Don't be fooled -- none of them are on your side.
And don’t give me that “It’s filled with people like you who hate America” rap either, ’cause I see through that nativist bullshit.
On Saturday, the New York Times reported that Leon Panetta testified to Congress that Dick Cheney had ordered the CIA to withhold information about a secret anti-terrorism program from Congress. Today, the Times reports that the program’s objective was to hunt down and assassinate enemies of America using covert paramilitary units. For eight years the CIA has been sitting on this, though it’s worth noting that the program was never actually implemented.
With all his blustering about protecting America and all that, why would Cheney want to hide such a noble endeavor from the Congress?
Some will will tell you it’s because we cannot just give that information away, as it would benefit our enemies. These people are either partisan bullshitters or pernicious criminals with something to hide, since federal law requires that the CIA must report such programs to the so-called Gang of Eight — the leaders of both parties and ranking members of the intelligence committees in both houses — who are sworn to secrecy.
So it might actually have something to do with the purpose of this law, which was written in response to CIA abuses of the 1970s that went on covertly for years and were kept secret on account of their “sensitivity.” The idea here is that Congress, as the direct representative of the American people, ought to be informed of the nation’s intelligence activities, regardless of their sensitivity, to ensure that horrendous and illegal things aren’t being done in the name of the people.
So while Cheney probably does not think it’s a horrendous thing to dispatch roving death squads across the world to secretly murder vicious people, he probably does think it’s illegal. And since he perplexingly believes that the constitution grants unlimited power to the executive, he probably thinks lying to Congress is not illegal.
The fact that Dick Cheney is, at best, well-intentioned criminal or, at worst, a shadowy villain is an old frustration. What really infuriates me this time around is that, despite an ostensible new era of governance, political hackery continues to cloud our national reckoning of the Bush administration’s abrogation of several core American values.
And this is happening from all angles of the political spectrum. For example, Liz Cheney, the evil overlord’s very daughter, said on MSNBC today that all this looking into alleged shadow governance and whatnot is really just a way of scoring political points against a prominent Republican and deflecting attention from Nancy Pelosi’s continuing drama with the CIA. But so far I have heard no prominent voices refuting the claim (unless you count George Will, who somehow doesn’t think such a thing would be illegal), just a gaggle of blowhards trying to impugn those who would ask questions about a very serious matter.
Meanwhile, the other blowhards are giving them lots of ammo. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee, recently opined that Panetta’s revelation vindicates Nancy Pelosi’s claim that the CIA lied to her about its interrogation practices, an assertion I have heard repeated by a number of liberal pundits.
No. No it does not. The program in question has nothing to do with that debacle. At best, this incident gives Pelosi a political advantage in characterizing the CIA as deceitful and uncooperative, but if that exonerates her in your mind, you are clearly more concerned with protecting your ideological coreligionists than with defending the principles of American democracy.
All of this could be cleared up, of course, with a comprehensive, non-partisan investigation of the Bush Administration’s anti-terror policies, a full disclosure of the scope and nature of all laws broken and powers expanded. At the very least, the citizenry deserves that, though holding the offenders accountable would do us one better.
But the one person who could make that investigation a reality, Barack Obama, refuses to do so. His rationale is that he wants to look to the future rather than rehash the past. Most likely, he senses the opportunity to lead the country into a new political era, wherein the political center shifts to the left and the Democratic party holds dominion over the public discourse in much the same way the Republicans did during the cold war. To go hunting for Republican war criminals risks the appearance of settling partisan scores, potentially alienating the moderate conservatives whose conversion is needed to realize a national political makeover.
Of course, retaining the unprecedented authority he inherited from the last administration wouldn’t exactly hurt Obama either.
1 Comment
July 15, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Why are people getting all upset over Cheney’s illegal death squads, illegal torture techniques, illegal NSA spying program, lets face it, nothing will happen to him, they might investigate, the justification will be 9/11, 9/11, 9/11 or you are only giving ammunition to our enemies and in the end nothing will happen, he is part of the ruling class. The chickens are coming home to roost from the operatives that stole the election for Bush/Cheney 2000 in Florida and 2004 in Ohio. I love listening to Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Glenn Beck, these chicken hawks on the War on Terror have become chicken little’s that the sky is falling when it comes to the economy, too funny.