According to the Wall Street Journal the Dems may have known about waterboarding and other tough interrogation methods since 2002. That means they could be deemed as war criminal because they did nothing to prevent these things from happening.
The briefings were first available to the Chairmen and ranking Members of the Intelligence Committees. From 2003 through 2006, that gang of four included Democrats Bob Graham and John D. Rockefeller in the Senate and Jane Harman in the House, as well as Republicans Porter Goss, Peter Hoekstra, Richard Shelby and Pat Roberts. Senior staffers were sometimes present. After September 2006, when President Bush publicly acknowledged the program, the interrogation briefings were opened to the full committees.
If Congress wanted to kill this program, all it had to do was withhold funding. And if Democrats thought it was illegal or really found the CIA's activities so heinous, one of them could have made a whistle-blowing floor statement under the protection of the Constitution's speech and debate clause. They'd have broken their secrecy oaths and jeopardized national security, sure. But if they believed that Bush policies were truly criminal, didn't they have a moral obligation to do so? In any case, the inevitable media rapture over their anti-Bush defiance would have more than compensated.
So any Democrat Congressman had the opportunity to make a name for himself as a whistleblower? That person would be lauded as hero to the left and the MSM since they would have prevented the US from allegedly torturing Al-Quida scumbags for information.
True, it would have ended that persons career in Congress but isn't taking a stand what a "progressive" is supposed to do? Hell, they could have even leaked the information to the press Deep Throat-style if they really wanted to protect their job.
What is kind of interesting about this is that Senator Rockefeller is opposing Panetta as the head of the CIA.
A senior aide to Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the outgoing chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the senator “would have concerns” about a Panetta nomination.
Rockefeller “thinks very highly of Panetta,” the aide said. “But he’s puzzled by the selection. He has concerns because he has always believed that the director of CIA needs to be someone with significant operational intelligence experience and someone outside the political realm.”
Maybe the concerns that Rockefeller has is that if Panetta is installed at CIA he will do all he can to uncover the shady intelligence gathering techniques that they have been involved in. Panetta would certainly want to know who knew what and when. So you would think that the Senate Intelligence Committee will be heavily scrutinized in any potential Panetta fact-finding expedition.
I mean the Democrat members of the Committee are supposed to have known what the CIA was doing since 2002. I mean they had the ability to shut down the money for the program if they didn't like their methods. I can see why Rockefeller would like to cut Panetta off at the knees before he gets the chance to turn over any rocks at CIA.
My guess is that Senator Rockefeller or another key Dem at the Senate Intelligence Committee will end up with the top CIA job. Panetta will pull his name out in a few weeks. I think that would be a good thing because the CIA agents that did the waterboarding and such did so with the complicity of the Bush administration, and through its inaction, Congress as well.
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