Friday, April 17, 2009

President Obama Releases Interrogation Memos

President Barack Obama released memos detailing interrogation techniques used during the (now lapsed) War on Terror.

I'm not sure I agree with those who say we are now hamstrung in our efforts to get information from unwilling guests, but I guess we won't know until there's some monumental failure and/or until the next president decides (for political purposes) to release information largely as a way to smear this president.

Because, I suppose, I'm a cynical little GPWOW, who thinks these things (like these things) don't happen on accident. I'm one of those paranoid freaks who doesn't consider it a coincidence that a shoddily prepared paper on right wing extremism appeared two days before a (largely) conservative protest was to take place. And I don't believe that Teh One released memos on interrogation techniques simply because the public "has a right to know."

More directly, I think the release of these memos was designed to smear, once again, the Bush administration and its intelligence agencies. Why do I think that? Because the memos were so lightly redacted as to allow virtually anyone to know essentially everything we did. And from there, it's not unpredictable that the moonbatosphere would become, well, unhinged at the prospect that our law enforcement personnel were collaring suspected terrorists or covering them with caterpillars (Correction: we only contemplated putting wiggly things in with suspected terrorists. We just couldn't cross the caterpillar line, I suppose).

But President Obama, bless him, isn't planning to prosecute any of the torture doers because he's so magnanimous there was no crime. It's really hard to prosecute people when their behavior is legal, but I'm not sure Democrats wouldn't try, anyway. After all, it's far better to grandstand than, say, read the laws that they wrote. But I'm sure we'll be treated all summer to hearings that allow high-minded Democrats to harrumph loudly about "torture," even after they themselves voted to allow everything detailed in the law.