WASHINGTON (AFP) — Debate is heating up in the United States on establishing a “truth commission” to investigate whether the Bush administration abused its legal powers under the guise of its “war on terror.”

“Nothing has done more damage to America’s place in the world than the revelation that this nation stretched the law and the bounds of executive power to authorize torture and cruel treatment,” said Patrick Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

He opened a hearing on Wednesday pressing for such an investigation saying it was badly needed as each week brought new revelations of alleged abuses under the administration of former US president George W. Bush.

On Monday, the administration of new President Barack Obama, published nine internal memos dating back to the Bush years.

They revealed how the former administration had given itself ample room to skirt the law on a number of controversial practices, such as the transfer of prisoners for secret interrogations or the power to wiretap phones without warrants.

Any eventual investigation could take various forms and be led either by the Congress, the criminal justice system or an independent commission.

On Wednesday, Leahy said the United States would see that “such a commission of inquiry would shed light on what mistakes were made so that we can learn from those errors and not repeat them.”

“By carefully gathering the facts, a commission can tell the whole story, not just of each individual agency studied in isolation, but of how all parts of the US government interacted in the handling of the detainees,” said Thomas Pickering, a former senior US State Department official.

For Pickering, as for Lee Gunn, a former admiral, such a commission would report to the Justice Department, handing over to the department the eventual authority to bring any legal charges.

They pleaded for the commission to have the power to call witnesses to testify, but not to be able to offer immunity in exchange for their testimony, or only in some rare cases.Republicans are already gearing for a battle.

“It’s a fishing expedition,” said Arlen Specter, a Republican member of the Senate committee, while defending the principle of legal action on a case by case basis.

“It is naive to expect a mere commission to settle an ongoing and embittered controversy about past government policy and replace it with a new consensus on historical truth,” said law professor Jeremy Rabkin from George Mason university in Virginia.

For Rabkin, such “truth commissions” were appropriate in countries such as Chile emerging from the repressive dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet or in South Africa after the brutality of the apartheid era.

“We are not remotely in that situation in the United States,” he argued.

And attorney David Rivkin, who worked in the Justice Department under the administration of former president Ronald Reagan, warned such a commission would have huge legal ramifications.

“It is important to recognize that one of the commissions’ most dangerous effects would be to increase the likelihood of former US government officials being prosecuted overseas, whether in the courts of foreign countries or before international tribunals,” he said.

(Source)