(h/t Heather)
Bill Kristol is upset that the release of the CIA torture memos will open up the potential for criminal prosecutions of Bush officials. William "the Bloody" Kristol wants to release all the CIA memos and have Dick Cheney testify about them. Wow, he even admits that torture is a crime, but brings up another right-wing canard: that releasing the CIA memos and more photographs of abuse hurts our national security.
(rough transcript)
Kristol: Torture is a crime, that is agreed upon. If these memos are so crazy, so ridiculous in their legal analysis ... three people being waterboarded, a few instances of waterboarding might not qualify as torture under certain circumstances, which is what the memos argued, then he (Obama) opened the door, and once he opened the door they're going down that road...
It's the Bush administration who authorized these things, they're still running against the Bush administration. Let's stipulate that the Bush administration did a lot for things wrong. How does that legitimize do something now that will damage our national security?
Williams: How does it damage out national security? I think when you have President Obama say somewhere we have lost our moral bearings. I don't think there's any doubt about that...
Kristol: There's a lot of doubt...
Williams: You said a moment ago that torture is illegal. You gotta remember President Reagan was out there signing the UN convention, we will not participate in torture as an American people. So something went wrong there.
Mara Liasson then argues about the Justice Department officials involved, and Brit Hume (as usual) just thinks it's all a farce. Yeah, torturing people is soooo comical, so inconsequential.
Mara: You might think that the lawyers of the Bush justice Department came out with a decision that was wrong, legally wrong and morally repugnant, but it doesn't mean that they committed a crime. That they said, ohhh we know this is torture, we're just going ot cook this up. The question is whether they did this in good faith or not. and if...
Hume: I predict Mara, based on what you're saying that any prosecution which will come out of this will be a total farce.
There will be a series of show trials with "grand inquisitions' and all the kinds of things we've been associated with. It's possible that those lawyers will get hauled before Congress and do to any investigation there Oliver North did to the e9/11 commission, which was to render it the farce that it always was from the beginning, that would be a good outcome, but this whole area ... what should be a closed chapter -- I don't see any national benefit to it...
Kristol:... I think now that the door is open, I say "bring it on." Let's have a big national debate on this. Let's have Steve Bradbury confront his accusers, who are one tenth the lawyers he is, and we're not under the pressure he was under and not a real threat. Let's have George Tenet testify. Let's have Mick Hagen testify. Let's have a serious debate, let's have Dick Cheney take on anyone that the left wants to produce about whether we were responsible, whether it was a dark chapter in our history that we have to be ashamed of or whether the US government behaved in a very fine way and I think a very impressive way...
Bloody Bill thinks Bush and Cheney's torturing of people is a very impressive way to handle prisoners.
I always love when right-wing hacks use the word "serious." It's only they who are the "serious" people, and therefore the world is only properly ruled by their hand. And he's confident that the propaganda that would be spewed by Cheney and his ilk will muddy up the waters enough to fool the American people.
Me, I'd like to see Cheney have to get in front of Henry Waxman.
