Memo to the President: E.I.T. Worked and Saved Lives

'TORTURE' WORKS
INTERROGATIONS FOILED PLOTS

IF Dick Cheney had a fantasy scenario for how the Bush administration interrogation program worked, it might go like this: A top al Qaeda operative is captured, but resists traditional interrogation. He's then waterboarded, after which he becomes an invaluable resource. Eventually, the terrorist conducts tutorials on al Qaeda doctrine and operations for the benefit of US intelligence officers.

Except it's not a fable. It describes the course of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed's post-capture career, according to The Washington Post. The Post report, together with CIA documents released in the last week, demolishes a key argument of opponents of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques -- that " 'torture' never works."

This contention always betrayed an insecurity. For all their thundering about the immorality of coercive interrogations, opponents never dared admit that they could have elicited important, perhaps lifesaving, information. They treated it as a kind of metaphysical impossibility.

In so doing, they left a hostage to fortune. They had to hope that Cheney was wrong when he said that classified documents proved the interrogations' effectiveness, or that the documents would never be declassified. The release of the 2004 Central Intelligence Agency inspector general's report -- declassified thanks to an ACLU lawsuit -- has been a disaster for them. In the intelligence business, it's called blowback.

The IG report said detainees in the interrogation program made the CIA aware of plots to attack the US consulate in Karachi, Pakistan; to fly hijacked aircraft into Heathrow Airport; to derail a train in America; to blow up US gas stations; to fly an airplane into the tallest building in California; and to collapse bridges in New York. If any of these attacks had come off, many of the same critics braying about the CIA's interrogations would be outraged about its failure to "connect the dots."

The IG report doesn't flatly assert that the interrogations were responsible for this intelligence haul, but the facts make it obvious. Top terrorists were withholding information before the application of the toughest techniques, but compliant afterward.

The report says KSM was "an accomplished resistor," who gave mostly "outdated, inaccurate or incomplete" information until he was waterboarded. Afterward, he became the "most prolific" source of important leads.

The IG report says KSM's cooperation led to the arrest of a truck driver in the US named Iyman Faris who was plotting attacks on New York landmarks; of a sleeper operative in New York named Saleh Almari; of an operative named Majid Khan who had easy entree into the US; and of two Pakistani businessmen whom KSM "planned to use to smuggle explosives into the United States."

Overall, according to another CIA document released last week, "detainees in mid-2003 helped us build a list of 70 individuals -- many of who we had never heard of before -- that al Qaeda deemed suitable for Western operations." In the War on Terror, learning these operatives' identities is almost the equivalent of the ULTRA program breaking German codes in World War II.

The former CIA Inspector General John Helgerson tells The Washington Post that "waterboarding and sleep deprivation were the two most powerful techniques and elicited a lot of information." Such extreme methods should obviously be used only in a carefully controlled setting against top detainees harboring information about ongoing plots. Detainees like KSM and a few of his confederates, who provided intelligence valuable enough to justify their harsh treatment.

Years of bombast and distortion have nonetheless killed the enhanced-interrogation program. The Obama administration has put the CIA out of the interrogation business and will henceforth endeavor to limit itself to the minimalist methods in the Army Field Manual. Thus it enshrines an interrogation regime that wouldn't have gotten KSM to cooperate so quickly, if at all. And turns its back on what worked.

Rich Lowry, NY Post, 9/2/09

Poll Dropping Languishing President Out for Patriot’s Blood

PUNISHING PATRIOTS
WITCH HUNT AT CIA ENDANGERS US

THE Obama administration's determination to hold witch-hunt "investigations" of CIA interrogators who did their patriotic best to keep us safe endangers us all.

Castrate the CIA, and Americans will die. But the Obama White House wants vengeance against those who don't fit its ideology. Your family's safety comes a distant second.

And let's get real: Attorney General Eric Holder (whose top career achievement was finessing the presidential pardon of a criminal Clinton donor) is not acting independently.

Anyone who believes that Holder didn't pre-brief the president and get the nod prior to announcing his determination to crucify high-achieving CIA agents probably believes that government-run health care will balance the federal budget.

I followed this travesty as I worked with our military at various bases last month. I could have been listening to old BBC World Service reports from the Third World. This is the sort of politicized retribution that prevails in backwater countries when regimes change.

Our wise tradition has been for new administrations to accept that their predecessors did their best, however disagreeably, and move on. Gerald Ford sacrificed himself to that end, and even Jimmy Carter understood that presidencies are not for domestic revenge.

