working on the economy, for instance, so there's not much to the "we're too busy for this" argument. My biggest fear is that the GOP would turn completely obstructionist, though it might be hard to tell the difference at this point.