by Bret Stephens

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124087384453961191.html

The Wall Street Journal, 28 April 2009, page A11.

Joe Gwinn

On Sun, 03 May 2009 12:37:42 -0400, Joseph Gwinn
wrote:

by Bret Stephens

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124087384453961191.html

The Wall Street Journal, 28 April 2009, page A11.

Joe Gwinn

The Politics of Liberal Amnesia

*
By BRET STEPHENS

Nancy Pelosi is "pushing back" against charges that she was aware of --
and acquiesced in -- the CIA's harsh interrogations of terrorist
detainees nearly from the moment the practice began, reports the
Politico Web site. Maybe she's suffering from amnesia.
[Global View] AP

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Maybe, for instance, the speaker doesn't remember that in September
2002, as ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, she was one
of four members of Congress who were briefed by the CIA about the
interrogation methods the agency was using on leading detainees. "For
more than an hour," the Washington Post reported in 2007, "the
bipartisan group . . . was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas
detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to
try to make their prisoners talk.

"Among the techniques described," the story continued, "was
waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture
by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no
objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room
asked the CIA to push harder."

Or maybe the speaker never heard what some of her Democratic colleagues
were saying about legal niceties getting in the way of an effective
counterterrorism strategy.

"Unfortunately, we are not living in times in which lawyers can say no
to an operation just to play it safe," said Democrat Bob Graham,
chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence during the 2002
confirmation hearing of Scott Muller to be the CIA's general counsel.
"We need excellent, aggressive lawyers who give sound, accurate legal
advice, not lawyers who say no to an otherwise legal opinion just
because it is easier to put on the brakes."

Or maybe the speaker forgot that after 9/11, the operative question
among Americans, including various media paladins, wasn't whether the
Bush administration had gone overboard. On the contrary:

"I asked the president whether he and the country had done enough for
the war on terror," writes Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in his
book "Bush at War." "The possibility of another major attack still
loomed. . . . Was it not possible that he had undermobilized given the
threat and the devastation of September 11?" (My emphases.)

Or maybe the speaker missed what former CIA Director (and Bill Clinton
appointee) George Tenet writes in his memoir, "At the Center of the
Storm," about the CIA interrogation of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed:

"I believe none of these successes [in foiling terrorist plots] would
have happened if we had had to treat KSM like a white-collar criminal --
read him his Miranda rights and get him a lawyer who surely would have
insisted his client simply shut up. In his initial interrogation by CIA
officers, KSM was defiant. 'I'll talk to you guys,' he said, 'after I
get to New York and see my lawyer.' Apparently he thought he would be
immediately shipped to the United States and indicted in the Southern
District of New York. Had that happened, I am confident that we would
have obtained none of the information he had in his head about imminent
threats to the American people."

Mr. Tenet continues: "From our interrogation of KSM and other senior al
Qaeda members . . . we learned many things -- not just tactical
information leading to the next capture. For example, more than 20 plots
had been put in motion by al Qaeda against U.S. infrastructure targets,
including communications nodes, nuclear power plants, dams, bridges and
tunnels."

Maybe, too, the speaker no longer recalls what she knew, and when, about
the Bush administration's other much-reviled counterterrorist program,
the warrantless wiretaps.

"Within weeks of the program's inception," writes Mr. Tenet, "senior
congressional leaders were called to the White House and briefed on it.
.. . . At one point in 2004 there was even a discussion with the
congressional leadership in the White House Situation Room with regard
to whether new legislation should be introduced to amend the FISA
statute, to put the program on a broader legal foundation. The view that
day on the part of members of Congress was that this could not be done
without jeopardizing the program."

Maybe, finally, the speaker has forgotten the role that previous grand
congressional inquisitions played in gutting U.S. intelligence.

"After the Watergate era," the bipartisan 9/11 Commission reported,
"Congress established oversight committees to ensure that the CIA did
not undertake covert action contrary to basic American law. . . . During
the 1990s, tension sometimes arose, as it did in the effort against al
Qaeda, between policy makers who wanted the CIA to undertake more
aggressive covert action and wary CIA leaders who counseled prudence and
making sure that the legal basis and presidential authorization for
their actions were undeniably clear."

The speaker and her partisans are the current beneficiaries of this
politics of amnesia. It won't be so forever. And when the time comes to
pay the price for their forgetfulness, it will not be small.
"Somewhere a True Believer is training to kill you. He is training with
minimum food or water,in austere conditions, day and night. The only thing
clean on him is his weapon. He doesn't worry about what workout to do---
his rucksack weighs what it weighs, and he runs until the enemy stops chasing him.
The True Believer doesn't care 'how hard it is'; he knows he either wins or he dies.
He doesn't go home at 1700; he is home. He knows only the 'Cause.' Now, who wants to quit?"

NCOIC of the Special Forces Assessment and Selection Course in a welcome speech to new SF candidates