And the lesson the left should draw from its own wretched global history is that those who stage the show trials this time may wind up in the dock themselves when the wheel turns.

But Obama's political base wants blood. American blood. This inquisition isn't about justice. It's about punishing those who fought terror with all their might.

What have we come to when our attorney general frees terrorists, then threatens to prosecute patriots who treated butchers too harshly for left-wing tastes?

What Holder intends -- with Obama's blessing -- isn't about cleaning up a rogue agency, but cleaning out those who believed that protecting our country trumped all else in wartime. This ideological purge promises to do more damage to the intelligence community than even the crippling Carter-era shenanigans -- whose effects are still felt today.

For his part, Obama's trying to have it both ways: letting Holder wear the black hat to advance an extreme-left agenda, while the president poses as if he's a disinterested party high above the fray.

But Washington doesn't work that way. And we all know it. If the president disapproved of the Holder witch-hunt, he could fire the attorney general today.

He won't, though. Because, in this administration's hard-left cosmos, the CIA is evil. For that matter, America is evil. Americans need to be punished and forced to face the evil our country has done.

So terrorists are "liberated," Gitmo will be closed, and the careers and lives of patriots will be shattered.

This matters. After serving in and around the intelligence world for decades, I can tell you that we're far better off with intelligence operatives, from interrogators to analysts, who show too much zeal than with timid bureaucrats who dread making any slight error.

You can't do useful intelligence work on a choke-chain. Yes, the intel community needs oversight and guidance. But it's vile for armchair critics, safe at home, to damn the earnest efforts of those who broke the likes of arch-terrorist Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

And some hard-core terrorists do have to be broken. Patiently playing to the prisoner's vanity works best in run-of-the-mill interrogations, but there are always exceptions. In those cases, our intelligence warriors must feel confident that our government's behind them -- and not waving an indictment.

The American people get this. The left's obsession with the rights of terrorists finds no support among sensible citizens. But the issue's been hijacked by the America-hating zealots who shaped our president's worldview and by media scoundrels whose credo comes from Grace Slick's 1960s lyric "I'd rather have my country die for me."

For the rest of us to live in peace, patriots must stand at the edge of darkness where our enemies dwell. This is a war. And it is sometimes necessary to do evil in war to achieve a greater good. Fighting Islamist terrorism isn't about campus theories. It's about the fate of millions.

In this bitter struggle that has been forced upon us, the Obama administration stands for creeping surrender.

Ralph Peter, NY Post, 9/1/09

Ted Kennedy 1932-2009

For as much as I may have disagreed with the senior senator from Massachusetts, on this day, it's good for the world to see how we treat our leaders with dignity and respect and are willing to set differences aside and comfort those who mourn the loss of a father, brother, and uncle.

America is a wonderful country.

Rest in peace, Ted!

Samuel Gonzalez

Exploiting Ted Kennedy’s Death for Democrat Political Gain

WHY TED'D WANT HIS DEATH EXPLOITED

IF you read the papers or watch the news, you'll en counter a long list of accom plishments by the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy. You're less likely to hear, however, that in his death Kennedy proved Rush Limbaugh right.

In March, the talk-show host and bete noir of progressives everywhere said that the health-care bill wending its way through Congress would eventually be dubbed "the Ted Kennedy Memorial Health Care Bill." At the time, the official position of the Democratic Party was outrage and disgust. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee initiated a petition drive demanding that the Republican Party formally denounce Limbaugh for his "reprehensible" and "truly outrageous" comments.

Fast-forward to a few hours after the announcement of Kennedy's death. Suddenly, naming the bill after Kennedy would be a moving tribute.

ABC News reports that "the idea of naming the legislation for Kennedy has been quietly circulating for months" but was kicked into overdrive by Sen. Robert Byrd, the Democratic Party's eldest statesman.

Intriguingly, this suggests that either Democrats already had the idea when Limbaugh floated it, which would mean their protests were just so much opportunistic and cynical posturing -- or they actually got the idea from Limbaugh himself, which would be too ironic for a Tom Wolfe novel.

But that Kennedy's death should be marked by cynicism, opportunism and irony is not shocking, given that these qualities are now the hallmarks of the party he largely defined.

The Democratic Party's determination to exploit his death for political gain puts the commentator who doesn't wish to speak ill of the dead in something of a bind. So let us be clear that there's no evidence whatsoever that Kennedy himself -- or any Kennedy -- would object to such a ploy.

