NEOAVATARA

Well, if you thought the battle over the Intelligence services were over…think again.

Round 1 in April of this year went to Dick Cheney, if you believe poll numbers.  Obama and the White House handpicked certain memos to leak, and Cheney called them on it, and asked them to release the memos which he felt proved that enhanced interrogation techniques saved American lives.

Well, the other shoe has dropped.  On the same day that somewhat damaging evidence was released by the CIA, the Obama Administration, who initially refused to release the memos Cheney requested, quietly released them today, after a weekend barrage of memo releases from the CIA.  However, the particular memo in question still has highly debatable information because security issues. The report is heavily redacted and, at times, it is unclear which detainees are being discussed. At no point does the report describe intelligence gained as result of enhanced interrogation techniques.

However, Cheney may have answered the question for us in a press release tonight:

The documents released Monday clearly demonstrate that the individuals subjected to Enhanced Interrogation Techniques provided the bulk of intelligence we gained about al Qaeda. This intelligence saved lives and prevented terrorist attacks. These detainees also, according to the documents, played a role in nearly every capture of al Qaeda members and associates since 2002. The activities of the CIA in carrying out the policies of the Bush Administration were directly responsible for defeating all efforts by al Qaeda to launch further mass casualty attacks against the United States. The people involved deserve our gratitude. They do not deserve to be the targets of political investigations or prosecutions. President Obama’s decision to allow the Justice Department to investigate and possibly prosecute CIA personnel, and his decision to remove authority for interrogation from the CIA to the White House, serves as a reminder, if any were needed, of why so many Americans have doubts about this Administration’s ability to be responsible for our nation’s security.

So unless the Obama Administration can show evidence to the contrary, it seems right now that clearly yielded high value intelligence.  Cheney goes so far to say that the bulk of useful intelligence came from these interrogations.  If so, the Obama Administration will have to go on the defensive.  After the weekend whispers of Attorney General Eric Holder restarting investigations of illegal interrogations, this comes at an inopprotune moment.  Showing the public that these interrogations saved many lives, maybe on the homeland, will make it that much more difficult to say that these men were rogue elements that were purely in it for evil purposes.

Again, I see this working in Cheney’s favor.  Regardless of what the media says, every poll supports the interrogation techniques, and also is against pursuing legal action against the interrogators.  The release of the CIA investigations into interrogations was supposed to be a bombshell, and seemed to fall far short of that bar, even among left wing analysts.  Heck, among the little tidbits in the released memos is the nugget that the Obama Administration is continuing to use rendition, a common punching bag of left wing bloggers.

There are also many rumors that Leon Panetta, Director of the CIA, has defended his interrogators and has said he will resign his posts if the Justice Department moves ahead with investigations, which he feels is basically a witch hunt.  Many on the Right are critical of Panetta’s running of the agency, but most respect him as an honorable man; his defection would hurt.  Panetta seems to have a lot of credibility on this.  In 2004, the Justice Department had career investigators study this exact same information and decided against prosecuting.  Holder now does the opposite 5 years later.  This looks simply like a political witch hunt.

Ultimately, this is a failure of the Obama White House to have any pushback against the most extreme elements in his own base.  In April, Obama went to Langley and promised that there would be no more interrogations.  The CIA didn’t believe him at the time, and obviously for good reason.  Obama lied to them.  It is simple as that. Obama and Holder risk alienating more Americans, especially if the memos show that these same men helped clearly protect the American people.

UPDATE:  Cheney on Obama on Fox News Sunday 8/30/2009:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DwQguVcSDI