Let The Inquisition Begin

Attorney General Eric "Torquemada" Holder has solved the problems of New Black Panther voter intimidation, crime in the cities, Islamic saboteurs at home and mass murderers abroad, so he now turns his mighty political talents to the true international criminals--the CIA interrogators who dared to use harsh techniques to elicit information from terrorists who might reveal information regarding impending future terrorist attacks.

Holder announced that he has decided to "establish a preliminary review after conducting a thorough examination of past reviews of interrogations, including an internal Central Intelligence Agency investigation completed in 2004 by the CIA's inspector general and separate reviews by Justice Department internal affairs watchdogs and prosecutors." That's Holderspeak for pursuing the banana republic agenda of finding ways to prosecute political opponents.

Despite his boss's denials over the past few months that his administration would pursue investigations and prosecution against former administration officials and operatives for their actions on and near the battlefields, Holder has decided to do it anyway. President Obama as recently as last week stated that he "wanted to avoid a polarizing backward-looking fight over issues far removed from my top priorities." The Chicago Tribune says "Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday opened a preliminary investigation into whether some CIA operatives broke the law in their coercive interrogations of suspected terrorists in the years after the September 11, 2001, attacks--presenting President Barack Obama with the prospect of a long, distracting battle over policies and actions carried out under his predecessor."

When confronted with questions from the press, Obama Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said "Ultimately, determinations about whether someone broke the law are made independently by the attorney general." And if you believe that, I have a big orange bridge here in San Francisco I'm willing to sell cheap. The attorney general works for the President. They are political allies. They share the same political philosophy. And Holder doesn't make a move that he doesn't first clear with his boss. While the Democrats will try to paint this as the sterling independence of an ethical attorney general, the chances that Obama did not pre-approve this move are somewhere between zero and none.

Make no mistake. This is pure retaliatory politics. The issue of what comprises torture, enhanced interrogation, ordinary interrogation, and asking nicely will remain a philosophical argument that will never be entirely resolved. And it's not the issue in any event. The possibility that Holder will find that anybody at any level committed any unlawful act based on the existing law at the time of the interrogations is infinitesimal. Those few who did were investigated, prosecuted and convicted, and it was under the Bush administration.

Holder is willing to make public announcements and reproduce documents for public view which are likely to endanger national security for years to come for the sole purpose of attacking political enemies. Of course, Holder has attempted to deflect this criticism by saying that he is merely reviewing the evidence collected by the office of former Attorney General Michael Mukasey who was looking into the destruction of CIA videotapes of detainee interrogations. And what is the horrendous violation of all human decency that Holder and his chief investigator, John Durham are hanging their hats on? Waterboarding.

Considering that there was nothing illegal about waterboarding and a few other nasty interrogation techniques, there is no way to view this announcement except as political punishment of political opponents. This is not something a mature republic does. Only dictatorships and autocracies with one-party governments posing as republics prosecute and persecute their opposition in order to maintain power.

The Democrats have a long history of creating phony political crimes and pursuing them until they finally trap a member of the opposition into doing something that appears to be unlawful. The Valerie Plame case is the most recent example. By the time the unrelenting attacks had succeeded, Scooter Libby was convicted of lying about a matter that had no substance in the first place. Nobody was ever tried or convicted for the alleged "crime." And why not? Because there was no crime to be guilty of. But if you make a mistake in thousands of pages of evidence and testimony about a non-crime, the banana democrats can yell "perjury" and it's off to jail.

Even the liberal MSM, while not criticizing Holder for the vicious underlying reasons for this inquisition, still fretted that this action could hinder Obama's push for his domestic agenda by exacerbating the partisan divide in Washington. And divide it will. Once again, the "bipartisan" Obamacrats have handed the Republicans an issue to rally around. As the McClatchy news organization says: "The probe could complicate Obama's broader political agenda in an already rancorous political atmosphere. Anger among Republicans could make it even harder for Obama to count on broad coalitions to enact his agenda,from health care to climate change and immigration. Even the AP said: "The CIA issue is another headache for an administration struggling to juggle two wars, a painful recession and a crowded agenda bogged down in Congress."

Refusing to take this latest dirty political ploy lying down, Republicans and conservatives predicted that Holder's decision would hurt US national security. The Hill said that Republican Senator Kit Bond lost no time in attacking back. Bond said: "The attorney general and the President are launching a witch-hunt targeting the terror-fighters who have kept us safe since 9-11." And Charles Krauthammer got to the real heart of the matter by saying: "These investigators are going to say, 'I was just obeying orders.' You are going to go to the White House and end up where they want to end up, with [Dick] Cheney, who is the great white whale of this investigation." Krauthammer failed to note what happened to Captain Ahab, the pursuer of that whale.

