“Listening to members of Congress, you might think the biggest problem at the Central Intelligence Agency is that one of its officers destroyed videotapes that showed waterboarding of suspected al-Qaeda operatives.”
Really? Which ones have been saying such wickedness? And why isn’t destroying evidence of torture, you know, just a bit of a problem?
Yes, it’s David Ignatius, up to his old tricks again on the WP’s Sunday editorial page, trying to sound like the voice of moderation and reason while abolishing the Fourth Amendment and generally putting the U.S. Constitution in cold storage for the next fifty or a hundred years.
But you do have to feel sorry for the poor old CIA, caught between a definite rock and a hard place: “The right bashes the agency for mishandling the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran; the left is indignant about waterboarding and other human rights issues.”
By “mishandling,” Dave means “telling the truth.” Because if there’s anything Dave and his compadres on the right feel the American people should not be allowed to have, it’s the truth. Ever since the “Team B” days back in the Ford Administration, the right wing, most definitely including Dave, have fought and fought and fought to make the CIA say what they want it to say, instead of that crazy, off the wall shit known as the truth.
As for the left, “indignant about waterboarding,” well, those damn hippies are never satisfied, are they? It’s not torture, OK? If we do it, it isn’t torture, get it? That’s the way it works! So shut the fuck up!
Dave does have some policy recommendations to go along with his rhetoric, like immunity for telecommunications companies that allowed the government to tap your phone without a warrant. Because if companies are going to get sued every time they break the law, well, what kind of government are we going to have here, anyway?
David Ignatius, defining democracy down, and getting paid to do it! Sweet!
