A “Re-Pete” Of Winger Torture Fiction

Leave it to the Murdoch Street Journal to jump to the defense of the deposed Bushco regime now that the Obama Administration has released details of the “enhanced interrogations” that took place during their predecessor’s watch, with House Repug Pete Hoekstra of Michigan “doing the honors” here…

Reactions to this former CIA program, which was used against senior al Qaeda suspects in 2002 and 2003, are demonstrating how little President Barack Obama and some Democratic members of Congress understand the dire threats to our nation.

Nothing like a little “red meat” for the faithful (give me a break)…

Last week, (Director of National Intelligence Dennis) Blair made a similar statement (about “enhanced interrogations” allegedly saving lives) in an internal memo to his staff when he wrote that "[h]igh value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa'ida organization that was attacking this country."

Nice of Hoekstra to “clip” Blair’s quote here; according to this New York Times story by Sheryl Gay Stolberg yesterday, Blair also said…

“We do not need these techniques to keep America safe,” said Mr. Blair, who added: “The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means. The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us, and they are not essential to our national security.”

Hoekstra continues…

Yet last week Mr. Obama overruled the advice of his CIA director, Leon Panetta, and four prior CIA directors by releasing the details of the enhanced interrogation program.

The “four prior CIA directors” were part of Bushco, by the way. What else do you expect?

And regarding Panetta, Hoesktra is basically right, but the following should be noted from here…

On March 18, the Justice Department told CIA Director Leon Panetta — as he was leaving for a foreign trip — that it would be recommending that the White House release the memos almost completely uncensored, officials said.

Panetta told Attorney General Eric Holder and officials in the White House that the administration needed to discuss the possibility that the memos' release might expose CIA officers to lawsuits on allegations of torture and abuse. Panetta also pushed for more censorship of the memos, officials said.

The Justice Department also informed other senior CIA leaders of the decision to release the memos, and, as a courtesy, told former agency directors.

…

Inside the White House, according to aides, Obama expressed concerns that releasing the memos could threaten ongoing intelligence operations as well as American officials. He also echoed the CIA chiefs' worries about U.S. relationships with always-skittish foreign intelligence services.

The Justice Department argued that the ACLU lawsuit would in the end force the administration to release the documents anyway, officials said.

Obama eventually agreed. The administration decided it would be better to make the release voluntarily, so as to not be seen as being forced to do so, the officials said.

Hoekstra continues…

Members of Congress calling for an investigation of the enhanced interrogation program should remember that such an investigation can't be a selective review of information, or solely focus on the lawyers who wrote the memos, or the low-level employees who carried out this program. I have asked Mr. Blair to provide me with a list of the dates, locations and names of all members of Congress who attended briefings on enhanced interrogation techniques.

Since Blair did not serve as DNI under Bushco, I don’t know how he could be expected to provide such a list. Also, while I believe there’s more than a little bit of “fudging” going on between Congress and our intelligence services here on the question of who was told what and when, I think the following is noteworthy from this exhaustive column by Jason Leopold...

In an interview with Newsweek last month, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, who now chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee and has launched a “review” and “study” of the CIA’s interrogation methods, said, “I now know we were not fully and completely briefed on the CIA program.”

Feinstein was reacting to a secret report by the International Committee of the Red Cross that was leaked, which described, in shocking detail, the techniques used to interrogate 14 “high-value” detainees.

…

To cast further doubt on (former DNI Michael) Hayden’s claims (that Congress was briefed on the “enhanced interrogations”), Congress should speak to Mary O. McCarthy, a former deputy inspector general at the CIA.

Three years ago, McCarthy said senior agency officials lied to members of Congress during an intelligence briefing in 2005 when they said the agency did not violate treaties that bar, cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment of detainees during interrogations, according to a May 14, 2006, front-page story in The Washington Post.

"A CIA employee of two decades, McCarthy became convinced that 'CIA people had lied' in that briefing, as one of her friends said later, not only because the agency had conducted abusive interrogations but also because its policies authorized treatment that she considered cruel, inhumane or degrading," The Washington Post reported.

"In addition to CIA misrepresentations at the session last summer, McCarthy told the friends, a senior agency official failed to provide a full account of the CIA's detainee-treatment policy at a closed hearing of the House intelligence committee in February 2005, under questioning by Rep. Jane Harman (California), the senior Democrat," The Washington Post reported. "McCarthy also told others she was offended that the CIA's general counsel had worked to secure a secret Justice Department opinion in 2004 authorizing the agency's creation of "ghost detainees" - prisoners removed from Iraq for secret interrogations without notice to the International Committee of the Red Cross - because the Geneva Conventions prohibit such practices."

