From his thoughts on the credit card bill to lessons learned from his role in the fallout of the AIG bonus fiasco, any and every topic was open to discussion...and to his credit, the senator answered our questions in-depth.
In my opinion, big question during the meet-up centered around the issue of torture. Near the end of the session, I asked the senator on his thoughts regarding the release of what's now being called the "torture memos". Specifically, I asked Senator Dodd if he thought the use of waterboarding amounts to torture and if so, should Congress a). hold hearings to address the matter and b) hold those in Bush administration who gave the green light to the use of this technique the accountable those for their decisions.
DODD: I don't know who the genius was in the room that night when they were discussing this, but if you're going to make a decision to release the documents, I presume everyone of us here would then have a follow-up question, which is: What are you going to do with that information? And if the answer is, "Well, nothing, we're just going to release the documents," I'm amazed, and some of us in the room say, "Wait a minute, you've got a problem." If you're going to release them, you're going to have to answer the next question: What are you going to do with them?
I believe that waterboarding is torture. ... Pat Leahy of Vermont has been arguing for a select committee - or a commission, I forget which he's talked about - to go and review all of this. I agree with him on that. There's some debate about whether he does it or the Intelligence Committee does it - somebody ought to do it. [...]
In a sense, not to prosecute people or pursue them when these acts have occurred is, in a sense, to invite it again in some future administration. If you think it doesn't mean anything, that you can basically do what you want and we'll somehow just say, "That was yesterday, today's today." Had that handful of people who advocated at the Nuremberg Trials embraced that view - Nuremberg became the symbol of who we were. Even these thugs got a lawyer. Even these thugs had a trial, despite their acts. So we became a symbol of jurisprudence and the rule of law. [...]
Q: Even if it goes up as high as - A lot of this stuff seems to point toward Cheney's office.
DODD: You gotta go where you gotta go.
You can view more of Senator Dodd's answers to my questions below the fold.
With the AIG bonuses still fresh in people's memories, I asked the senator about what type of oversight is being done by Congress (in regards to TARP) in order to make sure that taxpayers dollars will not be used by banks in this matter again.
With the House of Representatives passing their version of the credit card bill, I asked Senator Dodd on his thoughts on the senate's version of the bill getting passed.
With the fallout from the AIG fiasco, and the series of missteps he did in terms of communicating his role in the matter, I asked Senator Dodd about what lessons he learned from the entire episode.
I want to thank the senator for taking the time to sit down with members of the online community and taking our questions. You can read more on the meet-up (as well as watch the interview in it's entirety) over at Connecticut Bob.
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