Senator Dianne Feinstein has placed an unfair spotlight on the CIA. (harvardnsj.org.)
As predicted in Is Sen. Feinstein today’s Frank Church?, my Dec. 12 post, the liberal California senator followed through with her vendetta against the CIA and released the 500-page executive summary of the agency’s detention and interrogation program investigation.
Never mind that the CIA actions took place a decade ago, and that the agency’s practices have long been stopped. I recall just last year when White House Press Secretary Jay Carney responded to a question, ”Benghazi happened a long time ago.” I wonder where he would place the CIA interrogations in time.
Sane persons have been asking, “Why release this report now?” Others, on both sides of the question, have acknowledged it makes no sense to resurface what is essentially a closed case. Even Secretary of State John Kerry asked Feinstein to reconsider her plan to release the report at this time.
The president, who never passes up a chance to zing President Bush, tried to be coy, appearing to want the report delayed while agreeing it was important to release. Surely, he could have asked Feinstein to not release the document.
While Feinstein said, “This report is too important to shelve indefinitely,” she gives no reason for releasing it now, and expects that it would serve as our “willingness to face an ugly truth and say ‘never again.’”
We did that years ago. The Feinstein report only serves to open old wounds, and while she seems to believe it tells the world how committed we are to a just society, our enemies are not so forgiving.
“It’s really about American values and morals. It’s about the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, our rule of law,” Feinstein said in making her announcement. “If we cast aside these values when convenient, we have failed to live by the very precepts that makes our nation a great one.”
It’s too bad the senator has been silent on issues of current importance to the American people … Fast & Furious, Benghazi, the DOJ snooping at the Associated Press and of Fox’s James Rosen, the illegal targeting by the IRS, and the president’s frequent flouting of the Constitution and the rule of law with his immigration amnesty executive action.
