CIA Concealed, then Destroyed, Interrogation Tapes
In 2002, the CIA carried out interrogations on Al Qaeda suspects using harsh methods, including waterboarding. In 2005, the CIA destroyed two videotapes documenting these interrogations.
The recordings were not provided to a federal court hearing the case of the terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui or to the Sept. 11 commission, which was appointed by President Bush and Congress, and which had made formal requests to the C.I.A. for transcripts and other documentary evidence taken from interrogations of agency prisoners.
We’re Trying to Elect a President, Not a Priest
Allison Hantschel hits the nail right on the head:
We are not electing a national priest, nor, thank whatever gods exist, a national parent responsible for teaching us in the ways of his or her ancestors. And though one might find it comforting that a leader shares one’s personal religious faith, I myself would be far more comforted by having a competent individual in the job who does his or her work with care and responsibility, no matter where he or she spends the Sabbath.
It mattered very little that President Bush professed to be a Christian while Americans drowned and died in New Orleans. It mattered very little that his advisers and appointees claimed kinship with Christ while waging underplanned, unprovoked, illegal war with Iraq and dividing the spoils amongst campaign contributors and old friends.
Being president, leading this country, is a job, with particular tasks that need to be done to certain standards outlined in writing.
As in any job, it is your fulfillment of those requirements that matters. If you cannot perform to those standards, your prayers may make you feel better, but they won’t satisfy your bosses. You wouldn’t tolerate an employee who, when caught lying, stealing or just plain goofing off, told you his bad behavior should be excused because he, like you, was a Christian. Or a Muslim. Or a Buddhist. Or a Hindu. Or a Jew. Or a Mormon.
(The Southtown Star, via First Draft)
Huckabee’s Doings as Governor of Arkansas
First, Huckabee gets a convicted serial rapist released early. Several of the rapist’s victims write to Huckabee to ask him to reconsider; he ignores them. The rapist, quite predictably, goes on to rape and then kill at least one additional woman.
Fast-forward to the present:
“There’s nothing any of us could ever do,” Huckabee said Sunday on CNN when asked to reflect on the horrific outcome caused by the prisoner’s release. “None of us could’ve predicted what [Dumond] could’ve done when he got out.”
(Huffington Post via Suburban Guerrilla)
Well, gee. The high rate of recidivism among rapists isn’t exactly an obscure fact, now is it?
More on the NIE
From Think Progress, via Cursor:
At a press briefing this morning, President Bush said he was told by his Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell “in August” that “we have some new information” regarding Iran’s nuclear program. But Bush asserted “he didn’t tell me what the information was”:
BUSH: I was made aware of the NIE last week. In August, I think it was John — Mike McConnell came in and said, We have some new information. He didn’t tell me what the information was. He did tell me it was going to take a while to analyze.
Later, when a reporter followed-up on this statement, Bush asserted no one ever told him to stop ratcheting up the rhetoric against Iran:
REPORTER: Are you saying at no point while the rhetoric was escalating, as World War III was making it into conversation — at no point, nobody from your intelligence team or your administration was saying, Maybe you want to back it down a little bit?
BUSH: No — I’ve never — nobody ever told me that.
NOTE: Bolding belongs to Think Progress.
Summing Up
I wanted to find more to say about the NIE I mentioned yesterday, but I see others have already said everything I had wanted to:
Even if we grant him the credibility that he was telling the truth about the NIE report (which was withheld from the public all year…. by whom?) ask yourself if the world’s most powerful leader is suggesting World War III may be possible, and if his team is failing to let him know what the NIE said till a week ago, and if he had a vague suggestion in August that the NIE contained different information that was notable, then:
1) This is December. Why did he wait three months for a followup?
2) If his staff is withholding such critical information for all year, doesn’t it indicate someone’s judgment is faulty?
3) If the most powerful executive office in the world is operating so dysfunctionally, why does anyone believe the Bush White House or the Republican Party is strong on national security and terrorism issues?
No Democratic president in history has ever suggested he was kept in the dark by his staff or was too incurious to ask for followup on information about a country he felt we were threatened by. If we accept him at his word, he just revealed to our real enemies how badly our White House foreign policy team is functioning.
And that’s pretty frightening to even imagine.
Is our White House really that structurally weak on national defense? According to Bush’s stunning testimony, yes, it is.
And that means our nation is at grave risk.
Update: if Joe Biden’s saying it this quickly, then Mr. President, the whole nation’s gonna reach this conclusion by tomorrow. So you better be ready to make your case permanently: are you a big fat liar or have you really set a new Guinness world record at Ultimate Presidential Sucking Way Bad?
(from The American Street)
New Assessment on Iran
From the NY Times
A new assessment by American intelligence agencies concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen, contradicting judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb.
…
Iran is continuing to produce enriched uranium, a program that the Tehran government has said is designed for civilian purposes. The new estimate says that enrichment program could still provide Iran with enough raw material to produce a nuclear weapon sometime by the middle of next decade, a timetable essentially unchanged from previous estimates.But the new estimate declares with “high confidence” that a military-run Iranian program intended to transform that raw material into a nuclear weapon has been shut down since 2003, and also says with high confidence that the halt “was directed primarily in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure.”
I take this as further evidence that a military confrontation with Iran is ill-advised. Pressure from the international community seems to be having the desired effect. Let’s pursue that avenue sense it seems to be working. Afghanistan and Iraq are bad enough. We do not need to involve ourselves in another confrontation at this time.
