'It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department." –Attorney General Eric Holder, April 2009Mr. Holder had it right the first time. His about-face yesterday, compounded by his release of a 2004 internal CIA report on that agency's handling of terrorists, opens a political war that President Obama, the CIA and above all the country will live to regret.
"Justice Department Names Prosecutor to Reopen CIA Abuse Cases" –Wall Street Journal, yesterday
This is a trap the Administration set for itself. Mr. Obama and his team have attempted to appease their political left by publicly denouncing the Bush Administration's national security policies, even as they claimed to want to forget the past. Their disparagement has only fed the liberal demand for Bush prosecutions and increased the pressure on Mr. Holder to appoint a prosecutor.
Justice threw kerosene on those politics yesterday with its release of findings compiled by the CIA's inspector general in 2004 about the agency's detention and interrogation of terrorists. The ACLU had won a court order for their release. We were still reading its hundreds of pages at deadline, but most of the supposedly damning details had already been leaked. The new bits include the fact that interrogators threatened terrorists with a gun shot in a nearby room, with a power drill and cigarette smoke, and against Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's family. We suspect millions of Americans will be shocked to learn that these unshocking details are all that the uproar over "torture" is about.
Also, John at Power Line:
Having read the CIA report in its entirety, I am struck once again by how humane our treatment of captured terrorists was intended to be, and generally was. The handful of incidents highlighted by press accounts of the report came to light precisely because they were reported as deviations from the treatment of detainees that had been authorized by DOJ lawyers.I'll be reading over more of this information today.
There's lots of debate at Memeorandum.
Interesting to me is what's going on at the CIA. See ABC News, "Obama White House v. CIA; Panetta Threatened to Quit: Tensions Lead to CIA Director's "Screaming Match" at the White House." Also, the Astute Bloggers, "THE SOPRANOS STYLE OF ERIC HOLDER."
This out of a guy who could find no wrong out of the Black Panthers intimidating voters. You can always tell when the administration is in trouble. That is when they seem to find another reason to rehash something that has been looked at several times to no avail.
ReplyDeleteWhen they start losing the Left they start wheeling out this stuff and like Cindy Sheehan the Left just keeps allowing them to played for fools.
And the funny part is the Left just keeps allowing them to change the subject away from more substantive issues it cares about.
It is just hard to have any respect for people who keep coming back to be used over and over and over....................
Obama is going to do nothing that could come back and bite him since he has essentially kept Bush's policies, except he is attempting to keep what they do secret by creating an in house group to do the same things. One less susceptible to leaks.
P.U.S.S.I.
ReplyDeletePresidential Unit for Safe Suspect Interrogation.
(h/t: Neal Boortz)
Hey Dave, I like it. What an appropriate acronym. What is more interesting is that we can combine it with the Left's almost Pavlovian response and call it P.U.S.S.I. Whipped.
ReplyDeleteDennis,
ReplyDeleteI just wish Boortz had put a spew alert in front of that one.
LOL-It took me 15 minutes to clean the coffee out of my keyboard.
-Dave
That is one of the reasons I don't drink liquids around my computer. Like your style Dave. I think the only way to get the Left to think is to keep making fun of them.
ReplyDeleteThe sad part is that a significant number are young and have not figured out how this is going to affect them.
The 60s generation is fast reaching the point where their ideas are about to bite them in the ass and quite possibly end their lives prematurely. It would be quite the irony.