Liberals & The CIA

[RanchHQ]

FROM: The Greenroom Forum Archive The Ethics of Ferocity

"A few weeks ago, Eric Holder saw nothing wrong with Black Panthers using billy clubs to intimidate voters. Today, he thinks intimidating terrorists with cigars is a crime. Holder is the one who should be answering tough questions under oath."


The Ethics of Ferocity

posted at 3:56 pm on August 25, 2009 by Doctor Zero
The Obama Administration, aware that everyone outside of union bosses, and interest groups looking for billion-dollar ribeye steaks of taxpayer money, is having trouble remembering why they voted for Obama, has decided to drag CIA interrogators and Bush Administration officials into court, where they will be persecuted for their role in defending America from terrorist attacks. Apparently Obama and his accomplices decided to distract their liberal base from the fiery Hindenburg crash of socialized medicine, by offering them a relaxing cruise on the Titanic of leftist foreign policy. As with everything else the current Administration does, it’s a remarkably foolish move: dangerous for America, and self-destructive as a strategy.

I don’t have much patience or understanding for people who play games with national security for political benefit, so let me dismiss the political strategy of this outrage by saying it once again demonstrates the danger of believing your own political spin, and taking the lovestruck panting of a sycophantic media seriously. Real Americans are not anxious to punish the people who shut down al-Qaeda’s domestic operations. While liberals wave the Justice Department’s report on CIA interrogation techniques at the rest of the world and tearfully beg them for forgiveness, the rest of us are wondering why we don’t reduce the deficit by selling the rights to these interrogations on pay-per-view. The contestants on your average Japanese game show go through more intense ordeals.

Obama should understand that he was elected in spite of his childish posturing as a messiah and redeemer, not because of them. A weary public allowed itself to be badgered into electing the first black president, after they ran out of patience waiting for John McCain to explain why they shouldn’t. Normal people don’t define their relationship with the government by taking pleasure in the humiliation of political figures they dislike. We’re six months past the point where American voters can be kept quiet by suffocating them with the pillow of Bush hatred. We’re about a month past the point where anyone capable of independent thought believes Obama is a better president than Bush was.

Political strategy aside, America needs to resolve its argument about the morality of self-defense, and quickly. It’s my contention that a peaceful democracy has a moral imperative to demonstrate ferocity in defense.

Because we are not an aggressive, conquering nation, we don’t seek to subjugate the world and eliminate opposition. This means we will always be playing defense. One of the most dangerous delusions of the Left is the idea that we might be able to create a civilization that has no enemies. Civilization always has its enemies. Liberals should understand that, since they draw their own political strength from the unhappy remnant that always feels cheated by free-market capitalism, no matter how prosperous it might become. Even the most peaceful and compassionate nation will always be at risk from savages who wish to drown it in blood.

Anyone who has studied any form of self-defense knows the danger of hesitation. Effective defense requires swift and decisive action. When a fist is flying at your face, you don’t have time to flip through your mental catalog of Jet Li movies and pick a cool counter-move. Hesitation can defeat even superior strength and technical skill. The most powerful weapon in the world is useless as long as it remains in its holster… and it provides no deterrence value if your assailant knows it will remain there.

To suggest that enduring six months of Obama has made the CIA more hesitant to conduct effective intelligence operations is an understatement. Democrat political double-dealing is a crime that strikes at the heart of our venerated belief in civilian command of the military. We respect this arrangement, in part, because we believe it is proper for the civilian government to exhaust all peaceful, diplomatic avenues before we commit to war. You don’t send Marine recon units to conduct subtle diplomacy. The Bush Administration did its duty in this regard - for all the liberal caterwauling about “Bush’s rush to war,” it took a hell of a lot longer than Barack Obama’s rush to nationalize the health insurance industry and triple the deficit.

