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I Hate Politics
Posted by Kevin

Becasue it forces me to back people who did this:
In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

“The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough,” said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism effort. The CIA last week admitted that videotape of an interrogation of one of the waterboarded detainees was destroyed in 2005 against the advice of Justice Department and White House officials, provoking allegations that its actions were illegal and the destruction was a coverup.

Yet long before “waterboarding” entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

Now, there are several caveats to the story. It is sourced only to people who have in interest in making Democrats look bad, it is not entirely clear that everyone did approve of everything described (in favct, on Democrat did formally, though secretly, dissent) and there is precious little in corroborating detail regarding the nature of what was discussed. But even with those caveats, I am reasonably sure that they approved of at least something that they should not have. Partly because it was still right after 9/11 and a lot of people would have been scared and angry, and scared and angry people make mistakes. But, as I have said before, we have a dick political/foreign policy culture in this country. The press measures toughness by how willing you are to blow shit up and the foreign policy establishment measure seriousness by how willing you are to go to war to make sure the US always gets it way in everything. It is a poisonous, destructive atmosphere and it makes it easy for people to give into to the worst in the nature. I am not surprised that some did.

But I still have to support the Democrats. Because right now, they are on the correct side of the torture debate. Right now, it tis the Democratic party, largely, who opposes those measure and the GOP, largely, that supports them. Whether they have come to their sense, or whether they are doing the right thing because of political pressure doesn’t matter for the moment. What matters is that if we are going to get these things stopped and have any hope of punishing the people who ordered it, then we have to work through the Democrat party. It is the only tool available to use.

That last sentence is the key. The Democratic party is just a tool. Don;t expect leadership out of it. Real political leadership doesn’t come around that often and we shouldn’t waste our time looking for it. And that is fine. We are adults and out political system is predicated not on the knight in shining armor but on the engagement of its citizens. If we want something changed in Washington, the only sure way to do it is through the normal process of politics. We are way behind right now, but that is slowly beginning to change. The process of making the Democratic Party into a tool we can be proud of is going to take a long time and involve many defeats. The fact that Democratic leadership could see anything about the “enhanced” torture of the Bush Administration and not immediately take the floor to denounce it in detail is a defeat and a marker that on foreign policy and national security, the Democratic Party is still not much of a tool. The fact that the Democratic presidential candidates are almost entirely on the record as opposed to torture, that a significant portion of the Democratic lawmakers are trying to make waterboarding illegal, and that the Democrats are investigating the destruction of the CIA torture tapes are victories, even if small ones. the Democratic Party can be made into a better tool.

At this point, we need to get some better reporting on this matter and mark down who needs to be punished and removed for this. We wont get all of them; we may not get any of them. It is hard to take down entrenched members of the leadership. But we can get their supporters in Congress and we can continue to try and punish them when they do wrong and reward those who do right. It took a long time to get out of this mess; we aren’t going to get out of it over night. But its work we have to do and it works that requires us to remember that the politicians, evens one on our side currently, are not always or necessarily going to be our friends. That does not invalidate the necessity of the work.

December 10th, 2007 Politics | one comment