Dodging The Interrogation Bullet

You snooze, you lose. While we were all stacking up Z's during the Obama/Republican health care sideshow, the leftists in Congress just tried to slip another America Last national security bill through the House of Representatives. Fortunately, at least one Republican was wide awake during the sneak attack.

Democrat Jim McDermott of Washington's Seventh District is regularly referred to by his opponents as "Baghdad Jim." On the day of the Health Care Summit, McDermott attempted to tack on an amendment to another bill which would have defined all those CIA interrogator horrors in order to prohibit them. He poses as a civil libertarian, but it's much more likely that he gets his ideas from Saddam Hussein looking down upon him from paradise.

Here's the basic shopping list of oppressive interrogation techniques which McDermott wanted to protect his terrorist friends from. The amendment would have banned degrading procedures such as threatening a detainee, or forcing a detainee to blaspheme during an interrogation. Peace be upon him. And that's just the beginning.

Thou shalt not:
1. Commit nudity.
2. Use stress positions that would lead the detainee to believe further force is coming.
3. Commit prolonged isolation.
4. Have dogs of any kind in the vicinity of the devout Muslim detainee.
5. Deprive the detainee of food, water, sleep, or Band-Aids.
6. Expose the detainee to "excessive" heat or cold.
7. Place detainees in cramped spaces for an "excessive" period of time.
8. Coerce the detainee to violate his religious beliefs (leaving infidels alive?).
9. Place hoods or sacks over the detainee's head.
10. Exploit the detainee's phobias (like showing them the SI Swimsuit Edition?)
11. Serve ham sandwiches for lunch (OK, I made that one up).

Fortunately, Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Michigan) was wide awake and paying attention when the Terrorist Protection and Pacification Amendment was introduced in the House. Hoekstra asked McDermott "If a woman interrogator interviews a Muslim with her head uncovered, is that blasphemy?" After McDermott was unable to answer the question, Hoekstra went on: "In the intelligence community today, these folks already believe they are under attack by this administration, and this just reinforces it. This is outrageous. There has not been one minute of hearings or debates on this amendment, and you are putting something in that could put officers in jail for life. What are you thinking?" Well, Pete, he was probably thinking of those vicious, inhumane SEALs that they're putting on trial for making a terrorist uncomfortable.

"Intelligence" Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) attempted to pull McDermott's chestnuts out of the fire by proclaiming that "these restrictions are already part of President Obama's revised Executive Order." Well--not exactly. I'm sure The One would have loved to do so, but in anticipation of a public lynching for crippling America's ability to protect itself from terrorist plots, Obama merely ordered the end of water-boarding and ordered "limitations" on life-endangering interrogation techniques and "inhumane treatment." And if the Accommodator-in-Chief already ordered the necessary restrictions, what is the need for Congressional legislation that wouldn't pass constitutional muster anyway (has the Congressman never heard the words "vague and overbroad")? Furthermore, an executive order can be repealed or modified by a future executive order, but Congressional legislation ties the president's hands permanently.

National Review Online and David Horowitz's NewRealBlog have done a great job of bringing this travesty to the attention of the public. As Andrew McCarthy said: "The McDermott amendment was so broad and so vague that it basically outlawed the interrogation of terrorists. American shoplifters can be threatened by prosecutors with their phobias in order to get a plea deal." I would add that it's a pretty good way of getting shoplifters to "roll over" on their fellow shoplifters. Like getting terrorists to roll over on their fellow plotters. Shoplifters merely steal goods. Terrorists murder civilians en masse.

In case you weren't aware of it, Andrew McCarthy is not just a writer for National Review. He was also the successful federal prosecutor who convicted the Blind Sheikh and his companions for the first terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. He has pointed out more than once that the success of that prosecution does not justify civilian trials for foreign terrorists, nor should it be used as any kind of guideline for terrorist interrogations.

