Tuesday, August 25, 2009
What Are They, Nuts?
Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that he has appointed a special prosecutor (I thought we were done with those?) to investigate CIA people who were effective in interrogation of captured al Qaeda types and who have helped keep us safe in the near 8 years since 9/11.
Many on the right suspect this is a political ploy to take the heat of the all-seeing public eye off the ever-sinking-in-popularity health insurance reform bill and refocus on the horrible, terrible, no good former president and his party who had deficit spending less than half a trillion dollars per year (pikers, tyros!). It would seem a better plan if there was any there there, but here is the report on the horrible, terrible, no good things the CIA did to the captured al Qaeda types:
Some of the debriefers (not the trained interrogators) threatened to use a gun or a drill. The CIA never used the gun or the drill but they threatened to. The CIA threatened to kill KSM's children and and another inferred that the mother and family of another terrorist could be raped. They put on a play where they pretended to kill a fellow prisoner. Oh, and they blew cigar smoke in the face of a prisoner, after checking to see that blowing smoke was legal.
That's pretty much it. They were mean to them but didn't hurt them. The Horror!
There is nothing, nothing to be prosecuted. The career (as opposed to the political appointees) prosecutors during the Bush Administration looked at the facts and decided rightly that there was no torture and no crime, and they kept to their special ethics and did not investigate further.
This is pretty clearly a Kabuki play to spread some stink on the CIA in general and on the Bush Administration specifically but like a lot of what President Obama is pushing, it has feet of clay all the way up to the neck. It is transparently false, as is his wont.
Many on the right suspect this is a political ploy to take the heat of the all-seeing public eye off the ever-sinking-in-popularity health insurance reform bill and refocus on the horrible, terrible, no good former president and his party who had deficit spending less than half a trillion dollars per year (pikers, tyros!). It would seem a better plan if there was any there there, but here is the report on the horrible, terrible, no good things the CIA did to the captured al Qaeda types:
Some of the debriefers (not the trained interrogators) threatened to use a gun or a drill. The CIA never used the gun or the drill but they threatened to. The CIA threatened to kill KSM's children and and another inferred that the mother and family of another terrorist could be raped. They put on a play where they pretended to kill a fellow prisoner. Oh, and they blew cigar smoke in the face of a prisoner, after checking to see that blowing smoke was legal.
That's pretty much it. They were mean to them but didn't hurt them. The Horror!
There is nothing, nothing to be prosecuted. The career (as opposed to the political appointees) prosecutors during the Bush Administration looked at the facts and decided rightly that there was no torture and no crime, and they kept to their special ethics and did not investigate further.
This is pretty clearly a Kabuki play to spread some stink on the CIA in general and on the Bush Administration specifically but like a lot of what President Obama is pushing, it has feet of clay all the way up to the neck. It is transparently false, as is his wont.
Labels: CIA; Eric Holder; Political Kabuki Theater
# posted by Roger Fraley @ 4:38 PM 
