There was a time, so long ago, when John Kerry thought himself quite the war protester, quite the moralist, throwing away his Vietnam War medals, or at least copies of them, to show what he thought of Washington incompetence and hypocrisy. Well, now he’s personifying the same. According to Josh Rogin, reporting at the Bloomsberg View, John told Sen. Dianne Feinstein that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence shouldn’t release its long, long delayed report on torture and deceit during the Bush Administration.
“What he [Kerry] raised was the timing of report release, because a lot is going on in the world — including parts of the world particularly implicated — and wanting to make sure foreign policy implications were being appropriately factored into timing,” an administration official told me [Rogin].
Well, a lot is going on in the world. I know that, and I’m not even secretary of state. But Dan Drezner, not always my idea of a white hat, has a slightly less considerate take on John’s supposed distress, and imagines the scenario that might play out in “particularly implicated” parts of the world if, contrary to fact, John’s imagined state of affairs had the slightest correspondence with, you know, reality (which it doesn’t).
I won’t pilfer Dan’s brilliant sarcasm, which you can read here. I’ll just point to his bottom line: Mr. Secretary of State, folks in the “particularly implicated” parts of the world don’t have to read a Senate report to learn about our crimes. Because they’re the ones who have suffered from them.
