By James Donahue

Shocking daily revelations about just how directly involved former President George W. Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and their top cabinet members were in designing and instituting illegal torture of prisoners captured during their improvised “war on terror” are stirring the nation awake after eight long years of slumber.

As if we were unaware that the Republican crooks in the White House had so much blood on their hands? Who are we kidding?

Now that the truth is beginning to emerge, we can expect much more unveiling of criminal acts if we allow the stories to be made public. Elizabeth De La Vega, former federal prosecutor, told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann April 22 that Attorney General Eric Holder must ignore calls for a special prosecutor to open an investigation.

De La Vega warned that once a special prosecutor is appointed, it will mean that a Grand Jury will be seated, and all further information will become classified secrets inaccessible to the public for many years, if ever. She said, and we agree, that it is important that all of the information about the Bush criminal acts needs to be aired now, so that the American public and the world understands what happened to us since 2000 when that rag-tag gang of crooks stole the White House.

De La Vega noted that the Valeria Palme case that led to the conviction of Cheney’s aide, Scooter Libby for perjury, was a prime example. The case involved Palme’s exposure by a yet unknown high official as a CIA agent. This was done in apparent retaliation for a report by Palme’s husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, which countered accusations that Saddam Hussein, had or was attempting to develop atomic weapons. All of this information was buried because it went to a grand jury. If all of the facts were made known about that case, De La Vega suggested that the mass corruption that brought America to its knees might have been stopped sooner.

We believe the launching of unnecessary wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the harsh rhetoric that nearly started a third war with Iran, the awarding of no-bid contracts to private corporations that got billions and billions of American tax dollars for botched-up work or no work at all in the so-called rebuilding of Iraq, the stripping of teeth in environmental laws that allowed U.S. industry to continue on with runaway pollution, the ravaging of the U.S. Treasury by banks and lending institutions, and so much more were possible criminal acts waiting to be exposed.

If not criminal, they were obviously immoral acts.

The very way in which Bush took office in 2001, by a Supreme Court vote, was unprecedented and possibly a criminal act committed by people in high places. In the midst of an investigation by some major newspapers seeking to determine who really won that election, the nation was struck by the worst terrorist act in our history. The events surrounding the 9-11 attack on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center towers were so strange, and so unexplained, that many people believe this event was a major conspiracy, perhaps committed by our own people.

That Congress had the Patriot Act shoved down their throats within weeks after the attack, and were pressured into passing it without having a chance to even read and understand it, supports the theory of a massive conspiracy. The act stripped Americans of many Constitutional freedoms. To this day this piece of legislation needs to be repealed.

No, there is much much more that needs to be revealed about the Bush-Cheney years of power in Washington. We don’t need a grand jury seated to muddy up the revelations just yet. Let’s wait until all the facts are made public.

After that, we like De La Vega’s other suggestion. She wants to see an international grand jury created, with members of all of the nations that participated in the two wars, participating in collecting the evidence against this nest of war criminals. When they are done with them, it would be fitting to see them all hung in the public square, if one exists in Washington D.C.