The Church Commission in Redux

Picture yourself as being blind and entering a strange room. Then, someone hits you on the side of your head. Suddenly, as a blind person, you've then lost both your bearings and confidence to get out of that room. You subsequently panic.

In many ways, the United States was a lot like that blind person in 2001 when the events of 9/11 hit. As a country, we were panicked by the events of that infamous day. The 9/11 Commission blamed much of what happened on an intelligence failure. The bottom line was that we really didn't have the "spying" wherewithal to see that 9/11 was coming. Consequently, we had to employ forms of harsh interrogation to overcome our "blindness" in order to keep this country safe. That's the real context in which harsh interrogations were done.

Much of that intelligence failure of 9/11 was a result of the Church Commission activities of the 1970's that forced this country to pull back from our spying throughout the world. Frank Church, a Democrat, and the Democrats of Congress who authorized his commission, followed the "peacenik" attitude of that time. They were all being driven by the hatred of anything that had to do with war and as a result of the failures of the Vietnam war. Those same attitudes continue on to this very day with the likes of Nancy Pelosi/Harry Reid/Barack Obama and most of the other anti-war Democrats that populate our Congress.

In many ways, the Church Commission was revived, yesterday, when Barack Obama said that he was "open" to prosecution of Bush Administration personnel that gave any "legal opinion" that allowed any harsh interrogation techniques (See Full Story).

If the Obama's gang of hateful lefties does go after the members of the Bush Administration, then, the effect of doing so can be as chilling to our intelligence operations, going forward, as was the effect of the Church Commission in the twenty-some years that lead up to 9/11. If former people in the Bush administration are, in some way, prosecuted, it will send a message to almost everyone in future administrations that they should hold back to avoid getting involved with any decisions that may come back to bite them in the future. At the very least, this means that "snap" decisions will not be made at times when quick decisions might be seriously needed. That could mean the difference of immediately acting on a lead (say, to catch Bin Laden) and, instead, letting it slip through our hands. At worse, it means that we may cripple our intelligence operations to the extent that we could easily suffer from the events of another 9/11-like event in the future.

This is so typical of this President and this Congress. Barack Obama talks of developing a Public/Private partnership to end this recession; but, then, turns around and constantly attacks Wall Street; forces reductions in pay and compensation; and back taxes incomes away. This just creates fear of government and hardly the partnership that is needed.

Similarly, in this situation, he talks of reaching across the aisle to unite and eliminate partisan politics. So, what does he do? He spawns a witch hunt over interrogations to cause increased division. Also, with this week's actions, he is creating an environment of "fear" that will, more than likely, cripple our intelligence operations. This despite his daily Obama-speak that says he wakes up each morning concerned about the safety of this country.

From the day he released the memo about harsh interrogation techniques, it was his intention to inflame his base on the left such as MoveOn.org. After all, he is a product of MoveOn.org and George Soros. They are the puppet masters for this guy.

In order to satisfy the left of his base and their rabid hate of Bush and his people, Obama is now willing to put our country at risk for god-only-knows how many years to come; just like the bone-headed Frank Church and his stupid commission. If the Bush Administration's legal opinions are illegal activities and so set in concrete in this country, then, maybe, we should prosecute every single Federal Judge whose decisions and opinions were ultimately overturned by our Supreme Court. After all, in most of those cases that judge's faulty decision completely violated some one's constitutional rights. We could start prosecutions with the most overturned court system in this country: The left-wing, California-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Maybe, too, Obama's Attorney General, Eric Holder, should be prosecuted for his abuse of power in advising Mr. Clinton that he should give Marc Rich a full and complete pardon in what appears to be purely political payback for fund raising operations by Rich's wife. Then, too, Eric Holder should also explain his motives for also advising President Clinton to give 16 Puerto Rican nationalists --- who were all enemies of our State --- clemency. Maybe we should prosecute any Senator or Congressman who authors a bill and who gains its approval and it is passed into law; only to be overturned as being unconstitutional by our Supreme Court.

If we are going to go down this road of political retaliation every time a new Administration and dominant political party takes over, then those who are in charge, today, should be prepared for the same when they leave office. For example, if there is any waste in all this stimulus, maybe we should prosecute members of this Administration for misappropriation of funds. What this President and this left-wing Congress are doing is establishing a serious precedent for future decisions of government.

There is much that this country does that is far more torturous than waterboarding or the releasing of a caterpillar in a room with a known terrorists to extract valuable information. Think about Janet Reno, then working for Bill Clinton, and her directive to create high intensive lighting and loud music so that the Branch Davidians couldn't sleep and so they would eventually surrender. Wasn't that torture? Every day, hundreds of suspected criminals are tasered. I'm not actually sure, but tasers are probably just as extreme and injurious to a person as waterboarding or slamming someone into a padded wall. What about the psychological effects of putting prison inmates into solitary confinement. Is that not a form of torture?

As a country, and for over three years now , we have been well aware that waterboarding was being done. You can thank the New York Times for that. Yet, the people on the left are "now" acting as if this was the first time we ever heard of it. That's because this is another one of Obama's orchestrations of hate and division. It is just like the picketing of AIG homes by the SEIU labor union and by ACORN; Obama support organizations. This time, the "go-signal" was Obama's intentional release of the Bush Justice Department memos. This, then, became the appetizer for the hard left to literally go nuts. You had the far left crazies like Feinstein, Feingold, Leahy, Conyers, Soros, and MoveOn.org mobilize (just like the ACORN and SEIU over AIG bonuses). This reminds me of the same kinds of mobilizations you would see in a "banana republic" when the in-charge dictator would get thousand of loyalists into the streets to make it look as if the whole country was in an uproar over some whipped-up issue.

Lastly, our Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, were well aware of these interrogation techniques as a result of many confidential briefings that they attended during the Bush years. This is whole thing is political maneuvering and another attempt by this President to divide this country.