NBC, in no small hurry to bolster the administration's nefarious investigation, breathlessly announced that Holder had discovered further horrific interrogation techniques used by the former operatives of the Republican administration, including "threats against prisoners' families, sexual humiliation, mock executions, a litany of abuses by CIA interrogators at secret prisons overseas." Oh--the humanity! How could our government ever commit such horrific acts? The International Terrorists Civil Liberties Union (aka the ACLU) obtained this ungodly information from from a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit it had filed in 2003. Of course the ACLU had only the interests of Americans and liberty at heart when it filed a lawsuit to obtain information about overseas operations conducting investigations of foreign terrorists on and near foreign battlefields during a shooting war. Once again, the liberals and their leftist allies want to conduct an asymmetrical war against non-traditional enemies by acting as if it's just a local criminal matter.

Once again, the AP reports "despite the announcement of the criminal probe, several Obama spokesmen declared anew--as the president has repeatedly--that on the subject of detainee interrogation he 'wants to look forward, not back' at Bush tactics. They took pains to say decisions on any prosecutions would be up to Holder, not the White House." Well, I've never been the President of the United States, but I've run a few large companies, and if one of my executives went off on a tangent of his own without my express permission and in contradiction of my stated policy, I'd have booted his butt out the door.

It doesn't help Obama's and Holder's cause that some of his loyal sycophants in the media are slipping up and reporting things favorable to the Bush administration's position. CBS Evening News reported that "the once-secret documents do support the claims by Cheney (remember, he's the true target) that harsh interrogations at times did work. Interviews with prisoners helped the US capture other terror suspects, thwart potential attacks, including Al Qaeda plots to attack the US consulate in Karachi and fly an airplane into California's tallest building." The Washington Post goes even farther by saying "the report found that 'there is no doubt' that the detention and interrogation program itself prevented further terrorist activity, provided information that led to the apprehension of other terrorists, warned authorities of future plots, and helped analysts complete an intelligence picture for senior policymakers and military leaders." ABC World News reported that the documents Holder is reviewing "include information that backs up the Bush White House contention that the detainee program helped to avert further Al Qaeda attacks on the US, including one to derail a passenger train somewhere in the country."

The New York Times even got into the act. "The report found that the CIA program obtained critical information to identify terrorists and stop potential plots and said some imprisoned terrorists provided more information after being exposed to 'brutal' treatment." But it still felt compelled to conclude that "it raised broad questions about the legality, political acceptability and effectiveness of the harshest of the CIA's methods." Someone needs to tell the staff of the New York Times that fighting a war against merciless terrorists includes performing acts that are like making sausage--the result is great, but you don't really want to see it being made.

And while this is going on, the CIA is scrambling to deny rumors that Director Leon Panetta has threatened to resign over the Holder investigation. It did however, admit that Panetta has declared that he will "stand up for those officers who did what their country asked and who followed the legal guidance they were given." The denial included a statement that it was untrue that Panetta engaged in a "profanity-laced screaming match" at the White House when he learned of the Justice Department's plans. I find the denial to be unusually specific about what Panetta supposedly didn't do.

The Obama administration has further plans to damage the CIAs ability to obtain information using traditional means overseas. Detainees under Obama's new "criminal investigation model" will be handled by another layer of inept bureaucracy. No longer will CIA operatives interrogate the terrorists quickly, decisively and on the spot. Now detainees will be entertained by the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group which will be housed within the FBI. You know, the organization that denied the existence of the Mafia for nearly twenty years.

In a related story, CNSNews reports that "officers of the Central Intelligence Agency involved in a terrorist interrogation program that had been reviewed by the [Bush] Justice Department, authorized by agency superiors, approved by top administration officials and repeatedly briefed to leaders of the intelligence committees in the House and Senate nonetheless feared that the US government would not 'stand behind them' if they were later targeted for legal action because of the tough techniques used in the program." This came from the office of the CIA Inspector General. CIA officers harbored these fears even though the agency had carefully laid out its procedures for enhanced interrogation with the Justice Department and received approval from administration officials and repeatedly informed leaders of the congressional intelligence committees about what they were doing.

Grand Inquisitor Holder has not let the CIA officials down. He is now proceeding to prove that their worst fears were justified and prescient. He will conduct an investigation, interrogation and inquisition into the actions of those whose sole duty was to protect American citizens at home and soldiers abroad from further terrorist attacks. He will investigate knowing the success of the program. He will question, knowing that each of the operatives had good faith and justified reasons for believing they were acting under legal executive and congressional authority. He will interrogate to see if anyone was mean or nasty to innocent detainees. He will inquire into the views of the operatives and their bosses to ferret out patriotic heresy and denial of the only True Faith--Liberalism.