The other side of this arrangement must also be honored: we must allow the military to act with decisive speed, working within clearly defined rules of engagement. The military requires, and deserves, the assurance that they will not be used as political pawns by the civilian authorities. This is the duty a peaceful nation owes to the men and women who risk their lives, and make countless personal sacrifices, to ensure our safety. It is also logical, because the safety of American civilians, along with the hope for minimal collateral damage to foreign populations, depends on giving our defenders the confidence to take swift and decisive action. We know from experience that modern America does not have the political and cultural endurance to fight protracted wars - and, frankly, protracted wars stink. If war is forced upon us, it’s better for everyone involved if we make quick work of the enemy.

The Left has demonstrated a willing eagerness to sap American endurance in times of war, again and again. The antiwar movement is a fusion of many agendas, including domestic political hatred of the sitting President, and outright sympathy with the enemy. There is little that can be said to these elements of the Left… but to those who sincerely oppose extended military action on humanitarian grounds, I would say it is deeply immoral to apply political sanctions and legal penalties to the very people who have the best chance of ending a war quickly, or preventing enemy attacks from claiming innocent lives. Nothing will prompt a determined enemy to attack faster than the belief his target is paralyzed with uncertainty. Nothing will break the will of a terrorist organization faster than capturing or killing its command structure, and that requires timely intelligence.

There is exactly one way to obtain that intelligence, and you can read all about it, in the Justice Department report on CIA interrogations. The options to wish determined enemies away, hug them into submission, or instantly penetrate their command structure with double-oh super-spies are not on the table. The option of surrender is underneath the table, and a few hundred million patriotic Americans will stomp on your damned fingers, if you try reaching for it.

If a group of people took your family hostage, and one of their associates fell into your hands, you would do anything to extract the location of your family from him. So would Barack Obama, and Eric Holder, and every Democrat who ever sullied the halls of Congress by referring to American soldiers as Nazis. President Obama would not dither about the finer points of a criminal’s hypothetical “rights” while the man’s accomplices were taking power tools to Michelle and the kids. Anyone who would is a lunatic… and I don’t want to leave the security of our country in the hands of lunatics. The moral justification for relying on professional military and law-enforcement personnel is the understanding that their training will allow them to do all the terrible things we would do to protect our family, more dispassionately, carefully, and efficiently than we could. Double-crossing them for political gain is using the families of other people as poker chips, in the smug certainty your own loved ones are in no immediate danger. If we don’t let the professionals do their jobs against a relentless enemy now, then one day, we will all be soldiers.

A few weeks ago, Eric Holder saw nothing wrong with Black Panthers using billy clubs to intimidate voters. Today, he thinks intimidating terrorists with cigars is a crime. Holder is the one who should be answering tough questions under oath.

[RanchHQ]

LINK: Bret Stephens: Liberals and the CIA - WSJ.com

Liberals and the CIA

A real 'Plame-gate,' minus the outrage.

There is nothing more important than protecting the identities of CIA officers. So I need everybody to be clear: We will protect your identities and your security as you vigorously pursue your missions.
—Barack Obama at CIA headquarters, April 2009.

Once upon a time, Valerie Plame Wilson was a hero to liberals everywhere, a covert CIA operative whose cover was blown by a vindictive Bush administration out to ruin its critics. Today, liberals within government and without are betraying covert CIA operatives as if it were the very essence of virtue. Consistency, principled or foolish, has never been a hobgoblin of the liberal mind.

Consider Attorney General Eric Holder's decision Monday to investigate and potentially prosecute about a dozen previously closed cases involving alleged detainee abuse by CIA officers or contractors. Whether those agents and contractors are innocent or guilty—or whether they were simply working within parameters they believed were necessary and permissible, and circumstances they deemed urgent, but which the Obama administration has retroactively decided were not—are matters that will be determined in due course. The 2004 CIA report on which Mr. Holder based his decision says that the most damaging allegations are "too ambiguous to reach any authoritative determination regarding the facts."

What's nearly certain, however, is that the names of the agents will soon become a part of the public record, either directly or through leaks that the liberal press will have no scruple about printing. Last year, for instance, the New York Times published the name of a CIA officer who interrogated 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. This was despite the protests of the officer and the CIA that to identify him would "put him at risk of retaliation from terrorists or harassment from critics of the agency," as the Times put it in an editor's note.

