Thursday, January 22, 2009

CIA Welcomes End of Torture; Debra Saunders, Not So Much

This is interesting: according to an article by Spencer Ackerman, Obama's executive order prohibiting torture is likely to be welcomed by the CIA:

“It’s a great leap forward in terms of respect for human rights,” said John Kiriakou, the retired CIA official who supervised the early interrogation of Al Qaeda detainee Abu Zubaydah in 2002. “From the very beginning, the CIA should not have been in the business of enhanced interrogation techniques and detentions.” CIA interrogators waterboarded Abu Zubaydah, but not while Kiriakou supervised the interrogation....

Kiriakou said that the reaction to Obama’s harmonization of interrogations policy would get “a very positive reaction” inside the CIA.....“This should make people very happy. No one wants to be in harm’s way [legally]. Despite what the Bush White House and Bush Justice Department said was legal, I think people at the CIA understood that this was not legal and [the techniques] were torture.”
And if the name 'John Kiriakou' sounds familiar to IIRTZ readers, it may be because Debra Saunders quoted him in a column justifying torture. Once again, the guy who said the one thing on which her whole pro-torture rationalization rested Doesn't. Support. Torture.

Nor, in fact, does anyone else with an ounce of decency or honesty or integrity. Which, again, leaves out Debra Saunders.