Who knew that a covert agency would do such a thing?
Let’s start with the CIA failing to tell Congress about their assassination plan for Al Queda leaders. First of all, is there anyone here who has a problem with that plan? Okay then. Moving right along. The problem is not the idea…it’s the implementation. This is the same agency which tortured people who turned out not to be terrorists at all. The same agency which flew prisoners into countries we don’t even have diplomatic relations with, for God’s sake, so they could be tortured beyond what even the CIA was willing to risk. Damn. Don’t you just hate it when waterboarding isn’t good enough?
On the other hand. You can understand why the CIA was reluctant to brief Congress on their plans. If there is a more dysfunctional group of people anywhere on the planet, please let me know. All you have to do is watch five minutes of the Sotomayor hearings to get the picture. The very sight of Jeff Sessions questioning her racial impartiality was enough to induce seizures.
This is the guy who is the “ranking Republican” on the Senate Intelligence Committee. I vote they rename that committee. I don’t care what they call it, as long as they leave out the word “intelligence”.
But let’s go back to “lying”. Call me what you will, but I’m okay with lying. Especially since everyone does it all the time, and usually for a good cause. It seems to be only if you are religious that the sin of omission is equivalent to the sin of commission. Commision is doing something and saying you didn’t. Omission is like, you thought about it but didn’t. As far as I’m concerned, that isn’t lying.
Let’s take the following example. Your wife says, Honey, does this dress make my hips look fat? I rest my case.
That may seem like a trivial example, but the principle is the same. If I worked for the CIA, Hell (which I don’t believe in) would freeze over before I would tell Congress any more than I absolutely had to. I wouldn’t trust that somebody like John Ensign or Mark Sanford wouldn’t whisper little sweet nothings into the ear of a foreign agent.
It’s like the old joke about people keeping a secret. Two people can do it as long as one of them is dead.
In conclusion, never let it be said that I don’t change my mind based on new information. That new information came in the form of this weekend’s Opinionator op-ed in the New York Times. It’s a summary of opinions from the blog world about current events. It made me very uncomfortable. I would prefer that Democrats not act like idiots, so as not to undermine the big picture. I guess we don’t get that luxury.
Some of the conservative bloggers suggested that Leon Panetta did the whole “I shut down the program and now I’m telling you about it” thing as a politiical move to protect Nancy Pelosi. SadlyI’m starting to agree.