So much, then, for President Obama's solemn promises to the CIA troops. Nor is Mr. Holder's decision the only political missile tracing a course toward Langley.

On Friday, the Washington Post reported that the Justice Department is looking into allegations that military defense attorneys for top al Qaeda detainees had shown their clients photographs of CIA officers and contractors.

The pictures, some of which were "taken surreptitiously outside [the CIA officers'] homes," were gathered by an outfit called the John Adams Project, jointly sponsored by the ACLU and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. The Project seeks to identify the interrogators to serve as witnesses if and when their clients are tried in federal court or by military commissions. "We are confident that no laws or regulations have been broken," ACLU executive director Anthony Romero told the Post.

He's got to be kidding. The Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982, the law endlessly invoked in Mrs. Wilson's case, specifically proscribes anyone "in the course of a pattern of activities" from seeking to expose the identity of covert agents "to any individual not authorized to receive classified information." Equally plain is the penalty: "fined under Title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned not more than three years, or both."

The Act was written in response to the public disclosure of the names of U.S. covert agents, at least one of whom, Athens station chief Richard Welch, was assassinated in 1975 by Greek terrorists. It was approved overwhelmingly in Congress. In a 2006 letter to this newspaper, Sen. John Kerry approvingly quoted former president George H.W. Bush's "admonition that those who expose our agents are 'the most insidious of traitors.'"


The cover of a special review released Monday, Aug. 24, 2009, of a newly declassified CIA document.

Mr. Kerry was objecting to an editorial warning that CIA officers would soon have to take out personal insurance against the risk of lawsuits and congressional subpoenas. But those officers will have considerably more to fear if the detainees they once interrogated learn their names and are able to get the word out to their associates (as the "Blind Sheikh" Omar Abdul Rahman was able to get messages out of federal prison through his lawyer Lynn Stewart), assuming they don't get out themselves. In that case, more CIA agents will be gunned down—and the John Adamses of our day will have given demonstrably material support to terrorists.

Liberals have never liked the CIA, except when it suited their partisan purposes. That's fine: There's much not to like about the agency, and the U.S. might well be better off without its bungled operations and laughable intelligence estimates. But having shouted themselves hoarse over Mrs. Wilson, their enthusiasm for this new round of outing is a bit unseemly. Especially when lives are actually at stake. Especially when a liberal president has pledged to protect those lives.

[RanchHQ]

"Many of them speculated that they are being used by the administration not only to appease the left, but also as a deflection for all the other problems Obama is having. In other words, they are scapegoats for the Obama administration."

Breaking Faith with Those Who Defended Us

August 25th, 2009 at 3:20 pm by Elise Cooper


Attorney General Holder has decided to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate supposed abuses by CIA operatives. A former high-level Bush official expressed shock to NewMajority at President Obama’s strange moral standards. The official said: President Obama “has given the Defense Department the legal authorization to assassinate fifty Afghan heroin traffickers. I don’t understand it because interrogation has brought actionable intelligence while killing someone gets no intelligence.”


A former CIA operative told NM: “Anytime you are putting a human being under duress it is nasty. How can Holder be disgusted by what we did? Even non-physical interrogation is not a pretty thing to watch. You have to understand that he (the operative) is attempting to get someone to give up something he doesn’t want to give up to save American lives.” A former Bush official concurred and stated that the CIA is made up of “professionals who know what they are doing despite what this administration is saying. They have been very successful at preventing future attacks.”

Does Holder have a basis for establishing a special prosecutor? Everyone interviewed said absolutely not. A former high ranking CIA official felt that “this reopening of the cases smacks of double jeopardy.” NewMajority was able to view CIA Director Panetta’s message to the Agency’s employees in which he explained that these cases were already examined by the DOJ. He explained that “the report was made available to the leadership of the Congressional intelligence committees in 2004 and to the full committees in 2006. All of the material in the document has been subject to Congressional oversight and reviewed for legal accountability… The CIA has a strong record in terms of following legal guidance and informing the Department of Justice of potentially illegal conduct.”

