Ruben Navarrette Jr., a nationally syndicated columnist and a regular contributor to CNN.com wrote the following:
It's not every day that you see an administration devour itself. But that's pretty much what happens when you have the Justice Department investigating the CIA. This will poison the relationship between the entities, which still have to work together to keep America safe in the war on terror.
And we're expected to believe that Holder is acting on his own, without approval from the president. Obama has said he wants to "look forward, not back" and called this "a time for reflection, not retribution."
This is not a good look -- not for Holder, not for Obama and not for the administration...
more after the bump
What do Americans know that the Obama Justice Department doesn't? Maybe this: If you wanted to demoralize and destroy the country's intelligence agencies, and thus put its people at risk, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more effective way of doing it than by prosecuting CIA agents who did the nation's dirty work and acted in good faith, oftentimes after consulting with lawyers about the legality of their methods.
By the way, where did those lawyers work? This is the poetic part. In the case of Steven Bradbury, Jay Bybee, and John Yoo -- the authors of the so-called "torture memos" that were the subject of so much reporting a few months ago -- they worked in the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department.
That would be the same Justice Department that is now investigating CIA officers for, in some cases, doing what the department's lawyers told them was legally permissible to do.
Mr Navarrette, would have you believe that the CIA is above the law, that they would never commit a crime and that they almost always consulted with the Justice Department before doing anything illegal. Good grief!
Mr Navarrette, would have you believe that the 'end' justifies the 'means'.
He would also have you believe that because a few bad apples were caught in fact doing illegal actions for the Bush/Cheney administration, that other members of that same organization would rebel and purposely disobey any order given to them by the White House or Justice Department thereafter. He would have you believe that they would want 'payback'.
"If you wanted to demoralize and destroy the country's intelligence agencies, and thus put its people at risk, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more effective way of doing it than by prosecuting CIA agents who did the nation's dirty work and acted in good faith"
If what you say is true Mr. Navarrette, then thousands of our military would currently be "demoralized" and our military would be "destroyed" over the prosecutions of some of their bad apples that committed atrocities while conducting military actions during war time. You say that any prosecutions would:
"poison the relationship between the entities"
Are you implying that our troops would disobey Pentagon and White House orders if any of their fellow comrades were prosecuted or court marshaled for illegal actions? You don't have much confidence in our troop's sir, if this is what you mean - nor do you have confidence in our CIA agents in doing their jobs.
Some CIA agents actually questioned the legality of the action they were taking. In fact, a few have been reported as saying something like,
"We knew this was going to come back and bite us . . . These people weren't judges, they were just lawyers in the justice department. It was kind of like us telling ourselves it was okay to do it."
The official recalled the atmosphere at the time of the 9/11 attacks. "A colleague of mine said, 'I know this is all wrong but I keep picturing these people jumping out of windows and falling out of buildings'."
Yet they chose to go ahead and do 'the job' as ordered. These people may be vindicated for their actions because they were ordered to do them. The person(s) that did the ordering would hopefully then be brought to justice instead.
It's been reported that there may have been some agents that went further than authorized - they should be punished for those war crimes - don't you think? Otherwise sir, what would you consider a 'war crime' to be?
If we were at war with Russia or China and these illegal actions took place against our own troops, would you still ignore them? How would you explain that to the soldier that may someday be a POW themselves?
War Crimes may have been committed from the reports we've been shown. If America steps aside and ignores those crimes, how will we ever have the right to demand justice for crimes made by other nations?
By the way sir, the people at the Justice Department are NEW people, not the ones that committed these crimes.