Yoooooo

From Gary Kamiya's piece yesterday about John Yoo's rape of US law:

And yet the wreckage wrought by the Bush administration goes beyond Yoo. The just-released memos remind us of just how radical, secretive and destructive that administration was. Its misdeeds are so grave and far-reaching that they must be thoroughly investigated, and the perpetrators punished. Whether by a truth commission or criminal investigations, the dark history of the last eight years must be told.

So far, President Obama has been reluctant to call for such an investigation, saying he wants to focus on the future, not the past. But he's wrong. This is not about politics. This is about our American laws and values -- about our very identity. It would be easy to turn the page on the Bush administration, or to claim, as Yoo and his defenders try to do, that its sins should be forgiven because of 9/11. But it is precisely in a crisis when a nation shows its true mettle -- or lack thereof. To pretend that the last eight years never happened -- or to continue some of Bush's disastrous legal policies, as Obama shamefully appears to be doing -- would be to betray our nation's ideals, leave the door open to future misdeeds, and ultimately endanger our democracy itself.

We don't need revenge. We need truth.

Damn skippy.