Whether one calls it exploitation or heroic perseverance, the Kennedy dynasty's longevity is best understood as a response to fatal tragedies. Shortly after her husband's murder, Jacqueline Kennedy lamented Lee Harvey Oswald's inconvenient political views: "It had to be some silly little Communist."

Fortunately, her husband's handlers had things well in hand, orchestrating with a compliant media the grand fiction that Kennedy had somehow been a martyr to civil rights, taken out by right-wing "hate."

The real JFK, who cut capital-gains taxes and only reluctantly supported Martin Luther King Jr.'s March on Washington, had never been nearly as liberal as the posthumous legend created to give new life to liberalism -- and the Kennedy name.

According to the mythmakers, JFK would have pulled us out of Vietnam. Meanwhile, the real JFK boasted (mere hours before his murder) that he'd massively boosted defense spending and ordered a 600 percent increase on counterinsurgency special forces in Vietnam. The prior March, he'd asked Congress to spend 50 cents out of every dollar on defense.

Hence one of the great ironies of Ted Kennedy's career: He was the chief beneficiary of an inheritance from a brother whose views he didn't share.

Such contradictions never bothered Ted Kennedy, nor his fellow Democrats, when he was alive -- so why should there be compunction now?

After all, the Kennedys and the Democrats have mythologized and exploited the deaths of three brothers (and minimized the deaths of Mary Jo Kopechne and Martha Moxley) in order to protect the Kennedy brand. Naming a massive expansion of the federal government after Ted Kennedy, particularly when it was indeed his life's cause, seems entirely fitting and fair.

My only objection is the notion that somehow anyone but partisan Democrats should be expected to cave in to the "Do it for Teddy" bullying.

Conservatives should surrender to something that violates their fundamental principles out of deference to the very man liberals celebrate for never abandoning his fundamental principles? No one expected Ted Kennedy to become a champion of free markets out of deference to Ronald Reagan's memory.

Now, if liberals want to rally their own troops by putting Kennedy's name on the bill, that's their right, even if it will likely result in an even more unpopular bill than the ones now under consideration.

I suspect that they'll be disappointed to discover that the currency of the Kennedy name purchases far less than it once did -- thanks in large part to what Ted Kennedy did with it.


Jonah Gldberg, NY Post, 8/29/09

Kennedy's Funeral Further Damages the Church's Credibility

There is much truth to the adage that many of our wounds are self inflicted. This has been especially true for the Catholic Church in the United States and the Archdiocese of Boston in particular. Recall that the clergy sex abuse scandal first came to light there because of their egregious nature and the laxity of the then Archbishop Bernard Cardinal Law in handling them. According to statistics the Church is still reeling from the aftershocks.

On Wednesday the Church further diminished her credibility when it was announced that a Mass of Christian Burial would be celebrated for Senator Edward M. Kennedy at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica. It was also announced that President Barack Obama would be the eulogist.

Senator Kennedy, along with President Obama have been the most pro-abortion and pro-embryonic stem cell research politicians in the nation. As a matter of fact, Senator Kennedy refused to vote for Supreme Court nominees Robert Bork and Samuel Alito for fear their appointment might lead to overturning Roe v. Wade. These positions are inimical to Catholic Church teaching and throughout the years, the American hierarchy has railed against Catholic politicians such as Kennedy who hold such views. Some bishops have even advised them not to receive Holy Communion -- an action just short of excommunication.


In recent days the spin-doctors have done their best to portray Senator Kennedy as a devout Catholic. Stories of his visits to church in order to pray for his ailing daughter Kara, a cancer survivor, and reports of his personal religiosity have been widely circulated. The media has also noted numerous visits by priests to the Kennedys’ home during his illness for the administration of the sacraments, presumably including confession and even the celebration of a private Mass in Kennedys’ living room. There is no report, however, of repudiation of his voting record or sorrow for his obstinate refusal to adhere to Catholic morality on two of the most important life issues. An important part of the Sacrament of Penance, along with sorrow for sin, is to try to repair the damages that our sins have caused. Certainly, enough time had elapsed between the diagnosis of the Senator’s terminal illness and his death for him to make amends and to alleviate some of the scandal. Yet, there is no indication that this has happened.

