The Politics of Confusion

What initially caught my eye about this Newsmax blurb is the fact that, contrary to the media's rigidly incessant "everything evil started on January 20, 2001" meme, CIA "rendition" of captured jihadis - i.e. turning them over to friendly powers for the kind of interrogation we're too squeamish to administer - began under Bill Clinton, not George W. Bush, as the former CIA counter-terror operative and now-infamous Bushophobic stooge Michael Scheuer, has publicly admitted in an interview with the German newsmagazine Die Zeit.

But the farther you read into it, the more confused the Clintonoids appear to have grown during the '90s as to first how, and then whether, they should fight what we know as the GWOT:

According to an Agence France Press summary of the Die Zeit interview, Scheuer explained that the Clinton administration "had been looking in the mid-1990s for a way to combat the terrorist threat and circumvent the cumbersome US legal system."

The top Bin Laden hunter recalled that the extralegal directive came after "President Clinton, his national security advisor Sandy Berger and his terrorism advisor Richard Clark ordered the CIA in the autumn of 1995 to destroy Al-Qaeda."

Just which party was it that made the U.S. legal system so "cumbersome" to counter-terror operations in the first place? Indeed, which party thought - and still does think - the U.S. legal system is the appropriate means through and by which to fight al Qaeda and its state sponsors?

That's what makes the aforementioned 1995 directive to the CIA so dubious. If Clinton and his capos truly wanted to "destroy" al Qaeda, why did they seek to do so bound, gagged, blindfolded, handcuffed, legironed, and hanging upside-down in a tank of urine? Oh, yes, they did recognize the handicaps their ilk had imposed upon the system that they were now responsible for running. So instead of taking on those obstacles frontally and honestly and responsibly (as the Bushies have done), they subcontracted the whole kit & kaboodle out to the CIA with a plausible deniability sticker on the pallet - i.e. "We don't care how you do it and don't want to know how you do it, just get it done." And the CIA, run by like-minded weasels who were no more eager to fight the jihadis than the Clintonoids, farmed it out to the aforementioned friendly countries on essentially the same basis.

Then along comes George W. Bush, and then the 9/11 attacks, and he recognizes them as the acts of war they were and engages these declared enemies accordingly, including utilizing the "secret detention system" Bill Clinton had bequeathed him, and the entire American left lurches out of its floundering feckless into the narcissistic self-righteousness that always possesses their minions when a Republican is in the White House. And the cloak of secrecy that the press had no interest in piercing when their guy was POTUS is now atomized at the irresistable attraction of making trouble for his successor no matter what the damage to national security:

The effort President Bush authorized shortly after September 11, 2001, to fight al Qaeda has grown into the largest CIA covert action program since the height of the Cold War, expanding in size and ambition despite a growing outcry at home and abroad over its clandestine tactics, according to former and current intelligence officials and congressional and Administration sources.

"Growing outcry"? Quite the opposite, actually. And those "former and current intelligence officials and congressional and Administration sources" just might end up sorely regretting their own illegal "outcrying".

The broad-based effort, known within the agency by the initials GST, is compartmentalized into dozens of highly classified individual programs, details of which are known mainly to those directly involved.

GST includes programs allowing the CIA to capture al Qaeda suspects with help from foreign intelligence services, to maintain secret prisons abroad, to use interrogation techniques that some lawyers say violate international treaties, and to maintain a fleet of aircraft to move detainees around the globe. Other compartments within GST give the CIA enhanced ability to mine international financial records and eavesdrop on suspects anywhere in the world.

"Some lawyers" translates to "not many, and they're all left-wing fever swamp bottom feeders."

Over the past two years, as aspects of this umbrella effort have burst into public view, the revelations have prompted protests and official investigations in countries that work with the United States, as well as condemnation by international human rights activists and criticism by members of Congress.

"Burst into public view" translates to "leaked," which has given the Justice Department a serious leak investigation to pursue for a change.

Still, virtually all the programs continue to operate largely as they were set up, according to current and former officials. These sources say Bush's personal commitment to maintaining the GST program and his belief in its legality have been key to resisting any pressure to change course.

You can almost hear Dana Priest muttering, "damn it" over and over throughout that paragraph.

"In the past, presidents set up buffers to distance themselves from covert action," said A. John Radsan, assistant general counsel at the CIA from 2002 to 2004. "But this president, who is breaking down the boundaries between covert action and conventional war, seems to relish the secret findings and the dirty details of operations."

IOW, past presidents had the basic human decency to recognize that covert action is the devil's work, but this president is the devil incarnate.

The Administration's decisions to rely on a small circle of lawyers for legal interpretations that justify the CIA's covert programs and not to consult widely with Congress on them have also helped insulate the efforts from the growing furor, said several sources who have been involved.

"Small circle of lawyers" means every other lawyer not in the "some lawyer" category above, "justify the CIA's cover programs" means pointing out the self-evident constitutional authority the President possesses to pursue them, and "not to consult widely with Congress on them" means "the Administration" isn't being run by damn fools with shit for brains. Top congressional leaders have been kept in the loop, but not "consulted," and that's more than enough given how "widely" Democrats have apoplectically pooped their pants over this stuff since the leakers vomited this one-time classified information to the New York Times.

Bill Bennett had a couple of excellent comments about this whole mess this morning:

Priest preens in the piece that because of her revelations, the CIA has had to shut down its so called "black sites" in Europe - this is not something to celebrate: this means the WaPo openly and notoriously changed covert policy and operations, operations that no country before the publicity cared about.

The WaPo didn't change covert policy and operations; they usurped them. And that's why the leakers have to be mercilessly punished.

BB's peroration is something that Democrats serious about regaining national power will have to come to grips with sooner or later:

There you have it: this is the dark and dirty world we live in. Hardly a police state, hardly a truant officer or dog catcher state: we use foreign intelligence to capture and kill al-Qaeda and move detainees around the world; we look at international finanical records, and eavesdrop on suspected terrorists. If anyone told you we did that at a water cooler would you even blink an eye?

Of course not; you'd go nuts, wouldn't you, if we weren't doing that?

Damn right. And Americans will continue to vote accordingly for the foreseeable future.

About that there is no confusion.

[HT: CQ, Powerline]

UPDATE 12/31: I guess Mrs. Clinton has, albeit quietly, decided against being serious.

UPDATE II: More unseriousness, this time from Aunt Madeleine:

In an interview posted on the Democratic National Committee's web site, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright says she doesn't like the way President Bush "repeatedly" talks about achieving victory in the Iraq war.

"I was very troubled recently, particularly by [Bush's] first speech to the Naval Academy," the former top Clinton diplomat complains in a DNC audio webcast.

"They clearly had some kind of a new pollster in the White House tell them that the word 'victory' had to be repeated endlessly," Albright griped. "Plus, [there was] the backdrop that said 'victory' and then there was 'victory' on the podium. I don't know how many times he used the word 'victory.'"

Still, despite her discomfort over President Bush's victory talk, Albright insisted that she and other Democrats really do want the U.S. to prevail in Iraq.

By "prevail," of course, she means "retreat like it was Saigon in April 1975".

Sounds like the White House's "some kind of a new pollster" - Dontcha just love a Clintonoid complaining about pollsters? - is definitely onto something.