"Torture" Tuesday

The Senate Democrats' Bush torture report is scheduled for release today.  Thankfully all our foreign posts and overseas military have been placed on the appropriate defcon.  Not a good time to be a hostage held by Islamists, but maybe it's never a good time.

We know Dems like Feinstein and Levin are salivating for its release but the reaction from State and the White House has been curious.  Lots of political posturing in the days leading up, including a call from John Kerry with the blessing (or maybe urging) of the White House begging asking DiFi to delay the report until something is fixed, presumably something overseas, although both now claim they are 120 percent behind the release.  Does that mean something was fixed in the report, like maybe something Lerch said or did back in 2002 when the Democrats were cheerleading the 'torture' program?   Back when he was for the harsh interrogation before he was against it? 

Or was something fixed outside the report?  The Kerry call was reportedly last Thursday, a day before a flurry of activity occurred on the international terror front. Congress authorized a billion dollars for the Pakistani Army upon the departure of one of their generals who spent the previous week in DC gladhanding.  Then a Taliban bigwig was sent back to the Taliban. A day later we tried a raid to save one of our hostages held by AQAP in Yemen, just as the Pakistanis announced they had taken out AQ number 3/4 Adnan Shukrijumah, while the administration quietly transferred a pack of Gitmo detainees to Uruguay (whose president said they could immediately go free upon their arrival).  Then we launched a drone attack over Pakistan and killed another AQ bigwig along with some Talibanis.  Are the ducks now in a row?    

No doubt Cheney, Rodriquez, Hayden, and even Bush don't care about the ducks or anything else--they know this is an attempt to get some slimy Democrats back on the side of the angels, so they have been hitting the media circuits begging asking them to stand down.   Hell, did they not see Zero Dark Thirty?

Unless its much worse than ZDT.  Cause let's face it, everyone already knows we slapped around and dunked and were generally rude to a lot of AQ Muslims back when we thought a bigger attack was coming.  So unless there's evidence the CIA chopped off some arms or toes or put someone in a chipper-shredder or killed some family members it's hard to imagine a huge public outcry from this.  We know about waterboarding.   Will the report make figures like KSM sympathetic to more than just Rosie O'Donnell?


Seems the government is more worried about how terrorists might react to it than Americans, as if they think ISIS might freak out and cut someone's head off.   They don't need no stinkin' terror report to be mad--Obama always seems to need a new cause for any possible Muslim violence as if the terrorists really are on the run.  That way if something happens it can be blamed on a hateful video released report documenting Bush torture (even if the planning was ongoing for five months) and not his awesome foreign policy, which was evidently to outreach a hand of friendship while apologizing.  

Keep in mind the CIA spied on Congress in the investigation phase of the report, so there are obvious sensibilities in play.  Clearly the CIA thinks the Democrats are throwing them under the huge Obama bus.  Is that ever a good idea?   Does the president think the CIA will be more effective upon this release after their director likely misled Congress about whether his agency officers spied on Senate computers?   Does the internal division this report may engender in an already dangerously divided nation even matter to the Democrats?  Or is this being oversold?   

We wait and see.  

RELEASED  12/9/14

The Senate released the report and the NY Times has a summary, which seems to be that the CIA was a pack of lying sadists after 9/11, and the program was probably racist.  Brown lives matter.  Hmm, wonder what Valerie Plame and Jessica Chastain think about all of this?  She and Chastain's character are the only heroic CIA officers allowed to exist at the moment.

And how can John Brennan, who was involved in the 'torture', be allowed to continue running the agency?  Has he blackmailed somebody?   Good grief this is weird.

MORE  12/9/14

The reaction has been about as expected.  Leftist outrage, followed by McCain outrage, followed by more leftist outrage.  The Times, Post and Huffpo's front pages are virtual liberal sexual events.

Of course that means I'm defending 'torture'.  No, I'm defending fair play.  Aside from these sanctimonious Democrats crowing about upholding our values, did they blink when we killed Anwar Awlaki's teenage son or other innocents in the path of the hellfires?  Did they say anything when we took terrorists Warsame and al-Libi to Navy ships for weeks of interrogation?   Would they have us go back to the 90s when Clinton outsourced interrogation to countries like Egypt or Syria?

They are treating the CIA like a pack of sadists, not professional spies trying to ascertain where the next shoe was going to drop after 9/11.  Shoe, like shoe bombs, or worse.  Feinstein, Rockefeller, Levin and company are doing this purely for politics and bail their own reps out.   Nothing positive will come from this because at some point a president is going to be faced with a decision to use harsh interrogation to get time-critical info out of a detained terrorist as the CIA, DIA, NSA and other intel outfits tell him about chatter indicating a major attack.  Doing nothing, or sending Ali Soufan in to establish a rapport over a period of months, is not going to work.