The New York Times’ Scott Shane analyzes AG nominee Eric Holder’s statements yesterday at his Senate confirmation hearing. Mr. Holder emphatically stated that waterboarding is torture, which is obvious, and opened a big ol’ can of worms for (soon-to-be) former Bush Administration officials, and possibly career civil servants.
Yet his statement, amounting to an admission that the United States may have committed war crimes, opens the door to an unpredictable train of legal and political consequences. It could potentially require a full-scale legal investigation, complicate prosecutions of individuals suspected of committing terrorism and mire the new administration in just the kind of backward look that Mr. Obama has said he would like to avoid.
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In recent weeks, Mr. Bush, Vice President Cheney and other officials have strongly defended their counterterrorism methods and credited them with preventing attacks on the United States since 2001. Their implicit argument — that the Obama administration should not question policies that protected Americans — was made more explicit and personal by Michael V. Hayden, the departing C.I.A. director, in a session with reporters on Thursday.
“If I’m going to go to an officer and say, ‘I’ve got a truth commission, or I want to post all your e-mails, or, well, we’ve got this guy from the bureau who wants to talk to you,’ ” Mr. Hayden said, it would discourage such a C.I.A. officer from taking risks on behalf of the new president’s policies.
“We have no right to ask this guy to bet his kid’s college education on who’s going to win the off-year election,” Mr. Hayden said, alluding to legal fees that such a C.I.A. officer might face.
Excuse me?
We, The People, elected by popular vote, and the Electoral College confirmed, the incoming Commander-in-Chief, and we expect his principles to be followed by his subordinates.
We, The People, would like some real, public proof that the secret policemen have in fact protected us from the Bad Guys.
We, The People, would like to stop having our phones tapped, our persons searched, our travel interfered with, and our lives endangered by overaged cowboys.
We, The People, expect that when a person takes the CIA’s oath and pay that (s)he knows what they’re getting into, which especially includes “taking risks on behalf of the new president’s policies.”
We, The People, are paying for that CIA officer’s kid’s college education, often to the detriment of our own kids’ needs.
We, The People, are not holding a gun to this CIA officer’s head and forcing him to remain in our service. As so many stiffs have brayed over that last few years, personal choices entail personal accountability. If you choose to follow an order to commit criminal acts, you can choose to say No. The 20th Century taught us that much.