As McCarthy concludes, "After all, what's a few thousand dead Americans compared to the horror of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed suffering from sore sinuses for the afternoon [from waterboarding]?" Indeed. Ultimately, though, the real credit has to go to Rep. Hoekstra. He was there. He was paying attention. He saw the evil about to be perpetrated on the American people. And he acted. His words rallied the Republicans, and shamed the Democrats into backing off. And because it got hooted down, you are very unlikely ever to hear about this in the mainstream media. It might get passing notice on Fox News, or an article in the Washington Times, but that's about it. Without the blogs, most Americans will never know about the stealth bullet that just missed their heads.


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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.
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Stop That Man--He Didn't Do Anything!

The nervous nellies on the left are in high dudgeon again, fueled by a non-revelation revelation from the New York Times. And who is the nefarious villain behind the plot? The Prince of Darkness, grim, we tremble not for him, his rage we can endure, for lo, his doom is sure, four little words shall fell him: "Look, it's Dick Cheney!"


The New York Times, which seems to know more about spy programs than all our agencies put together, discovered another secret counterterrorism program which was designed to train hit squads to bump off top Al Qaeda leaders. Now I assume you're all horrified by such a concept, but apparently there are those who would beg to differ. Isn't it against the law to pick off terrorist leaders? Well, no, actually. It's an executive order which can be rescinded with the stroke of a pen, but let's not get bogged down in details.

So what has the New York Times' panties in a bunch? CIA Director Leon Panetta last month killed the program after he confidentially told the two Congressional Intelligence Committees about the sketchy details. The leaks didn't get out to the Times for a couple of days, but that's not what the Gray Lady is having a hissy fit over. The Evil One, former Vice President Cheney, may have told the CIA not to disclose the program to Congress. Can you imagine such a thing? Never mind that the program was never actually set up, let alone activated, and that it was abandoned before it ever got past the initial talking stages and the routine non-assassination training of a few overseas allies who might, maybe, have been brought into the program later. This is a blot on America's goodness, and it must be avenged.

Token conservative Debra Saunders in the San Francisco Chronicle put it very nicely: "After all, why bankroll an intelligence agency if you can't use it to kill an enemy against whom America is fighting a war?" Logic like that falls on deaf ears at the New York Times, as well as dyspectic Congressional Democrats. The inestimable Senator Dick Durbin of Lyinnois has argued that there should be--wait for it--an investigation!

First of all, there's no evidence, other than the New Yorks Times' unnamed sources' say-so that V. P. Cheney ever told the agency any such thing. It's all right for the Times to have secrets, just not our intelligence agencies. All this indignation is just more lefty political grandstanding. The New York Times reported on December 15, 2002, that there was a program which contained "a list of terrorist leaders the Central Intelligence Agency is authorized to kill." Isn't that seven years ago? It would seem that Senator Durbin, along with 98% of Americans, and its own staff, do not read the New York Times.

The current Times article went on to report that the covert program "never became fully operational, involving planning and some training that took place off and on from 2001." OK. And other Times stories added that CIA Director George Tenet killed the program in 2004, his successor, Porter Goss revived the program, but it never became operational, even when Michale Hayden, and later Panetta, took over as CIA chief."

Saunders goes on to say that the AP has reported that the House Intelligence Committee is laying the groundwork for a formal investigation. "If so, the committee might start by probing how it is that Intelligence Committee members didn't know about a plan that had been reported on the front page of the New York Times." I would add that the second question should be "How is it that the New York Times didn't know about a story that was printed on the front page of the New York Times? And did the Times' unnamed sources get their information from the 2002 New York Times story?"

The 2002 story also has another gem. "In the case of the presidential finding authorizing the use of lethal force against members of Al Qaeda, Congressional leaders have been notified as required (emphasis added), the officials said." In other words, the best Mr. Cheney could be investigated for is allegedly telling the CIA not to tell Congress about a program that Congress had already been told about. If you're confused, you're not the only one.

Who is the real goat in all this silliness? Norman Panetta. He rushed to tell two Committees, confidentially, that he had discontinued a non-operational operation which had been cancelled much earlier as reported by the New York Times, and was rewarded (as he should have known he would be) by a leak coming out of one of those Committees.

Saunders' final words are very apt: "The message to Agency staff may be unintended, but it is clear--If there's anyone left at CIA headquarters who wants to defeat Al Qaeda, that person would be well-advised to hire a lawyer first. Or maybe a shrink."
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