Rep. Jason Chaffetz (Utah), a rising star in the GOP recently elected to his sophomore term, said Tuesday that he would have no problem adding a probe of potential torture authorization under the Bush administration to a growing checklist of investigations drafted by newly empowered Republicans.
Here's the conversation from his talk on Tuesday with MSNBC:
RATIGAN: How far back do you think is appropriate? Because the one thing that's not on this list would be, for instance, a torture investigation.
CHAFFETZ: Well, it may be on the list as well. I'm not afraid of going after the Bush administration. I wasn't brought here by the establishment. When I ran for congressman in 2008, I'm just a freshman year, George W. Bush, Orrin Hatch, and Bob Bennett, three Republicans, they campaigned against me. So I don't mind going back and looking at 'em. So I don't have any hesitation there whatsoever.
Rep. Darrell Issa, who is likely to become chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, spoke earlier this week about just how ambitious his plans for the panel were.
"I want seven hearings a week, times 40 weeks," Issa told Politico.
Out of these hundreds off potential investigations, however, many of them seemed to be focused around banks, stimulus oversight, mortgage lenders, and other questionable financial agents, but Chaffetz's rhetoric perhaps set the stage for a more controversial line of inspection.
A recent report from the UK's Daily Mail claims that, according to a leading human rights lawyer, former President Bush could indeed face criminal punishments over his recent blunt admission that he had authorized waterboarding and would do it again. Alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was eventually waterboarded 183 times in March of 2003 alone.
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