Republicans Who Say CIA Secret Program Story Is Good For GOP Won’t Support Probe
If you believe the Politico, Republicans are very, very psyched about the media’s heavy focus on that secret Cheney-authorized program that the CIA concealed from Congress, because it’s really bad politically for Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats.
Republicans claim that House Dems who are mulling an investigation into the secret CIA program, like Intel committee chair Silvestre Reyes, are helping the GOP paint Pelosi and Dems as weak on terror. As a spokesman for GOP leader John Boehner put it: “The speaker’s liberal allies are keeping her accusations against the CIA front and center.”
This raises the question: If keeping these allegations in the news is so good for Republicans, why don’t they want a probe of the program?
If the House did launch an investigation into the CIA’s secret program, of course, the media attention to this story would ratchet up exponentially. Yet Republicans mysteriously don’t support any such efforts. Boehner spokesperson Michael Steel declined to answer directly when I asked him if the Congressman would back an investigation. Meanwhile, GOP Rep Pete Hoekstra was similarly dismissive: “I don’t have to revisit these things.”
It’s possible that Republicans secretly think a probe would be bad for Dems and want it to look like Dems instigated it. Or maybe the GOP claim that revelations about Bush-Cheney-era CIA deception are really good for Republicans deserve a tad more skepticism.
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I’ll see your tad and raise you one more.
Lets face it, there isn’t a single issue that Republicans won’t claim is good news for them. If the economy turns around tomorrow and unemployment goes to zero they will still claim it helps them and hurts the Democrats. I am running out of braincells from trying to decipher their bizzarro world musings. But hey if they think having Dick Cheney as the face of their party and the standard bearer for the next year and a half I say have at it hoss. See where that gets you.
I think being a congressional Republican must be like being on a 2 year peyote safari.
The CIA may have misled or failed to inform about other programs, but it doesn’t help Nancy Pelosi’s case that the CIA lied to her specifically about waterboarding. If she had any political courage, she’d be among those pressing for a full investigation. So the Republican tactic is do you really want to open up this can of worms if it makes some of the Democratic leadership look badly? They are betting Pelosi and the Dems will let this die. And quite frankly, so am I. My queendom for some Democratic leadership with backbone.
drjamo
Uhmmm Nancy Pelosi called for an investigation already. You are kinda late on that one.
sg – your first sentence (along with Greg’s cynicism) describes something quite real. Clearly, there’s some sort of marketing axiom here to which they hold firm allegiance…the “never admit you are losing or are wrong – always be on the offensive and refer to self/party as winner” thing. Dems and others do it too, of course, but not nearly to the degree we see with Republicans/conservatives.
I think it’s a really interesting phenomenon and one of the aspects of political behavior I’m trying to understand. And it seems to be about dominance or projection of dominance more than anything else.
Humility, in this framework, is much worse than merely benign, it’s a serious negative. Likewise, reflection or second-guessing (eg Bush, “I won’t debate with myself”). As a cognitive process, it sits directly opposite to the way good science works, for example, or even to how we normally think a rational mind ought to operate.
If we were to put to these fellows that real humility or reflection made evident to the voters/press would do them some good service electorally, we’d very surely get a response similar to what we’d see in Gordon Gekko if we were to posit that “the meek shall inherit the earth”.
The more thoughtful conservatives aren’t in this mold but their numbers are, as you know, diminished to the point of near invisibility presently. One can pretty easily imagine the disdain Lincoln would hold for the present crowd and its values.
On the plus side, Obama clearly represents (and models) something quite different.
Bernie
I think its the era of Bushism rather than Republicanism or Conservatism that has turned the GOP into a party of no self reflection. Its all about certainty and never looking back critically. Thats something that George Bush brought to the party and which has fired up their base. Even when he was dead @ss wrong they admired him for not admitting it. Even the pundits pushed that same line of thinking. It was supposedly admirable not to second guess yourself. It was Colin Powell who said it unnerved him that Bush thought that way but Powell is what the GOP base considers a RINO now precisely because of that stance. So its all errors of their own making, but its phenomenal to me how much damage Pres Bush did to his own party and how that damage will keep resonating for years to come.
Yesterday I had called into a right winger radio station about this assassination list. I brought up the Munich movie in which the assassins where given a list of what he thought were the planners of the kidnapping and killing of the Olympic team. They of course tried to say this is no different than predator bombs hitting Afghanistan. I’d argue this is nothing like Afghanistan in that the methods and the manpower alone behind gathering intelligence is probably 10 fold for that region compared to what we had focused on Al-Qaeda at the onset of the fight against Al-Qaeda.
Plus, considering how wrong the CIA got Iraq, do we really want to go on just their intelligence and get into the assassination business? Their last mistake cost us 4k+ soldiers and 50k+ Iraqi deaths. Iraq is an example of going of limited intelligence. Imagine all of the “oops” that would have happened with an assassination group going around the globe, taking out who they thought were Al-Qaeda intelligence agents.
