ML: I need some help understanding the Feinstein report on the CIA. She had to know it was very damaging to the country, didn’t she? And there’s no reason to think she was trying to accomplish some “worthy” objective, was there? So why?
JJA: Well let’s first underline your last point: the missing “worthy” objective. What’s the dog-that-didn’t-bark in this story? Answer: there are no recommendations. None at all. It’s striking, to me at least, that after producing thousands of pages of text, and bemoaning the Agency’s interrogation methods, there’s no call for new laws, or even for punishments of the “guilty” parties.
ML: Right. So why?
Related: Why The CIA “Torture Report” Is Like the Rolling Stone Rape Debacle.
The first commenter at the link is right: Feinstein is a traitor.
Was Diane Feinstein a useful idiot? Idiot, yes. Then again, maybe she’s just senile.
Useful? Not so much, except for her country’s enemies of course. They are already taking full advantage of her gift to them.
This is one of, if not the most disloyal act I’ve seen in a politician of any stripe, anywhere.
Now the GOP, very soon in complete control of Congress can, and will IMHO, wreak vengeance on the Dems including the POTUS. Look for a “revisiting” of many scandals the Dems have managed, thus far with some success, to keep under the public radar. Benghazi, the IRS stormtroopers, immigration debacles, Obamafiasco, and many other sliming opportunities.
Hillary Clinton, in her bid for the presidential nomination, will bear the brunt of her fellow Dems’ miscalculation, as all semblance of decency or fairness has been swept away. I predict these two fronts will so dominate the news landscape that it will be very difficult for the mediocracy to ignore – try that they will.
Perhaps it was simply the current administration DiFi wanted to discredit. There are rumours around the internet (not the most credible of sites, but what the heck) that Barry and DiFi had a big-time falling out a few years back. If there really is anything to the wild rumours, this report just might be payback.
Why?
To divert attention away from Obama and all the bad things he is doing to the USA, you know like giving amnesty to 5,000,000 illegals.
Normally I agree wholeheartedly with all the political commentary on this site.
Here I am torn, having read this.
In particular, I would not like to live in a country where the intelligence agency lets a man freeze to death for being uncooperative or leaves someone chained upright for seventeen days.
Get back to us if someone you love is ever the victim of a terror attack.
Clovis, have you read the site’s self-description?
“We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.”
If you read the left, you get the left. It’s just that simple. Gul Rahman was innocent “as far as we can tell”? Who the hell is this “we”? I’ll take Wikipedia, thanks:
“Gul Rahman was captured and arrested on 29 October 2002 during a joint operation by U.S. agents and Pakistani security forces against Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin. He was reportedly arrested with the physician Ghairat Baheer, the son-in-law of the warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who leads the insurgent faction Hezb-e-Islami.”
@ Michael Anderson
“Get back to us if someone you love is ever the victim of a terror attack.”
A very close friend was killed in the IRA bombing of Harrods at the time that the Americans were closet supporters of and apologists for the IRA so make of that what you will. My daughter serves in the British army and her boyfriend has recently returned from a 9 month deployment in Afghanistan.
“Clovis, have you read the site’s self-description?”
Samizdata is not at all a left-wing site-you clearly don’t know what the descriptors mean: it is a right-wing libertarian site which links approvingly to Small Dead Animals.
Ah – the bit about “recovering neo-conservatives” must have led me astray Clovis.
Very sorry to hear about the murder – no other term for it – of your friend. IMO there is no difference between the IRA and Hezbollah, with the striking difference that at least the IRA is composed of people who have always lived in Ireland.
We’ll agree to disagree on the matter of torture then.
Oh, and regarding your daughter and her boyfriend – thank them for me if you get a chance.
” I need some help understanding the Feinstein report on the CIA. She had to know it was very damaging to the country, didn’t she?”
Nothing new in that report, everything in it was already publically known.
It should also be remembered that most of the terrorists that were inmates at Guantanamo have been repatriated, so they have told their pals all about everything they experienced first hand.
Why was this report rehashed? Because Obama’s popularity numbers are tanking and the report is about the horrors of President Bush.
why are people so concerned about how suicide bombers are treated, the CIA generally lets them live, which is more than they grant themselves
Canadian troops and intelligence ops don’t waterboard POWs because it’s against our military law and a criminal code offence. I agree with that. OTOH I don’t disagree valuable intelligence was gained through waterboarding, specifically the elimination of Bin Laden. What should be clear is the US executive and legislative branches had unanimously OKd this method in light of 9/11. At that time Feinstein herself implored that everything possible be done, including by inclusion, waterboarding, which surely was brought up in intelligence discussions.
Did the CIA go over the top? I believe, and the non-mediocracy alluded to it today, they did, possibly quite a bit over, maybe just short of criminal acts, by US standards. Did the Feinstein Report contain any recommendations to help the CIA clean up their act? No it didn’t; a political hatchet job from day one.
The trouble is the public knows that though, so apart from gnashing of teeth over at the CIA nobody actually cared since the event carried no resonance. American pain for no political gain; not the best way to go imho.
Notwithstanding the belated difference of opinion over enhanced interrogation techniques, why would the US Senate issue such a report that is clearly against American interests? They must know the Republicans will act in kind once in control of Congress.
IOW, they can’t be that stupid. Can they?
The Bloomberg article is interesting because we see a journalist who hasn’t been able to completely suffocate his integrity, suborn it to the collective narrative.
I would think a suicide bomber would have very little to say.
Another memember of the Stupid Jackas Party(Dumb-O-Crats)always writting up some idiotic gun control bills to be passed by fellow Dumb-O-Crats then signed into law by a Stupid Jackass Party govenor Jerry(Moonbeam)Brown
Yep and the irony is that this element who declares only police and the military have firearms…..trusts them the least of any other polity.