4/23: To Investigate Or Not To Investigate

The topic of torture continues to dominate political blogosphere chatter. Liberal bloggers are urging AG Eric Holder to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate lawyers in the George W. Bush admin. who authorized brutal interrogation techniques. While conceding that prosecuting Bush officials would probably cause a political firestorm, John Cole asks: "What are we supposed to do when our government has done this? Just look the other way because otherwise it might be politically difficult?" Liberal bloggers are also echoing Dem congressmen in calling for the creation of an independent "Truth Commission." However, conservative bloggers are fiercely opposed to both prosecutions and Truth Commissions. They're arguing that going down either path would be politically disastrous for Dems.

What else is happening in the blogosphere?

• Liberal bloggers (Yglesias, Drum, Duss) are buzzing about a new McClatchy article alleging that the Bush admin. "applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence" of a Saddam Hussein-al Qaida link.
• Liberal bloggers (Benen, Cole) think House GOPers are crazy to demand that HHS Sec. Janet Napolitano resign, but conservative bloggers (Allahpundit, Malkin) continue to bash Napolitano.
• Liberal bloggers (Logothetis, Lemos) continue to criticize Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA), who was allegedly caught on wiretap promising favors to a suspected Israeli agent. While some conservative bloggers are defending Harman, others are criticizing her.

BUSH: I Want The Truth!

Liberal bloggers continue to push Holder to appoint a Special Prosecutor:

• Balloon Juice's Cole: "[AZ Sen.] John McCain says prosecuting will have a 'chilling effect.' Isn't that the point of prosecuting crimes -- to have a chilling effect on future potential criminals? I know deterrence is always cited by death penalty advocates. I have no idea if Holder will decide to prosecute people for any of this, and realize that if it happens, DC will just explode, but at the same time, if these people did commit crimes, why shouldn't they be prosecuted? [...] What are we supposed to do when our government has done this? Just look the other way because otherwise it might be politically difficult?"
• MyDD's Charles Lemos: "I have taken the view that those who provided the intellectual underpinnings such Jay Bybee and John Yoo and those who made the political decision such [Defense Sec.] Donald Rumsfeld to institute torture as an instrument of state policy should be held accountable for such blatant violations of American jurisprudence and accepted legal international standards of conduct."

Bloggers are also calling for an independent "Truth Commission" to conduct an investigation:

• Daily Kos' mcjoan: "CQ is reporting that Senate Judiciary Patrick Leahy is determined to proceed with a torture inquiry. [...] An independent commission would be preferrable [to a committee probe], but so would a Republican party that didn't support the premise that Republicans are above the law."
• The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan: "We should not trust Obama to investigate this in secret any more than we should have trusted Bush and [ex-VP Dick] Cheney to run it in secret. Let's have a Truth Commission; give it time; give it money; and then let us see all of it. Then, and only then, should the attorney general decide whether to launch prosecutions. And, in my view, those at the highest levels of authority should be those first prosecuted. If that means prosecution of a former president, so be it. He is not above the law."

BUSH II: I Don't Give A Damn What You Think You're Entitled To!

Conservative bloggers are strongly opposed to both prosecutions and Truth Commissions:

• Townhall's Carol Platt Liebau: "Do the Democrats understand the precedent this sets for the future? If Bush officials are tried for 'war crimes' because they authorized coercive measures on a limited basis against terrorists (measures that helped save American lives, according to Obama's own intelligence chief), it opens a lot of doors, none of them good -- for anyone."
• Commentary's John Podhoretz: "If this goes forward, and I mean this seriously, anyone reading this blog post who is a friend of or a relative of someone working in high precincts in the Obama administration had better strongly advise their loved one to quit and get the hell out of Washington. Because it won't end here. Because it is all political, in the end. Because one day, they will be caught in the vise just as surely."

Conservative bloggers are also arguing that prosecutions and Truth Commissions would be politically disastrous for Dems:

• RedState's Brian Faughnan: "Do Democrats really believe that the American people will become angry at the way the Bush administration handled detainees in the War on Terror? It's more likely that such an investigation will anger the political center of this country, and convince them both that America has not treated detainees badly, and that Obama is going too far in rolling back Bush's policies."
• Power Line's Paul Mirengoff: "I hope that there are no prosecutions and no hearings. They would be bad for the country, bad for the defendants, and unjust. However, the prosecutions, and even more so congressional or other hearings, would probably be good politically for Republicans. [...] Obama understands this. That is why he -- and even more tellingly, his smartest political operative Rahm Emanuel -- initially seemed to be against the idea of prosecutions and showed little enthusiasm for congressional hearings."
• Right Wing News' John Hawkins: "There are, at a minimum, tens of millions of people in this country who would consider it to be far beyond the pale and even dangerous to democracy to attempt to jail members of the Bush Administration for waterboarding terrorists. Obama and Company would be very wise to take heed of that sentiment before they do something extremely foolish that we may all end up regretting before it's over."