Insufficient cynicism. You probably didn’t mute the tube when Dubya came on, didja?
Maybe. (SG says she did call for one, but you’re right that she’s not pressing for one.)
But although SF-Nancy is not known for political courage, I think here she’s on the right track. An investigation now would certainly be a big impediment to Obama’s agenda. Health care, climate change, EFCA, Stim2, DADT/DOMA would all be in much greater jeopardy. Which could explain Bohner’s enthusiasm.
Me? I want to see a DoJ investigation. But not yet. Early 2010 would be a good time to start. Maybe Patrick Fitzgerald will be done with Blaggo by then? (Not likely, but you get the idea.) Something that starts to ripen around mid-autumn….
Greg~ Have you seen this? Latest article from The State in South Carolina…Gov Sanford’s cheif of staff tried to call him 15x on his state cell and the Gov ignored the calls, plus check out the offers from “friendly media” (Fox News and Washington Times) to spin on behalf of the Gov…WOW
Oops…here is the link to The State article
http://www.thestate.com/154/story/862957.html?storylink=omni_popular
That’s it exactly Jzap. SG to catch up: Pelosi was the only one calling for a commission about torture forcefully before admitting (finally) to when she learned about waterboarding. (Harry eid and Obama already said they had no interest in it). After finally admitting when she knew of waterboarding, all you’ve heard from her is crickets. Any time anyone approaches Pelosi about the issue, she just shuts down… no comment, I’m leaving it to the committee, I don’t talk to Panetta, etc. Cowardly.
If she had any political courage, she would just fess up to what she knew, take her lumps and have a real, full and open investigation of the sins of the prior administration, the CIA, and yes the congressional leadership that totally ceded their oversight responsibilities and didn’t challenge these programs at the time.
Harry Reid and Nancy P: the blind leading the blind; McConnell and Boehner: dumb and dumber. Lynn Cheney and Mika on Morning Joke : two of the dumbest.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/206607/page/1
I’m supposed to be upset about a secret program to kill the AQ leadership? A program that was actually never close to being operational?
Sorry, I’m not outraged. This is just politics, there’s not much substance. If the program had been operational, then yes. But one talked about now and then… and even then described as “tentatively” – is a big “so what”.
sg – I highly recommend Easton’s “Gang of Five” (available for next to nothing from Amazon). There’s much of this that can be traced further back than 2000. Consider Gingrich, for example. Norquist, Abramoff and Reed, back in the eighties, studied Stalin and modeled key activities on his precedent. For sure, Bush represents what (we can hope) is the bottoming-out of the phenomenon at the WH level.
Greg: Hoekstra update required:
“Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., the senior GOP member of the committee, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that he would support an investigation. But from what he knows now, Hoekstra said, he does not believe the effort merited congressional notification.
Like many other Republicans, Hoekstra believes the Democratic anger about not being notified of the program sooner is meant to bolster House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.”
Do serious Republican’s uphold Obama’s challenge to: Pick yourself up. Dust yourself off and remake America? The World is changing! and we must make the changes or America’s future morals and economy could become a cesspool of North and South Korean computer, spying, (mafia) and war plots (evacuating into the US) camouflaged under conservative worries about “terrorism. In my opinion these communist and secretive (covert) animals shuld be returned to Vietnam War Prison Camps Immediately!
There’s no secret When Koreans have the same last name, they are part of 1 family. In 1984 I caught a Korean “houseguest” snooping in my cupboards and under a rug! At the time I didn’t know how to respond. Recently a US Army specialist imparted: “if the enemy is pulling files, when it comes time to war, we could end up feeling stripped.” It’s hard to believe but as I look out the window, (along a college street resembling a hurried slide show of Kias and Hyundais, whose models and styles were definitely stolen from American manufacturers) I understand a Nazi slogan. “They are veeds, veeds, (weeds)”Karmically, they are killing themselves for billions and trillions of generations, but unless we stand up for America with courageous thought, word and action, and that means: when, where, and what? our conciousness, economy, security, and even broader aspets like weather and natural disasters will occur and intensify because our society is evolutionizing as a whole, butt Korean party bashers were evidently not offically invited by anyone or any power that I know. . .I carry an iron rod in my car that I would use to crack some Korean skull and kick the rest of it into the ground, 10,000 times over. It’s not personal, just about saving America. What encouraged their beastiality? probably Attila the Hun or Ghangis Kan or gross conspiracies such as the Hamiltons or Suleyanis, capable of ruining a fine, thriving civilization such as ancient Turkey. America needs to wipe out ignorance of foreign relations evil. And that includes Polish Nazi witches and warlocks, Czechoslovakians, Taoists, Zen, Christian occultists, atheists, psychologists, pharmacies, gas and oil industries,companies that kidnap scientists, illegal Japanese “hara-kiri” enforcers and Snow White’s evil stepmother! Sorry if this is rather graphic, but all true, all true.