So, will the Justice Department pursue criminal charges against Bush administration officials for using "torture" against terrorist detainees in the wake of 9/11? I'll be surprised if they do. Right now I imagine President Obama is taking phone calls from everyone from former President Bill Clinton to current Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi asking him what the heck he thinks he's doing. Doesn't he [Obama] realize that any inquiry into Bush administration misdeeds would consume a whole host of former and current Democrat public officials including the aforementioned duo?
Why, after all, stop with alleged mistreatment of detainees by the Bush people? In the 1990's the Clinton administration initiated a program that resulted in far worse treatment to prisoners than anything the CIA did under Bush. In the 90's the Clinton people, in the spirit of outsourcing, practiced what's called extraordinary rendition in which a detainee was sent to countries much less punctilious about human rights than are we. In these hellholes the detainee was "questioned" by methods a description of which would revolt any decent human being.
Then in the wake of 9/11 the Bush CIA briefed several of the ranking congresspersons involved with Intelligence oversight, which included Democrats, which included Nancy Pelosi, on the details of the methods they were using to extract information from captured terrorists. According to the Washington Post nary a one raised any substantive objections. They were all tacitly, if not overtly, on board with the program.
So, if we're going to go after Dick Cheney, George Tenant, Condi Rice, and Don Rumsfeld let's include anyone guilty of breaking the law in order to insure your children's safety. Let's also go after Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Sandy Berger, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Tom Daschle, Dick Gephart and a host of other Democrats who were complicit in the use of torture to gain information to save us from another 9/11. If President Obama wants to send a message that torture will not be tolerated in his administration he'll have to haul all of the aforementioned before whatever tribunals the Democrats set up for the purpose. If he doesn't then the only message he's sending is that the only torture that won't be tolerated is that instigated by Republicans.
I don't think the President or congressional Democrats are really interested in pursuing the matter to the point where top Democrats are being indicted. The purpose of pressing an investigation, after all, was probably just to get Dick Cheney's scalp, and perhaps that of a few others of the hated Republicans. If Democratic scalps are going to also be forfeit then, well, let's just forget the whole matter and let bygones be bygones.
When it finally dawns on the Democrats what a Pandora's Box they've opened, I think they'll quickly turn their attention to other matters and let the torture business die from lack of oxygen. If I'm right then we can expect lots of talk in the weeks ahead about looking forward, not backward, etc., etc.
RLC
