Yet Mr. Panetta can only do so much to reassure his troops. Faced with legal jeopardy, CIA staff will avoid intelligence-gathering risks, making it that much harder for the CIA director to succeed in his day job—protecting the country from harm. It will matter little that the president retained successful Bush-era counterterrorism programs if there is no intelligence-community will to implement them.
Perhaps you should broaden the scope of your political sources beyond Fox News, the opinion columns of the Wall Street Journal, and other conservative outlets. Last I checked, the word on the street was that we still don't have any evidence that Cheney's "enhanced interrogation techniques" (a.k.a. torture methods) were actually effective...
ReplyDeletehttp://mediamatters.org/research/200908310023
http://washingtonindependent.com/57273/ex-fbi-agent-still-no-evidence-that-cheneys-torture-methods-work
By the way, even many conservatives are willing to admit the CIA & military were breaking the law with their torture techniques:
A Neo-Con
http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/04/29/torture_isnt_conservative
Libertarians
http://www.reason.com/news/show/135644.html
Conservative Christians
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/february/23.32.html
Senate Republicans
http://democrats.senate.gov/journal/entry.cfm?id=292813
Just to give a few examples.