And I really want to know who is handing out the “intent” advice over at CIA. ““What would be accomplished by appointing a prosecutor in a case where criminal intent would be so hard to prove,” asks a retired officer.” Didn’t get around to mentioning whether those intel officers in other countries who “don’t understand” are co-conspirators either.

That was one of the lines that set off my hackles regarding the article.

Excuse me, but when you intend to do the act, then you intend all the reasonable consequences flowing from the act. That crap about “it’s not intent to torture if you were only intending to ask a question and just so happened to torture someone while you were asking” is just that, crap.

And that pretty much summarizes my feelings on the topic as well.

Perhaps you have already visited the site.

This may be of interest:

Connection between James Woolsey and Michael Ledeen

Woolsey was Ledeen’s lawyer during his Iran-contra testimony
Submitted by Anonymous 2005-03-05 21:28:33
http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/000566.html

Edit

Woolsey was Michael Ledeen’s attorney for the Iran Contra hearings.
Submitted by fedup 2008-05-11 20:02:09
Michael Ledeen – a neo-conservative who is vocal on the subject of regime change in Iran, Ledeen helped bring together the main players in what developed into the Iran arms-for-hostages deals in 1985 before being relegated to a bit part. He reportedly reprised his role shortly after 9/11, introducing Ghorbanifar to Pentagon officials interested in exploring contacts inside Iran.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB210/index.htm

Woolsey came to Ohio University about six years ago as a guest speaker at the Baker Peace Conference (many of us could not figure out why the hell Woolsey would be the guest speaker at a Peace conference).

Woolsey got so pissed off when I asked questions about the Office of Special Plans and the false pre war intelligence along with the Niger Documents. He acutually lost it and started yelling . Was really pleased that I was able to get under his skin. He really looks like a spook.

(have not heard one Republican say that “no one is above the law” They all ready know that they have been more concerned about lies under oath having to do with blow jobs than intelligence snowjobs, torture or outing an undercover agent.

Sounds like Panetta has lined with their priorities.

Will the American public ever have access to the report having to do with how much damage the Bush administration did to U.S. national security by purposely outing Plame?

But we do know that he has pitched Laurie Mylroie’s tales of Iraq being behind the first WTC bombings and 9/11, including writing a foreward for one of her books and making “golly, ain’t she great” comments. (And Mylroie was a co-author with Judy Miller for that matter – small world, eh?)

George W. Bush. (The Corporal of Industry), used the people’s and the congresses belief that all presidents have the integrity to separate defense of country, from defense of politics. He bullied the congress into accepting his viewpoint. The congress would back down, believing that no one who had been elected president could so blatantly lie and distort the facts. Bush’s lies are still being defended to this day.

The CIA has problems and they should be addressed, but Congress must accept that it was deceived and made a fool of by George W. Bush. Congressional oversight of the CIA really became CIA oversight of the CIA during the Bush Administration. Porter Goss, a former CIA operative, was the head of the House Intelligence Committee before becoming head of the CIA. The CIA’s man in the U. S. Senate (Bill Nelson D-Fl), in a rare show of non-partisanship, immediately supported the republican Goss’s nomination. The CIA penetration of the House and and Senate allowed it to disrupt, divide, and lie to the Senate and Congressional committees. With the blessings of the Bush administration the CIA wouldn’t have to worry about any non-Bushies looking over their shoulders.

Most of the CIA leadership was smart enough not to have anything to do with the Bushies, but a few did come forward and offered up their souls to the Bushies. These are the people who are fighting any investigation within the CIA. All the power that they had accumulated during the Bush administration would be lost. They could find themselves at the mercy of the laws and the people that they had stepped on in getting to their present positions.

Congress must face the fact that they had been fooled and that the soldiers in intelligence community were doing what they were told to do. Congress must now take the difficult road of investigating the prosecuting the people who gave those orders. Some suggestions: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, Douglas Feith, John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee.

P.S. Did I mention that the CIA’s man in the U. S. Senate (Bill Nelson D-Fl) said Leon Panetta was a close friend.

I didn’t know this, but have seen a reference to the fact that Woolsey was also Ledeen’s Iran-Contra lawyer.

If, in addition to torturing al-libi to order, the CIA had a side door, via Woolsey, or more entrance into the Niger forgeries (and there’s still Suskind’s allegations about the Habbush letter and the CIA role in that forgery.

Not that the Dems in Congress have made even a passing effort to nail that one down.

Still, if the picture that is being painted is torture and forgeries to buy Cheney the war he wanted instead of to protect against al-Qaeda, good faith becomes no faith real fast. If you are going to bed every night knowing that you were a lynchpin in creating the Iraq war and all the limbless and lifeless and homeless that resulted and that the way you kept your ass out of trouble was to use domestic propaganda and pressure on Congresscritters to turn America into a torture regime and get to celebrate the horrors you wrought as “patriotism” then I guess you’d get a bit cranky and snotty with reporters too. That lack of sleep at night, when all the ghosts rise up to meet you, can do that.