Barack Obama stepped lightly around the Senate Intelligence Report on CIA torture, knowing that he can condemn what happened in the dark days after 9/11, but that he can’t afford to cast the CIA aside. He can condemn torture, James Oliphant writes in the National Journal, but he still defends the intelligence community. As one White House official put it, CIA agents “have saved lives. They are saving lives as we speak.”
Former CIA director Michael Hayden fires back at Senate Intelligence Committee and its torture report. Via Politico.
Inhumane scenes from a CIA prison. What the torture report tells us. Via Amy Davidson at the New Yorker.
Does torture actually work? What the CIA claims it can do and what the committee found. Via The New York Times.
Jeffrey Goldberg writes in The Atlantic that it wasn’t the CIA that first made the post-9/11 case for rage and retribution. It was everywhere you looked.
Meanwhile, congressional leaders have apparently reached a deal on spending. (Meaning, no shutdown this time.) Via The New York Times.
As part of the spending deal, Congress will block the D.C. legalization of pot. Just one more reason to be happy you don’t live in Washington — where you don’t get to elect anyone to Congress, so guys from Utah and Oklahoma pretend to represent you. Via Vox.
So the Darrell Issa era flames out with a final bit of Grubering. You had to be there. Fortunately Dana Milbank was. Via the Washington Post.
