Rebuttal to Senate Intelligence Committee Report

Yesterday I posted a blog, which outlined the characteristics of the recent Senate Intelligence Committee report having to do with enhanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA prior to their discontinuation in 2009. The blog sought to say why the Democrat members of the Committee opposed the techniques and the reasons the Republicans on the Committee opposed the report. Now, however, I want to express my own opinion of the released report.

I believe that the report was obviously political in its essence. In spite of all the ethical, high-minded, patriotic rhetoric coming from the Committee Chairwoman, Senator Dianne Feinstein, I don’t believe a word of it. The document was obviously meant to draw one last gasp of criticism against the administration of President George W. Bush before the Republican-dominated Senate and Congress is seated. The publishing of that report would never be allowed by a Republican Senate.

Any government report that is endorsed by only one party with the total objection of the other party is highly suspect of being a partisan, political, statement and not a well-rounded and well thought-out piece of truth finding.

Critics of the report ably point out that the report was submitted to the public without giving a good consideration to the CIA’s statement; and the majority members of the Committee (the Democrats) did not even attend most of the 60 hours of meetings with the CIA designed to explain their side of the questions being considered. The report was published  without first submitting it to the Intelligence Community for fact checking.

The real damage done by the report, however, is the damage it has done to the function of the CIA and other intelligence agencies that seek to keep our nation safe from terrorist attack. No reasonable intelligence agent is going to take any risks to his own safety from damage meted out by government liberals or any other members of the “blame America first” bunch for doing his job of finding terrorist offenders and bringing them to justice. That report has put an end to covert action necessary to run an effective intelligence agency.

The report’s findings of errors could have been used effectively by the government to correct errors without publishing it to the general public and overseas observers and, thus, stirring up a firestorm of criticism against American intelligence agencies. This report should have been used in another way. But…politics comes first!   

On top of all that, production of the report absorbed no less than $40 million of tax-payer money!!

If any of my readers have not read yesterday’s blog, I would suggest that you go to http://manringen.blogspot.com and go the blog dated 12 December 2014.