Torture, Pelosi, and the Elephant in the Parlor

Nancy Pelosi has given several contradictory statements regarding her role in the Congressional committee that oversees CIA’s secret operations, including aggressive interrogation techniques that have been called “torture” by some politicians.

The political-media establishment, including Commentators on the right have focused on Speaker Pelosi’s embarrassingly  incompetent press conference yesterday where she was incoherent in her attempt to escape accountability for having heard any CIA briefings, by accusing the CIA of lies and deceit.

It seems they’re all stuck in an inconsequential debate over minutia, while ignoring the elephant in the room: the motives of those who stirred up this debate in the first place.

This is about partisan politics, about discrediting George W. Bush, and thus diminishing Republican votes in future elections.  That’s all.

The military and the CIA captured hundreds of terrorists during the first eighteen months after the 9-11-01 attacks and the CIA used aggressive interrogation techniques to gain what turned out to be critically valuable information from some of them.

Back then, opinion polls showed overwhelming approval for any means necessary to neutralize Al Qaeda and it’s associated network of terrorist cells.  Indeed, President Bush’s approval ratings soared above 80% because he spoke forcefully of his commitment to kill or capture those who were responsible and  were planning follow-up attacks.  No politician would have dared to publically object to interrogation techniques that caused a detainee to become fearful or suffer pain, but not permanent injury.

But as Bush’s personal popularity eroded Democrats became emboldened, launching what has become a six or seven year noise campaign to plant in the public mind the perception that Bush authorized senseless, gratuitous torture, inflicted by fiendish CIA agents.

Partisan Democrats, including President Obama, have overdosed on sanctimonious indignation, performed for the cameras, asserting that water-boarding and other, unnamed techniques were torture, were illegal, violated our values, enraged the rest of the world, etc.  They hurled a thousand times more vitriol at Bush and the CIA than at the barbaric terrorists who committed unspeakable acts of torture all over the world.

In their hearts, they don’t really care any more than the rest of us if a terrorist who has murdered hundreds of people suffers enhanced interrogation, or for that matter, even full blown torture, if it yields valuable information that saves America from future attacks.  But their “base” of anti-war, blame-America Lefties loves the performance and all the noxious noise influences masses of voters who lack the time or inclination to study the issue and figure out what it’s really about.

Some of their assertions are absurd.  For example they claimed these techniques never yield any information of value.  Then when presented with reality, that information gained this way enabled the CIA and military to head off subsequent attacks they cliim the same information could have been acquired in other ways.  Of course they never say what those other ways are.

This political game, discrediting the CIA and threatening its staff with prosecution just to tarnish Bush and the Republicans has  serious consequences.  It undermines the war on terror and makes America more vulnerable if CIA personal come to believe that interrogating terrorists and extracting valuable information can make them the targets of politically motivated retribution years later.  Today, CIA Director Leon Panetta, a former Democrat Congressman who was just appointed to the position by President Obama, showed some leadership strength with a public letter to all agency staff.  Some excerpts:

There is a long tradition in Washington of making political hay out of our business. It predates my service with this great institution, and it will be around long after I’m gone. But the political debates about interrogation reached a new decibel level yesterday when the CIA was accused of misleading Congress…

My advice — indeed, my direction — to you is straightforward: ignore the noise and stay focused on your mission. We have too much work to do to be distracted from our job of protecting this country…

We are an agency of high integrity, professionalism, and dedication. Our task is to tell it like it is-even if that’s not what people always want to hear. Keep it up. Our national security depends on it.”

By making this letter public, Mr. Panetta seems to be warning his former collegues in Congress that he is not willing to allow the agency he now leads to be taken down by their politically motivated tirades.   While we have often disagreed with Panetta in the past we salute him for taking a principled stand on this issue.  An ineffective CIA, staffed by people who fear their successes will bring about hindsight political persecution in the future, would leave America far more vulnerable in a treacherous world.