All the former CIA employees informed NewMajority that in any organization, there will be rogues — the CIA is no different. However, a former senior intelligence official summed up everyone’s feelings when he stated that “Holder has a firm grasp of the rear view mirror and seems intent on slamming the engine of government into reverse. No one is defending the actions and comments of a small group of Agency officers who were singled out in the IG report. That is why the CIA told the IG about them and the CIA referred these cases to career prosecutors, not Bush administration people, at DOJ.” A former high ranking CIA official felt what is happening “is shameful really. It’s unprecedented. We were the ones who took the initiative to report misdeeds.”

All those interviewed are curious why this is all happening at this time. Many of them speculated that they are being used by the administration not only to appease the left, but also as a deflection for all the other problems Obama is having. In other words, they are scapegoats for the Obama administration. They all attest to the fact that none of the information coming out is new. They all believe that there is no need for a special prosecutor. The only reason Holder is appointing one is for a fishing expedition. One former operative felt that “they don’t have any specific cases against somebody so now they are going to play around in the dark to try to find something.”

In interviews with NM, Congressman Rooney (R-FL), a former JAG prosecutor, said it is unfair to go back and change the rules after the fact.” Congressman Hoekstra (R-MI) stated that the fact that “the Obama administration apparently is planning to reopen these cases after thorough review by nonpartisan prosecutors raises serious questions.” Minority Whip Cantor (R-VI) went even further, stating that “I find it very troubling that this administration is turning on the servants of this country who were trying to protect Americans… that is not how we settle political scores with successive administrations.”

SOURCE: Breaking Faith with Those Who Defended Us

[RanchHQ]

[RanchHQ]

Dang, I sure hope Lisa doesn't see this:

Blowing Smoke at Terrorists
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
By Terence P. Jeffrey


Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri, according to the 9-11 commission report, was the mastermind of the Oct. 12, 2000, attack on the U.S.S. Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors.

Nashiri was also the target of an "unauthorized" CIA interrogation technique (that had not been legally vetted by the Justice Department) that is described in a May 7, 2004, CIA inspector general's report that was partially declassified by the Obama administration this week.

CIA officers blew smoke in Nashiri's face, according to the report, and they used cigars.

The IG's office described this smoke-blowing as one of several "unauthorized or undocumented techniques" it discovered had been used in isolated incidents by CIA employees interrogating high-level al-Qaida terrorists.

"An Agency (redacted phrase) interrogator admitted that, in December 2002, he and another (redacted phrase) smoked cigars and blew cigar smoke in al-Nashiri's face during the interrogation," said the IG report.

The IG, however, was unable to clearly establish that the smoke-blowing was intended to force Nashiri to cough up what he knew about al-Qaida's plans.

"The interrogator claimed they did this to 'cover the stench' in the room and to help keep the interrogators alert late at night," said the IG report. "This interrogator said he would not do this again based on 'perceived criticism.' Another agency interrogator admitted that he also smoked cigars during two sessions with al-Nashiri to mask the stench in the room. He claimed he did not deliberately force smoke into al-Nashiri's face." The interrogators learned their lesson: Don't blow smoke at terrorists.

In a more serious incident, a CIA interrogator reported that some unspecified interrogators told Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, the mastermind of the 9-11 attacks, that they would kill his children if America was attacked again.

"An experienced agency interrogator reported that the (redacted) interrogators threatened Khalid Sheikh Muhammad (redacted)," said the IG report. "According to this interrogator, the (redacted) interrogators said to Khalid Sheikh Muhammad that if anything else happens in the United States, 'We're going to kill your children.' According to the interrogator, one of the (redacted) interrogators said (redacted)."

An obvious question: What is the word or phrase in this passage that has been redacted in three instances from immediately before the word "interrogators"? All we know for sure is the government thinks it should remain secret.

