Monday, August 24, 2009

Obama flip-flops on prosecution of CIA employees

Back in January, Barack Obama had no intentions of prosecuting Bush administration or CIA employees for water boarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques.

Barack Obama on This Week (Jan 2009)


From the Video:
"I don't believe anybody has broke the law. On the other hand I also have a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards. And part of my job is to make sure that for example at the CIA, you've got extraordinarily talented people who are working very hard to keep Americans safe. I don't want them to suddenly feel like they've got to spend all their time looking over their shoulders and lawyering."


Now that they need a distraction from the Obamacare disaster, they are ready to name a prosecutor.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has decided to appoint a prosecutor to examine nearly a dozen cases in which CIA interrogators and contractors may have violated anti-torture laws and other statutes when they allegedly threatened terrorism suspects, according to two sources familiar with the move.

Holder is poised to name John Durham, a career Justice Department prosecutor from Connecticut, to lead the inquiry, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the process is not complete.

Durham's mandate, the sources added, will be relatively narrow: to look at whether there is enough evidence to launch a full-scale criminal investigation of current and former CIA personnel who may have broken the law in their dealings with detainees. Many of the harshest CIA interrogation techniques have not been employed against terrorism suspects for four years or more.

President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder should remember water boarding prevented a second 9-11 in Los Angeles. This investigation will be very damaging to the moral at the CIA. Rumor is CIA Director Leon Panetta is ready to throw in the towel.

Hat tip to Gateway Pundit.

1 comment:

Diogenes said...

See, here's your problem: to you, all black guys look alike.

Barack Obama is the President of the United States.

Eric Holder is the Attorney General of the United States.

Both are black men. Thin, even. Basketball players. Lawyers.

But Barack Obama is not Eric Holder. And Eric Holder is not Barack Obama.

Barack Obama, as the President of the United States, can say he doesn't really feel like we should look backwards and prosecute rogue CIA interregators or the creeps of the Bush White House who REALLY deserve to be in prison. Guys like Jay Bibee, David Arrington, John Yoo.

Now, Eric Holder, as the Attorney General of the United States, is the chief law enforcement officer of the country. HE'S the guy who decides, ultimately, who gets prosecuted and who doesn't. Now, true, Barack Obama could fire Eric Holder if he was truly that displeased with what the AG was doing, but the last time a President fired an AG for doing his job was when Tricky Dickie Nixon took out not one, but two AGs in a single Saturday night during the Watergate investigation. And we know how well THAT ended up, don't we?