A Mass of Christian Burial is a privilege -- not a right. It is for those who have lived a Christian life. Senator Kennedy’s scandalous disregard of his Church’s teaching and the destruction of human life that may be attributed to his voting record make his funeral celebration quite dubious. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states: “Scandal is an attitude or behavior which leads another to evil… and that it takes on a particular gravity by reason of the authority of those who cause it”(n. 2284-85). For such a person the Code of Canon Law says, “Church funeral rites are to be denied to the following (unless they gave some sign of repentance before death): manifest sinners to whom a Church funeral could not be granted without public scandal to the faithful” (c. 1184.3). How many Catholics have been led astray by Senator Kennedy and other prominent pro-choice Catholics? And, finally, how many other Catholic politicians will be emboldened to emulate his behavior because the honor the Church is extending to him?

Some will argue that the Church, by its very nature, always gives the benefit of the doubt to the sinner. Yet, even such an act of charity calls for a pastoral solution so as not to mislead others and cause greater harm. In this case, a subdued funeral service should be offered for the repose of Senator Kennedy’s soul. It should be made clear that, as it is the purpose of every Catholic funeral, the Mass is being celebrated to beg God’s mercy for the deceased. But, then even this solution would be meaningless when the nation’s most pro-choice president ever is permitted to eulogize his ideological soul mate in the Church’s sanctuary. Imagine the accolades that will be lavished on the Senator Kennedy’s character and career!

The Church’s credibility has once again been undermined by the hierarchy of the Church in Boston. This scandal is even bigger than the one enabled by Cardinal Law because of its bad message and long ranging implications.

Rev. Michael P. Orsi a Research Fellow in Law and Religion at Ave Maria School of Law. Human Events, 8/28/2009

The Hero of Chappaquiddick: a profile of liberal Democrat Ted Kennedy

In light of the death of Sem Ted Kennedy, I like to re-post a 5 year old article that touches on “the other Ted Kennedy” that will not get much attention. The Liberal media so loves to whitewash their heroes.

Ted Kennedy was able to live 77 years.

Mary Joe Kopechne wasn’t so lucky.



The Hero of Chappaquiddick: a profile of liberal Democrat Ted Kennedy

B y Jack Ward 7/30/05

On the anniversary of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal, Edward M. (Teddy) Kennedy wanted to make sure everyone was reminded of the incident. Since Sen. Kennedy wants to remind us of history, I feel obligated to mention the anniversary of Kennedy's troubled past.

Teddy is the last son of Joe and Rose Kennedy. The older, famous sons John (JFK) and Robert (RFK) are icons in Democrat politics. But as Cleo O'Donnell, a wife of a former Kennedy campaign aide said, "Teddy Kennedy was the weak kitten in the litter, never able to measure up to his brothers." At prep school his performance was so mediocre his brother JFK once referred to Teddy as "the gay illiterate."

Teddy was admitted to Harvard as a legacy student rather than for academic achievement. Teddy was fortunate that JFK, RFK and his father had graduated with distinction. Teddy's claim to fame at Harvard was getting expelled for cheating in his sophomore year. After getting expelled, he sat around feeling sorry for himself until he signed up for a four-year hitch in the Army.

His father Joe (who was the U.S. Ambassador to England) was very upset. He reportedly said, "Don't you ever look at what you're signing?" He then pushed political buttons and revised the enlistment to two years. It is nice to have a daddy fix your screw-ups. In two years he never go above the rank of private.

After demonstrating his military prowess, Teddy returned to Harvard and joined the rugby team. Rugby has been described as a "character-building sport." In one match, Teddy got into three fist-fights and was finally thrown out of the game. According to referee Frederick Costick, "Teddy was the only player he had ever expelled from a game in 30 years of officiating." Rugby did little to improve Teddy's character.

After graduating from Harvard, he entered the University of Virginia Law School. At Virginia, he was called "Cadillac Eddie." He got four tickets in two years for running red lights and driving at night with lights off at 90 miles per hour through neighborhoods. But even with convictions, fines and strict driving regulations, he never lost his license.

When JFK was elected president in 1960, his Massachusetts Senate seat became vacant. Papa Joe said, "Look, I paid for it, it belongs in the family." But Teddy wasn't 30, so he couldn't run. So Joe got an interim slug to occupy the office until Teddy could be anointed. In 1962, Ol' Joe succeeded and Teddy became a U.S. Senator.

