I would call what Marcy and Laura Rozen are doing quite the opposite of leaving her out twisting in the wind, and a parade of members of Congress are backing her up, too.

The ones who could but aren’t are in the Hoyer/Emanuel camp.

Ignatius, who just defended torture on Charlie Rose, had a column a couple years back about a George Mason Univ conference on Iran in which it was clear that the State Dept leadership (Rice & co.) at the time were using the model of defeating the revolutionary states rather than containing them.

The background here is the defense of ‘terror’ as this term arose during the French Revolution, and the question of whether one is to contain or defeat a revolutionary regime viewed as hostile to the free-market hegemon in the world system. Prime Minister Pitt was for containment, and Edmund Burke, the founder of modern conservative thought and the major model here for the Straussians (’neo-conservatives’), was a flip-flopper on the subject.

The question of torturing ‘terrorists’ in this regard is tied to the larger question of whether the US is ‘at war’, or involved in policing and peacekeeping. Should US policy in Central Asia, and elsewhere (e.g. Iran, PM Netanyahu) be based on a legal model such as that applied during the Korean War, or an ‘exceptional’ model? Is the US attempting to be ‘normal’ or ‘exceptional’, legal or decisionist, vis-a-vis the international order in the terms of Carl Schmitt.

Ignatius is clearly pointing out more and more that he is an advocate of the latter, a very dangerous position now being trumpeted by the Washington Post as a whole.

The Post is attempting to oppose a percieved new direction of US foreign policy by an administration which is on record for reigning in the attempt to use the term ‘war’ both legally and metaphorically. In March 2009 the Defense Department officially changed the name of its present operations from ‘Global War on Terror’ to ‘Overseas Contingency Operation’ (OCO).

The most dangerous element in this approach is the attribution of collective guilt to the members of an entire world religion, which makes this new so-called ‘long war’ against Islam[ic radicalism] so different from the attempt to contain/defeat either the French Revolution or the Soviet Union. The declared ‘enemy’, from the point of view of the members of the religion in question, are an entire world religion, not a ’secular’ heresy (Jacobins, Leninists) of a ‘Western’ world religion (Christendom). However politically conservative the historical politics of this world religion are, it is many centuries old and institutionally embedded in a manner in which the old foes of the hegemon from its right wing perspective – the Jacobins and their terrorist ‘direct’ democracy, the Leninists and their ‘totalitarian democracy’ – were not. (These are the ’socialist democrats’ of the past.)

The WaPo is presently on the losing side of the argument; but Ignatius mouthing off to Charlie Rose about the virtues of torture is just the tip of their ice berg. Hiatt in the Sunday editorial fulminating about the danger of ‘abandoning the central Asian battlefield’ is much more worrisome, as this ‘battlefield’ is a ready source of thousands more ‘enemy combatants’ for an international and national ‘justice system’ which, to paraphrase Jim Webb on the talk shows this weekend, ‘can’t handle them.’ Thus, in his view, the US needs an exception military based justice system as prescribed by the Military Commisions Act.

[As long as the US is spending 50 billion USD a year in Afghanistan, and 1/2 a billion on the Pakistani military, it has the whole policy there, as my friend Andy Bennett put in brilliantly, ‘af-pac-wards.’]

You got under Justin Raimondo’s skin:

“If the definitive history of ideological blindness and partisanship is ever written, then surely Wheeler will figure prominently: her prose epitomizes what happens to the English language and logic itself when they are forced into the procrustean bed of a predetermined conclusion.”

With some matters, Raimondo’s prose exemplifies clarity and rhetorical prowess. His essay “The torturous logic of Nancy Pelosi” is Justin at his worst: opinionated, fact-free, and blatantly partisan.

i don’t know what Nancy was or wasn’t told and i don’t really know who to believe in this matter of he said she said but one thing that i do know is that the CIA has fabricated evidence on the gravest of matters: wars of aggression–so what they say (especially when it comes to their defense of their purported actions during the unjustifiable “war”) should not been accepted as credible, or trustworthy unless other independent sources can be used to verify their statements.

Poor Justin. Such a magnificent essayist put to shame by his own increasingly fact-free tirades and incessant whining.

Go Dick!

“McConnell, R-Ky., told “FOX News Sunday” that he personally questions the need to hold inquiries to find out “who knew what when,” but acknowledged that the disagreement between Pelosi and the CIA could warrant one…”The best way to resolve the dispute if it needs to be resolved is through the (House and Senate) intelligence committees.”

Keep in indoors, where they can play politics, release a “minority view” and actually play politics when the exonerating report is released.

Of course the problem is that the Intelligence Committees would be investigating THEMSELVES…most of these characters are still skulking the halls. So that’s why they want an internal investigation…but they dread having an independent investigation. Yet they are calling on Pelosi to “prove” that she was lied to, by evidence she can’t obtain since it’s classified.

How about an independent prosecutor?

Marci has pointed out that there are two prospects. One is Joe Rodriguez, the head of the CTC (Clandestine Services) infamous for destroying the videotaped records of the torture-interrogations. The other is “Torture to the precipice of death” Fredman. Either, or both, of these sources would have ulterior motives for producing a less than accurate account of what was actually said at those meetings.

Or the ol’ WHIG group getting together again to provide cover for ol’ scratch Cheney?