In 2004, McCarthy was tapped by the CIA's Inspector General John Helgerson to assist him with internal investigations about the agency’s interrogation methods.

"In his report, Mr. Helgerson...raised concern about whether the use of the techniques could expose agency officers to legal liability," according to a November 9, 2005 story in The New York Times published the same month the (torture) tapes were destroyed. "They said the report expressed skepticism about the Bush administration view that any ban on cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment under the treaty does not apply to CIA interrogations because they take place overseas on people who are not citizens of the United States."

"The officials who described the report said it discussed particular techniques used by the CIA against particular prisoners, including about three dozen terror suspects being held by the agency in secret locations around the world," The New York Times reported.

New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer wrote in her book, The Dark Side, that it is believed that the torture tapes were destroyed two years after Harman wrote her letter advising against it because Democratic members of Congress who were briefed about the tapes began asking questions about whether the interrogations were illegal

"Further rattling the CIA was a request in May 2005 from Sen. Jay Rockefeller, ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, to see over a hundred documents referred to in the earlier Inspector General's report on detention inside the black prison sites," Mayer wrote in her book. "Among the items Rockefeller specifically sought was a legal analysis of the CIA's interrogation videotapes.

"Rockefeller wanted to know if the intelligence agency's top lawyer believed that the waterboarding of [alleged al-Qaeda operative Abu] Zubaydah and [alleged 9/11 mastermind] Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, as captured on the secret videotapes, was entirely legal. The CIA refused to provide the requested documents to Rockefeller.

"But the Democratic senator's mention of the videotapes undoubtedly sent a shiver through the Agency, as did a second request he made for these documents to [former CIA Director Porter] Goss in September 2005."

Aside from all that, though, I should note that I actually agree with Hoekstra; everybody from Bushco should testify under oath before Congress (with no shot whatsoever at immunity).

Hoekstra continues…

Any investigation must include this information (concerning torture) as part of a review of those in Congress and the Bush administration who reviewed and supported this program. To get a complete picture of the enhanced interrogation program, a fair investigation will also require that the Obama administration release the memos requested by former Vice President Dick Cheney on the successes of this program.

An honest and thorough review of the enhanced interrogation program must also assess the likely damage done to U.S. national security by Mr. Obama's decision to release the memos over the objections of Mr. Panetta and four of his predecessors. Such a review should assess what this decision communicated to our enemies, and also whether it will discourage intelligence professionals from offering their frank opinions in sensitive counterterrorist cases for fear that they will be prosecuted by a future administration.

Meeting any or all of the preconditions I highlighted above from Hoekstra would surely turn the investigation he seeks into the “show trial” that he decries.

And finally…

Perhaps we need an investigation not of the enhanced interrogation program, but of what the Obama administration may be doing to endanger the security our nation has enjoyed because of interrogations and other antiterrorism measures implemented since Sept. 12, 2001.

This is the typical partisan garbage you would expect from a guy who claimed here last May with Former Senator Man-On-Dog that we finally found Iraq’s WMD, even though the Iraq Study Group said all such weapons had been destroyed in ’91 (I know Santorum is at it again today, but I have neither the time nor the desire – when he appears, the Inky isn’t just financially bankrupt, but intellectually and morally as well).

And let’s not forget this episode from just about a year ago, in which Hoekstra refused to “carry the water” for Bushco on the question of a supposed nuke deal with North Korea, expressing his frustration with the “administration” and its failure to notify him for seven months on the matter.

Oh, and remember how Hoekstra, in a particularly grotesque episode of “sock puppetry,” fed lies to Time’s Joe Klein in November 2007 here which Klein printed practically verbatim, where Hoekstra claimed that the House Democrats' version of the FISA bill (the RESTORE Act co-sponsored by the great Rush Holt of New Jersey…of course, the Dems as a party caved on FISA outright last summer) required warrants for every foreign terrorist's call and that the bill thus gave the same rights to foreign Terrorists as American citizens?

Finally, Hoesktra claims in the Journal today that our nation has been secure “since Sept. 12, 2001.”

I’ve asked this question many times before, and I’m sure I’ll ask it many more times (based on this); is Rush Holt the only member of our government WHO REMEMBERS THE DAMN ANTHRAX ATTACKS??!!

Update: Sick bastards, the whole sorry lot of them (at Fix Noise here for sure, and elsewhere)...