Pogrom

As we approach the 8th anniversary of 9-11, it seems only fitting that the Obama administration, spurred on by Left-leaning members of the Democratic majority in both the House and the Senate, has decided to begin a pogrom against the CIA. The New York Times reports”

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. named a veteran federal prosecutor on Monday to examine abuse of prisoners held by the Central Intelligence Agency, after the Justice Department released a long-secret report showing interrogators choked a prisoner repeatedly and threatened to kill another detainee’s children.

The Left wing of the majority party seems eager to expand the investigation further in an attempt to snare past Vice President Dick Cheney and maybe even the hated George W. Bush in the investigation’s Web. What these delusional fools don’t seem to understand is that they are establishing a precedent that will return to haunt every future President, Vice President, and administration. No good can come of it.

In their moral preening about “torture” and the “rule of law”, many of the Democrats seem not to remember the months and years immediately following 9-11. The threat of Islamist terrorism was very real (even if some on the extreme Left chose not to recognize it) and remains so to this day.

The CIA needed information and worked within defined and legally reviewed guidelines to acquire it. There is no evidence that real torture occurred. No one was killed, maimed, or permanently injured. Islamists did experience physical discomfort, terrifying but controlled coersion, and psychological stress, but nothing more.

They wanted to kill us. We needed information to stop them. And the Inspector General’s Report that The New York Times quotes to condemn the actions of CIA interrogators also states that these methods allowed the CIA to collect: "intelligence that has enabled the identification and apprehension of other terrorists and warned of terrorist plots planned for the United States and around the world." We acquired information that stopped other plots, that disrupted al Quaida operations, and that kept the country safe, but no matter, we were harsh, and we just can’t have that, can we?

The Times is breathless in its reporting of the harsh measures that were used:

In another session of questioning, the report said, one C.I.A. interrogator told investigators that Mr. Mohammed was told that if there was another attack on American soil, the C.I.A. would “kill your children.” Mr. Mohammed’s young sons were in the custody of Pakistani and American authorities at the time.

Among a litany of C.I.A. tactics, the report describes the “hard takedown,” when a detainee was grabbed and thrown to the floor before being moved to a sleep-deprivation cell. It details baths given to Mr. Nashiri, saying he was sometimes scrubbed with “the kind of brush one uses in a bath to remove stubborn dirt” to induce pain. In July 2002, the report says, a C.I.A. interrogator grabbed a detainee’s neck to restrict the prisoner’s carotid artery until he began to faint. Another officer then “shook the detainee to wake him,” and the “pressure point” technique was repeated twice more.

This is the same “Mr. Mohammed” who plotted the deaths of 3,000 innocent Americans and the same “Mr. Nashiri” who plotted the deaths of 17 sailors in the attack on the USS Cole

But those who insist on exhibiting their moral superiority are somehow troubled over the fact that an interrogator threatened “Mr. Mohammed’s” children. Threatened only! No one touched a hair on their heads. The threat worked because "Mr. Mohammed" disclosed people and plots that allowed our intelligence services and military to save lives. “Mr. Nashiri" did the same.

Of course, the President tells us that he wants to “look forward.” This disingenuous statement is insulting. If Barack Obama truly wanted to “look forward” he would not have released top secret reports and would have reigned in his Attorney general – it’s done by every President all the time.

Instead he tries to have it both ways, throwing red meat to the left wing of his party but claiming that he’s been forced to do it and therefore, is not culpable for the outcome. That's not leadership.

William Murchison comments:

To appease the fundamentally unappeasable left wing, we haul operatives of the U.S. government through the justice system by probing, testing and suspecting them as if they were, well, terrorists; undercut the morale of our main principal intelligence and of terrorist hunters that have escaped the government's notice; and gladden the hearts of terrorists suddenly given to know what small consequences accompany defying U.S. interrogation. Do we risk foregoing vital intelligence that we would have been ecstatic to own on Sept. 10, 2001?
Put it merely in political terms. What's in it for Barack Obama? He thinks to earn the gratitude of ordinary -- as distinguished from left-left-left -- voters for affecting these amazing results? He has not merely handed the Republicans a rhetorical club with which to pummel him (rightfully, I might add), but he has also made it harder than ever to bring the country together over his health care project. No wonder he wanted to go on vacation. In Martha's Vineyard, he can nervously hope the furor will die away before he goes back to work.

Most people believe that Barack Obama is an astute political operator. Not this time.