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Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
In addition to taking the under on Slave's 64 yeas for Alito (calling the vote of 52), I also predict that history will regard the Bush administration's terrorist imprisonment approaches to be a nadir not only for american foreign policy but also for its role as the leader of the free world. Although it may ultimately be something of an historical footnote, like McCarthyism, it will be a noted one.
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I agree that it will be a footnote, but, like McCarthyism or Japanese internment, a very negatively noted one. I am not sure I think that analysis will be correct, however. (In this case. I also agree that the ends do not necessarily justify the means.)
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Hank:
We need a CIA doing things we don't know about. Scrutiny of the CIA in the 70s and 80s killed it.
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I think it was more downsizing, bureacratic changes and general governmental hostility than scrutiny, but the scrutiny didn't help. Oddly, you need accountability to get results, but if you are results-oriented in intelligence gathering & analysis and penalize incorrect suppositions, you discourage non-consensus (i.e.: safe) thinking, and therefore, while you get many of the little things right, you totally miss the big shifts. In any event, I think the CIA is doing plenty we don't know about. I think the problem is their methods of doing it have now been thoroughly analyzed by our enemies and are being effectively circumvented/subverted (see: Chalabi & Iranian misdirection re: WMD in Iraq). Again, public scrutiny doesn't help that, but bureacratic entrenchment & serious institutional risk aversion are probably bigger problems.
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Penske:
the Clintons attempted to destroy the CIA in the 90s. That is something history should examine. Although it may have been about sex, and if so, it is probably excusable.
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Carter had a lot more to do with it, and the gelding of the FBI was in the long term perhaps more damaging, if well justified at the time. (Don't worry, you can still blame a Dem. Though none of the Repubs after really fixed it, either.)
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Burger:
Of what benefit is it to hide the existence of interrogation prisons other than to avoid international scrutiny? This isn't covert ops, which are, understandably, covert. Once you've caught them and are interrogating them all but the information gleaned can be public without serious threat to intelligence gathering efforts.
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You're kidding, right? Hiding the very existence of the prisons is one thing, but, as it would in fact seriously impair intelligence gathering efforts to make public (for example, by allowing any sort of access) information about who you have captured or are actively interrogating (because your enemy learns (i) where you are getting intelligence hits and perhaps how, and (ii) what areas of their operations are compromised - "pinging" western intelligence and analyzing exactly where that intelligence is weak is a particular strength of al Qaeda, incidentally) or how you are interrogating them (because they can prepare other operatives to resist those methods), mere knowledge of the prison's existence is sort of useless from a human rights enforcement p.o.v. Maybe we do in fact calculate in the balance that the human rights supervision issues are so important that they trump the security issues, but don't kid yourself that that isn't, in fact, the trade off.
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Burger:
I like Texas, although I prefer the pork barbecue to the beef.
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Once again, I concur. And what is it with that sickly-sweet tomato based sauce?