Presumably there's a good reason: national security.

Having survived his exposure to second-hand smoke, Nashiri was exposed to the most serious unauthorized interrogation technique documented by the IG.

"Sometime between 28 December 2002 and 1 January 2003, the debriefer used an unloaded semi-automatic handgun as a prop to frighten al-Nashiri into disclosing information," said the IG report.

"After discussing this plan with (redacted) the debriefer entered the cell where al-Nashiri sat shackled and racked the handgun once or twice close to al-Nashiri's head.

"On what was probably the same day," the report continued, "the debriefer used a power drill to frighten al-Nashiri. With (redacted) consent, the debriefer entered the detainee's cell and revved the drill while the detainee stood naked and hooded. The debriefer did not touch al-Nashiri with the power drill."

Now, this truly idiotic behavior led the CIA's inspector general to conscientiously refer the case to the Criminal Division of the Justice Department — six years ago, immediately after it happened. The Justice Department declined to prosecute.

Other reported instances in which CIA interrogators used unauthorized techniques did not merit a separate IG investigation, according to the report. "These included the making of threats, blowing cigar smoke, employing certain stress positions, the use of a stiff brush on a detainee and stepping on a detainee's ankle shackles," said the report. "For all of the instances, the allegations were disputed or too ambiguous to reach any authoritative determination regarding the facts."

In the end, the IG dodged a definitive judgment on the productive value of the enhanced interrogation techniques that the Justice Department did approve for use by the CIA, saying that the "effectiveness of particular interrogation techniques in eliciting information that might not otherwise have been obtained cannot be so easily measured."

But CIA interrogations of detainees, according to the report, did uncover plots against the U.S., including plans to "loosen spikes in an attempt to derail a train," "blow up several gas stations to create panic and havoc," "hijack and fly an airplane into the tallest building in California in a west coast (sic) version of the World Trade Center attack" and "cut the lines of suspension bridges in New York in an effort to make them collapse."

In the eight years since Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida has not managed to strike America again. As a reward for the CIA's part in this success, President Obama has now stripped the agency of its lead role in questioning terrorists and Attorney General Eric Holder has named a special prosecutor to investigate its interrogation practices.

LINK: CNSNews.com - Blowing Smoke at Terrorists

[Maximus]

Hey libs.

Did you read Ranch's post? A guy blew smoke in the face of the terrorist who masterminded the US Cole attack and its out now. Aren't you glad that this latest development has been spread throughout the world? Our enemy will use it to support their cause. How "progressive" you must feel.

[RanchHQ]

Max, to be fair there was also "the use of a stiff brush on a detainee".

[RanchHQ]

"A message is being sent that we now face no crisis..."

Saturday, August 29, 2009

Demonizing the defenders

Clifford D. May
During the 1990s, most of us thought we were living in a period of unprecedented peace and prosperity. We even spent the "peace dividend" -- cutting resources for intelligence and the military. The Cold War was over. We had no enemies worth worrying about. That was the accepted narrative of that giddy era.

The fact that Americans were being attacked with regularity by Islamist terrorists -- for example, in New York City in 1993, at Khobar Towers in 1996, at two of our embassies in Africa in 1998, off the coast of Yemen in 2000 -- did not lead most politicians to conclude there was a crisis that needed to be addressed. As a result, the catastrophic attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, came as a shock and a surprise.

In the wake of Sept. 11, it was obvious we faced a national security crisis -- that a war was being waged against America and the West. Extensive anti-terrorism policies were implemented in response. Terrorists were hunted down and killed. Others were captured and interrogated. In a few cases, "enhanced interrogation techniques" were authorized to coerce them to reveal what they knew about terrorist attacks planned but not yet carried out.

Even so, most experts predicted that further assaults on Americans would not be long in coming. Curiously, the same people who are now quick to credit President Obama's stimulus spending with averting a second Great Depression say they doubt whether there is any correlation between the anti-terrorist policies of the Bush administration and the homeland security we've enjoyed over the eight years since their implementation.