BUSH III: Keep Torturing 'Em Until They Give The Right Answer

Liberal bloggers are buzzing about a new McClatchy article alleging that the Bush admin. "applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime":

• Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias: "Now here's a good reason to torture someone. As explained by Jonathan Landay one important use of torture to the Bush administration was to force detainees to cough up 'evidence' of the Iraq/al-Qaeda ties that Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, etc. already 'knew' existed. [...N]ot only does torture appear to have vastly eroded key elements of America's strategy of self-presentation in the world, it contributed to our undertaking a massive policy blunder that led to much more loss of innocent life than occurred on 9/11."
• Dylan Matthews: "It was contemptible enough to try to scrounge up whatever evidence possible to support a preordained conclusion. And it was contemptible enough to torture suspects for whatever reason. But the combination of the two reaches grand new heights of deplorability."
• Mother Jones' Kevin Drum: "One of the common observations of the anti-torture crowd is that, historically, torture has been used primarily to extract false confessions, not genuine intelligence. Which is really a very tedious thing to say. After all, even if you don't like the guy, everyone knows that George Bush was trying to prevent future attacks by al-Qaeda, not extract false confessions. Right?"
• Think Progress' Matt Duss: "I suppose it's fitting, if disturbingly ironic, that techniques adopted wholesale from methods intended to extract false confessions were used in an attempt to generate evidence of a non-existent Al Qaeda-Saddam operational relationship. In addition to the basic issue of illegal torture, however, we have the issue of mis-allocation of resources. The time spent and assets used in attempting to torture out a justification for what we now know was a predetermined Iraq invasion could have been better spent actually protecting America. In other words, the Iraq war was damaging U.S. national security even before it began."
• Obsidian Wings' hilzoy: "If I were Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld, the idea that there might be a just God would make my bones freeze with terror."
• Firedoglake's Spencer Ackerman: "[This] seems like something that a Congressional investigation into torture would be interested in."

Sullivan: "McClatchy's story is the most eye-popping of the last week in my view, certainly a twist I didn't fully foresee. [...] The first reason to use torture is to prevent a ticking time bomb that could kill millions; the second reason is as a routine part of intelligence gathering; the third is to produce false confessions to justify a war already planned. Torture is a powerful weapon, isn't it? Look how many it corrupted so completely and so fast."

NAPOLITANO: The Right's Next Target?

Liberal bloggers are ridiculing House GOPers who are calling on Napolitano "to step down or be fired in the wake of a controversial department memo" about right-wing extremism:

• The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "It's hard to overstate how truly crazy this is. The Republican Study Committee has simply gone stark raving mad. [...] If these clowns keep screaming bloody murder over meaningless flaps that fall apart under scrutiny, it will be that much more difficult for them to be taken seriously when a genuine controversy arises."
• Cole: "These people are seriously not going to last four years. We should probably take out a few more of them in the 2010 elections just so they can take a breather and pull themselves together, because they clearly didn't get the message in 2006 and 2008. The Republican Study Committee is fundamentally no different from the wingnuttiest blogger."

Conservative bloggers, on the other hand, continue to criticize Napolitano:

• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "She doesn't know immigration law or how the 9/11 hijackers got here, and she can't manage a report on a topic as sensitive as domestic terrorism without insulting vets, but hey -- at least she doesn't owe back taxes. Who could have guessed that the title of Most Hapless Obama Appointee would pass so soon from [Traesury Sec. Tim] Geithner? Nothing says 'smart power' like having foreign media wonder how your chief of security got her job."
• Michelle Malkin: "Too bad we don't have a DHS Secretary serious or informed enough to speak competently about these matters without cue cards. Maybe she needs her own teleprompter, too."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Blair Bombshell?

Allahpundit:

"Ed [Morrisey] has been all over the Dennis Blair story today but let me add my two cents in calling it a nuclear bombshell in how it incinerates the left's bad-faith 'torture' calculus -- or rather, non-calculus. They're unwilling to concede that there's any moral choice to be made here because, when push comes to shove, they're unwilling to say flatly that they'd risk American lives so that Abu Zubaydah doesn't have to spend time in a box with a caterpillar or whatever. That's why the Times buried the Blair story today and that's why Hillary [Clinton]'s lip service about getting everything out in the open, in reply to a question about Cheney claiming that abuses were corrected, is so stunningly disingenuous. The very last thing [Obama] wants is getting everything out in the open about how waterboarding or belly slaps prevented attacks because that means an honest debate on the subject, which in turn leaves him caught between the nutroots and a whole lot of swing voters. The beauty of the Blair story is that, for the very first time, they've got someone saying torture works whom they can't dismiss as 'unreliable.' Like I say, nuclear bombshell."

LEST WE FORGET: Feel The Love

John Cole:

"An actual phone conversation with my mom a moment ago:

Mom: Your dad and I just heard a story about a guy who lived to be 110. Who would want to live that long? All your friends would be dead.
Me: Well, in 40 years or so I could be at the old folks home with you.
Mom: Are you trying to prove our point?

I'm getting her nothing for Mothers Day."