From The Salt Lake Tribune — Originally published Wednesday, July 15

The House Intelligence Committee plans as early as next week to begin investigating a secret CIA program to use specially trained hit teams to kill or capture top al-Qaida leaders. … [M]embers of the committee are rightfully upset that the Bush administration kept Congress in the dark for seven years, allegedly under orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney.

… This and other recent revelations have intensified the clamor for President Barack Obama to appoint an independent “truth commission” to fully investigate the intelligence policies of the Bush White House …

Obama has resisted, maintaining that Congress and the Justice Department are suited to the task and that it is in the country’s best interest to look ahead …

We do not agree. The president must set aside political considerations and do what he should already have done. We understand his desire for bipartisan support for his ambitious economic, health and energy reforms. But it is up to the president to act if the two political parties cannot come together over an issue as critical and fundamental as the rule of law.

It is a given that the United States at some point will again be the target of terrorism. To fail to expose the hard lessons of post-9/11 intelligence policy and apply them to the future would be a dangerous disservice to this and future generations of Americans.