There is an article on Politico (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22439.html) this morning which cites Democrats from Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, Dianne Feinstein of California, Russ Feingold of Minnesota, and others, accusing the CIA of releasing certain memos detailing briefings given to congressional Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi, Carl Levin, and others on the enhanced interrogation techniques used at the time during the Bush administration to deflect blame from themselves. That they are covering their own butts on this one, and attempting to deflect attention to our lawmakers.
Well hell yeah! And rightly so!
They even make it sound like the Executive branch is out to get them! Feingold says, "members of the committee or their staff were not in any way involved in [the release of the document]. It appears to come from the executive branch itself. ... I think it’s unbelievable."
Specifically, he finds it unbelievable that Republican Congressman Pete Hoekstra of Michigan requested from the CIA, and received (sin of all sins on the part of the Executive branch, which includes the CIA), a release of memos detailing these briefings of particularly congressional Democrats who are hollering "torture" now so loudly.
Do Feingold, Feinstein, Levin not think the memos should have been released? These are some of the same Democrats I heard complain time and again when President Bush was in the Oval Office about its refusal to release such memos, and the overuse, they claimed, of classifying documents in a range of different areas, including the whole brouhaha over the U.S. Attorney firings.
So now not only are these Democrats hypocrites on torture, they are hypocrites on open government!
I say Obama is letting these various memos out - earlier memos which were damaging to the former President, his legal advisers, and his Justice Department in particular, and these CIA memos providing information on briefings, including and especially to Democrats - because he IS in fact a believer in open government. That's my conclusion at this point, and the only part of this whole story which doesn't reek.
ALL these memos should come out now. There are no more grand secrets to be kept. And the public wants to know. If there are still some particulars which must remain secret, then redact them sparingly, and release the rest.
But here's the most despicable part of this story, and of the objections being offered now by the likes of Feinstein and company - they are saying that most to blame for the fact that these interrogations took place is the CIA!..and that they are trying to cover their butt and deflect blame onto legislators.
It's like blaming the prison guards for Abu Grab!
The CIA are the foot soldiers in all of this. They are at the end of the chain! The President and his advisors, lawyers, and his Justics Department are at the top of the chain. Next after them are the legislators who by law must be briefed, and were briefed, and who serve in our government as a check and balance on the actions of the Executive branch, a check and balance on potential tyranny, as the Framers saw it and designed it. And it worked exactly as it was supposed to. Except people like Pelosi and Levin (briefed 5 times between 2006 and 2007) did nothing. And they need to account. And the voters need to hold them to account. Feingold and Feinstein weren't high enough members on an intelligence committee to receive briefings. They are just despicable for criticising the CIA for implementing (awe say implementing) the policy which the President (their boss) approved, and about which congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle were informed, and did not object.
If I were a CIA guy, I would have rightly concluded that, "Well, this sucks, but our whole government seems to think it's ok."
This would all be campaign fodder which I would be busily accumulating if I were a prospective opposition candidate to these very prominent Democrat Senators. And Pelosi should lose her seat next time Californians vote. Not only was she the ranking Democrat overall in the Congress, but also the ranking minority member of the Intelligence Committee back in 2002 and 2003 when, had a bigger stink been made, something could have been done to terminate the program in its infancy.
But check out the article. If you wonder what the smell is, it's probably eminating right off your computer screen. As Orrin Hatch said about this, the Republican Senator from Utah, "We’re not without power up here. Now, they can make a fuss on policy differences, but to try and besmirch the people who had these tough decisions to make during those trying times is really offensive to people like me." And, as Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas said (top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and someone therefore who knows), when asked whether the relevant Democrat lawmakers were informed of the interrogation techniques, his answer: "A strong, affirmative, yes."
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Posted by: trusted essays | May 03, 2011 at 04:16 PM