On July 18, 1969, Teddy's sordid past caught up with him at Chappaquiddick, Marths's Vineyard, Massachusetts. Teddy was one of a party of six married men and six single women. Investigators confirmed that a package liquor store sold three half-gallons of vodka, four fifths of scotch, two bottles of rum and two cases of beer for the party. Attendee Joe Gargan said, "Frankly, everybody was a little bombed."

About 12:45 a.m., Teddy and campaign aide Mary Jo Kopechne decided to leave the party. Rather than have Teddy's personal chauffeur (Jack Crimmins) drive, Teddy demanded to drive Mary Jo "to the ferry" - but the ferry had stopped running at midnight.

Deputy Sheriff Christopher "Huck" Look saw a black Oldsmobile driving erratically and the driver appeared to be in a "confused state." Even with the partial license plate, it was verified to be Kennedy's car. After being spotted by Deputy Look, Kennedy sped off. In his haste, he missed the bridge and the car went into the water. Teddy escaped but Mary Jo Kopechne didn't. Kennedy didn't report the accident for more than 10 hours.

Neither Kennedy's timeline nor account of events matched the facts nor the statements from the deputy sheriffs or nearby residents. While the 10-hour delay ensured that he couldn't be charged with driving while intoxicated, his driver's license had expired and he had fled the scene of an accident. Friends recreated his driver's lcense, but Chapter 90, Section 24 of the Massachusetts vehicle code requires "imprisonment for not less than 20 days or more than two years" when a driver leaves the scene of an accident where injuries occur - for all people except a Kennedy.

State police detective-lieutenant George Killen said, "Senator Kennedy killed that girl the same as if he put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger."

In 1973, Sen. Ted Kennedy said, "Do we operate under a system of equal justice under law? Or is there one system for the average citizen and another for the high and mighty?"

Teddy should know.

Obama Wagging the Dog: Launches Witch Hunt of Bush Interrogators

Obama's War on our Spies

The criminal indictments may as well be captioned, “The United States vs. The Central Intelligence Agency,” because that’s the correct way to identify the adversaries. The Democrats’ war on our intelligence agencies has now become a two-front war with the Obama administration attacking where Congressional Democrats couldn’t.

Attorney General Eric Holder has announced he will appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the CIA interrogators who used tough interrogation techniques to see which of them will be prosecuted. Holder has drawn a line in the sand.

On one side stands the US Department of Justice, its army of second-guessers and scalp-hunters at the ready, with unlimited time and an unlimited budget to pursue whatever theory of the law it chooses. On the other sits the interrogators and CIA bureaucrats who have been trying -- sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing -- to get terrorist detainees to give up intelligence information that will save American lives.

Unlike the Justice Department, they don’t have unlimited funds to fight in court for years. There won’t be gaggles of high-priced lawyers donating their services to defend these people. Many of their lives will be ruined, and fortunes lost.

Grinning on the sidelines will be the terrorists and the nations that sponsor them, wondering how America can be so incredibly stupid as to hobble its principal spy agency in the middle of a war that cannot be won without that agency’s success in everything it does.

But the enemy is more understanding of our history than we are. They remember that Gen. George S. Patton was sidelined for many critical months during World War 2 for the minor infraction of slapping a soldier across the face. They know that though espionage is probably the world’s second-oldest profession, our politicians and academics treat its professionals worse than they treat the practitioners of the oldest profession. And they know how soft-brained we have become.

Holder’s about to appoint career federal prosecutor James Durham -- who is already investigating the CIA’s destruction of videotapes of many of the interrogations -- to investigate whether crimes were committed in the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” including waterboarding by CIA interrogators.

Holder’s announcement came a day after what ABC News reported as a “profanity-laced screaming match” at the White House involving CIA Director Leon Panetta who may have threatened to quit over the release of a CIA Inspector General’s report on the interrogations and -- almost certainly -- the Obama-Holder decision to go forward with the appointment of Durham.

That screaming match might also have been about the White House’s sudden move to take direct charge of the interrogation of terrorist detainees. No, Barry and Rahm won’t be going into the closed cells to face off with the world’s worst people. But they will be approving what can and can’t be done by those who do.

Congressional Democrats -- led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- have been at war against our intelligence agencies ever since it became clear that Pelosi had been briefed on CIA waterboarding of terrorist detainees in 2002. Pelosi has repeatedly accused the CIA of lying and driven Panetta -- himself a partisan Democrat -- to write a scathing defense of his agency in an August 2 Washington Post op-ed.