Now, not only are some of those policies being abandoned, but Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. also is making an effort to demonize and, possibly, place in the docket those who conceived or carried them out. It will be a watershed in American history if lawyers from the current administration prosecute lawyers from the previous administration because they disagree with their legal opinions. In America, it used to be sufficient for one party to defeat the other at the polls. Jailing political opponents was regarded as excessive.

In much of the media, the abuses that occurred at Abu Ghraib have been implicitly linked with the controversy over the use of limited but coercive techniques to get high-value terrorists talking. As a result, I'll bet there are people who now believe that Lynndie England was a trained CIA interrogator rather than a kid from West Virginia who enlisted in the Army Reserves and got sent to a jail in Baghdad where she mistreated prisoners for her own entertainment. They may believe, too, that she read the Justice Department memos and acted on their instructions as part of a top-secret government intelligence-gathering operation.

By the way, it is inaccurate to refer to those memos -- as they have been in most press reports -- as "torture memos." They are anti-torture memos: They draw a line between torture, which is prohibited, and harsh but legal techniques designed to prod uncooperative terrorists to reveal information about ongoing operations. One can argue over where to draw the line -- precisely how many hours of sleep deprivation constitute torture? -- but one cannot seriously argue that no attempt was made to draw it. Nor can one argue, based on the evidence, that these methods did not prevent terrorist attacks and save American lives.

An attempt is being made to lead Americans back to a pre-2001 landscape. A message is being sent that we now face no crisis -- Americans need not be overly concerned about militant Islamists waging a war against us. Indeed, this White House and this Justice Department no longer speak of war, only of crimes committed by terrorists and - with more vehemence -- by those who have attempted to thwart them.
It is likely to be a long time before a captured terrorist will again tell an American interrogator what he knows. It also may be a long time before another terrorist is captured. For now, at least, it is still permissible to use drones to kill terrorists in such remote corners of the world as Waziristan. Though how would you like to be the CIA operative pulling that trigger?

Clifford D. May is president of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a policy institute focusing on terrorism.

LINK: Washington Times - Demonizing the defenders

[RanchHQ]

Eric Holder’s Spicy Tuna Roll

posted at 5:32 pm on August 30, 2009 by directorblue



What do we got, today, George?


Uhm, first file: those terrorists from Los Macheteros who petitioned for release?


Refresh my memory. What’d they do?


You know, the ones who bombed 130 different locations, robbed a couple of banks, killed six people and injured a couple of hundred others.


Oh, that’s right. Stamp that one: PARDON.


Okey doke. Next file: that financier friend of the big-wigs… he’s a fugitive living in Switzerland who committed tax evasion, racketeering and trading with the enemy. But his wife looks like she’ll pony up a million for various “good causes”.


Okay, that’s a PARDON.


#3: those Black Panthers who stood at a polling place, dressed in paramilitary garb, swinging billy clubs and screaming racial threats?


Mmmm, that’s a tough one. Eenie, meenie, miney, moe, catch a tiger by the toe, if he… just kidding: PARDON.


Finally, we’ve got the CIA agents who were interrogating the USS Cole and 9/11 terrorists.


What’d they do, again?


Brace yourself, this is some shocking stuff. First, they blew cigar smoke in the USS Cole bomber’s face…


Cigar smoke? What the…?


It gets worse. They revved up a power drill to scare the guy. They made lots of scary noises like that.


I’ve heard enough! Those sons of b***hes! That is just un-f***ing-acceptable! Throw the book at ‘em, Georgie! Throw the book at ‘em. Let ‘em know: We. Mean. Business.


Oh, and George, could you call up my personal physician at Bethesda and book an appointment for me this afternoon? Those spicy tuna rolls gave me a real tummy ache.


Sure thing, boss. Whoa! Criminey… …uhm, before I take these files over to Barry, I’ll have Anne Marie get you some Gas-X.

[RanchHQ]