The Feinstein Report Is Going to Cost Us

[Valin]

National Review:

The so-called torture report is worthless as an investigation, but it’s valuable to our enemies.

Andrew C. McCarthy

12/13/14

 

Jihadists are still waging their war against the civilized world. Check that: Jihadists are currently winning their war against the civilized world. Thank Barack Obama, who fails to grasp the difference between being “the president who ends wars” and the president who retreats from wars, and thus surrenders while the enemy is on the rise.

 

(Snip)

 

As I have frequently argued here over the years, there is a world of difference between what is couched in political rhetoric as “torture,” a conversation stopper that the Left cavalierly applies to every instance of prisoner abuse, and the federal crime of torture, which has a strict legal definition and is a difficult offense to prove, precisely to ensure that torture is not trivialized. Not surprisingly, then, the fact that the interrogations investigation was terminated has never been regarded as a clean bill of health.

 

(Snip)

 

And just as our allies are reminded that America is an unfaithful friend, so, too, have American national-security officials, intelligence agents, and warriors been given a cautionary lesson: If you take actions to protect the American people — in wartime, in the heat of the moment amid a palpably justified fear of mass-murder attacks after nearly 3,000 of your fellow citizens have been slaughtered — better prepare to be hounded as a war criminal for the succeeding decade or more.

 

Jihadists, meanwhile, will go on beheading teenagers and planning massive attacks.

 

(Snip)

 

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Chuck Todd On The Release Of The Senate Report: Is It A Personal Issue Between Brennan And Feinstein?

Friday, December 12, 2014 | posted by Hugh Hewitt

 

Audio

[Valin]

Was Feinstein a Useful Idiot or What?

Michael Ledeen

December 13th, 2014

 

I kept asking myself, why would Senator Feinstein approve a “report” whose main effect inevitably would be to damage America? And it occurred to me that it might be a mistake to try to understand this bizarre event in the usual context of domestic politics. It probably belongs to a different realm of analysis: national security, international affairs, and espionage. Maybe that was really the point of the operation.

 

It benefits our enemies, after all. It undermines other countries’ willingness to share information, and to work with us “in the field.” Anyone who takes life seriously must acknowledge that, quite aside from the merits of the “case” brought by Democrat staffers on the Senate Intel Committee, we’ve been damaged. It’s not the first time, but it hurts — it hurts even those of us who are not great admirers of CIA, and maybe it will hurt a lot more.

 

(Snip)

 

So we’ve got two recent blows to our most important intelligence agencies, and for all we know the world-wide scandals, demonstrations, editorials and opinion pieces are based on bogus information. Maybe that bogus stuff is accidental, the result of the human errors that define our existence. But maybe it’s deliberate…after all, we’re in pain but others are popping corks.

 

How to think my way out of all these questions? I’m not smart enough, so I dialed up the greatest expert, the late James Jesus Angleton, who years ago headed CIA counterintelligence. Happily, my (very) unreliable ouija board worked right away, and there was Angleton (I’ve never been quite sure about the location of “there” and don’t expect to find out), raspy voice and all (he seems to have access to Camel cigarettes, or maybe his later favorites, Virginia Slims).

 

(Snip)