| begging the question |
[Jul. 9th, 2009|09:43 am] |
The question of the C.I.A.’s candor with the Congressional oversight committees has been hotly disputed since Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the agency of failing to disclose in a 2002 briefing that it had used waterboarding against a terrorism suspect. Ms. Pelosi said the agency routinely misled Congress, though she later said she intended to fault the Bush administration rather than career intelligence officials.
Since then, Republicans have called Ms. Pelosi’s complaint an unwarranted attack on the integrity of counterterrorism officers and have demanded an investigation.
I think the point is to figure out whether our counterterrorism efforts of the past eight years have, in fact, had any integrity to them. |
|
|
| Comments: |
They have had some. Or, rather, I have a good friend, whose honesty and integrity I cannot begin to question, who is brave, and good, and true: who worked on counter-terrorism.
Whether that one good man is enough, is obviously a question to beg.
I don't doubt the integrity: I doubt the efficacy.
This quote is from an article talking about the admission that the CIA hid operations from Congress - not just the subcommittee overseeing the CIA, but the "Gang of Eight" who were supposed to be basically apprised of everything.
When the story broke, that was the part that I took most seriously. It is, in my eyes, a constitutional attack to fail to brief Congress so that it can provide oversight of the Executive.
Even the "Gang of Eight" stuff is, well, quasi-legal at best. | |
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}