In that article, Panetta condemned the Congressional jihad against the CIA saying it was characterized by “…an atmosphere of declining trust, growing frustration and more frequent leaks of properly classified information.” For short-term political advantage, and to cover up for Pelosi’s lies, the Congress of the United States is making war on the CIA. Now the White House and the Justice Department have lined up with Pelosi.

Sen. Chrisopher Bond (R-Mo), ranking Republican on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, summed it all up yesterday. Bond said, “First the White House usurps control over terrorist interrogations, signaling to the world they have lost confidence in Leon Panetta and our intelligence community, and now the Obama Justice Department launches a witch-hunt targeting the terror-fighters who have kept us safe since 9-11. With a criminal investigation hanging over the Agency’s head, every CIA terror fighter will be in CYA mode. With things heating up in Afghanistan and Iraq, this looking back and unwarranted "redo" of prior Justice Department decisions couldn’t come at a worse time for the safety of our troops in harm’s way and our nation.”

Bond’s statement came on the day when the Obama administration released a heavily-redacted version of the CIA Inspector General’s report dated May 7, 2004 on the alleged abuses of detainees in CIA custody. The report was selectively redacted to remove apparent references to the information gleaned during the interrogations with two very important exceptions.

As soon as he was inaugurated, President Obama prohibited the use of the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” on terrorist detainees, condemning them as “torture”, though that is not what American law said in 2002 and 2003 when they were employed.

One al-Quaida detainee, Al-Nashiri, was subjected to some of the “enhanced interrogation techniques” – the ten methods described with specificity on page 15 of the report – on the first day he arrived at the prison. As the report says, “Al-Nashiri provided lead information on other terrorists during his first day of interrogation.”

Abu Zubaydeh – who was subjected to waterboarding as Pelosi was told on September 4, 2002 – gave information that “helped lead to the identification of Jose Padilla and Binyam Muhammed – operatives who had plans to detonate a uranium-topped dirty bomb in either Washington, DC or New York City,” as the report says on page 87.

And Khalid Shayk Muhammad, who was one of three detainees who were waterboarded? He was “probably the most prolific.”

KSM “provided information that helped lead to the arrests of terrorists including Sayfullah Paracha and his son Uzair Paracha, businessmen whom Khalid Shayk Muhammad planned to use to smuggle explosives into the United States; Saleh Almari, a sleeper operative in New York; and Majid Khan, an operative who could enter the United States easily and was tasked to research attacks (part redacted). Khalid Shauk Muhammad’s information also led to the investigation and prosecution of Iyman Faris, a truck driver arrested in early 2003 in Ohio.” (Page 87 of the report).

The IG report alleges a number of abuses of detainees including “mock executions” and threats to relatives of the prisoners. But this CIA IG report was given to the Justice Department when it was written five years ago.

According to an August 19, 2009 letter signed by Sen. Bond and eight other Republicans, “Three former Attorneys General and numerous career prosecutors have examined the findings of that report and other evidence and determined that the facts do not support criminal prosecution.”

But Holder’s appointment of Durham willfully disregards that fact and implicitly says that all those former Attorneys General and career prosecutors didn’t know what the law is – actually, what it was when the acts occurred. Holder and Obama know better.

Conspicuously absent from the documents released yesterday are the ones that former Vice President Cheney asked for: two memoranda that show the information that was gleaned by the rough interrogation methods.

Most importantly to the Democrats all of the congressional investigations into the treatment of detainees -- and Nancy Pelosi’s knowledge of it -- will be foreclosed as long as the criminal investigation goes on. At least as long as it takes to get through the 2010 congressional elections.

But, in the end, it’s not the fate of Nancy Pelosi that matters. It’s just as Cong. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mi) said yesterday.

“At the same time the situation in Afghanistan is getting decidedly worse and the Taliban is advancing, the Obama Justice Department is launching an investigation that risks disrupting CIA counter terrorism initiatives. This is the last thing that should happen when the president is sending more troops into harm’s way, and the nation’s top military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, said over the weekend that al-Qaeda still remains a threat to America and our interests abroad.”

But all of that is of no importance to Obama and Holder. All that counts is treating our spies as our enemies, and our enemies as our friends. Take heart, Messrs. Ahmadinejad, bin Laden and Assad. These men are more dangerous to us than to you. And, it must be said, that can no longer be thought an accident. Not after yesterday.

Jed Babbin, Human Events, 08/25/2009