NEOAVATARA

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/23/torture.politics/index.html

No real surprise here.

Then National Security Advisor Condi Rice, Attorney General John Ashcroft and others approved as early as the summer of 2002 the CIA’s use at secret prisons of harsh interrogation methods, including waterboarding, a technique that new Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has described as illegal torture, according to a chronology prepared by the Senate intelligence committee and declassified by Holder.

Rice gave a key early green light when, as President George W. Bush’s national security adviser, she met on July 17, 2002, with the CIA’s then-director, George J. Tenet, and “advised that the CIA could proceed with its proposed interrogation of Abu Zubaida,” subject to approval by the Justice Department, according to the timeline.

The issue, of course, is that the Justice Department was still trying to figure out what the legality of the issues were.  Congress was notified of this plan immediate.  For example, Nancy Pelosi was briefed on it in the summer of 2002. Other people in Congress in the intelligence committees were informed then as well.  Are they culpable?  I would argue they are just as culpable as any lawyers involved in this case.  Porter Goss, the former CIA director, today confirmed that Congressional leaders were fully briefed on these issues as early as 2002.

In early 2004, a comprehensive report by the CIA inspector general raised new questions about the program, including queries about the waterboarding of three detainees. It said the interrogations were not clearly legal under an international treaty the United States had signed known as the Convention Against Torture, which bars cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment that falls short of torture. A fresh legal review by the Justice Department prompted Ashcroft to inform the CIA in writing on July 22, 2004, that its interrogation methods — except waterboarding — were legal.  Waterboarding was also accepted as legal if certain restrictions were maintained.

This is all in hindsight.  Let me remind you:  In the summer of 2002, we were still under the threat of imminent attack.  Afghanistan was nominally under control, and the Iraq war had not started.  We were still chasing Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan, and there were terror threats from the Middle East, Europe, and Asia.  We were at war, people.  For people to go back and second guess the issues at the height of the war is absurd.

Let me remind you was DNI Dennis Blair said just last week:

“High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this country,” Adm. Dennis C. Blair said.

“I like to think I would not have approved those methods in the past,” he wrote, “but I do not fault those who made the decisions at that time, and I will absolutely defend those who carried out the interrogations within the orders they were given.”

Additionally, this trickling of information to the public is unfair and unjust.  If they want to make this a public discussion, release everything and move on.

I actually don’t agree with the waterboarding aspect; but for me to now go back and tell those who had access to the most intelligence at the time that they were wrong is so absurd to be ridiculous.  We have these people to make the tough decisions.  They did not make these decisions lightly.  Obama is potentially opening legal prosecutions against people giving legal advice; they didn’t even perpetrate the ‘torture‘.  If we start to prosecute these people, every group of officials who ever have to make tough decisions will second guess themselves into oblivion.

This is a dangerous path we look forward to.  It is easy to criticize in hindsight. The White House is finding that out quickly; look at their policy toward Gitmo, which is in total disarray.   President Obama should grow a spine, and stick with his initial gut reaction and be against any prosecutions.  He was right to begin with.  Anything else will be a political nightmare.