Porter Goss suspects it:
A disturbing epidemic of amnesia seems to be plaguing my former colleagues on Capitol Hill. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, members of the committees charged with overseeing our nation’s intelligence services had no higher priority than stopping al-Qaeda. In the fall of 2002, while I was chairman of the House intelligence committee, senior members of Congress were briefed on the CIA’s “High Value Terrorist Program,” including the development of “enhanced interrogation techniques” and what those techniques were. This was not a one-time briefing but an ongoing subject with lots of back and forth between those members and the briefers.
Today, I am slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed; or that specific techniques such as “waterboarding” were never mentioned. It must be hard for most Americans of common sense to imagine how a member of Congress can forget being told about the interrogations of Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. In that case, though, perhaps it is not amnesia but political expedience.
The world has sharp edges. Good men have done hard things to keep those edges away from the soft center.
Politicians play games, pundits adopt stylized postures, and all the while the darkness looks for ways to rush in.
The government we deserve.
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Government of the ignorant, by the ignorant, and for the ignorant. Jefferson told us the result of such, and we are getting it good and hard.
With the present bunch, you need to throw in a healthy dose of mendacity.
I prefer to think of it as “an unprotected election”…meaning “unprotected by knowledge…of basic economics, history and civics…all pushed off the school’s plate, to make way for sex ed and self-esteem boosting every gets a trophy activities, but no recess or dodgeball.
Strange…they can all manage to get a barrier device on a fruit from Central America, but they haven’t a clue that the President is not in charge of everything in the entire Universe.
What have we done? (and, how did we do it?)
There are liars and then their are [insert profanity here] liars. As QM relates, you get the liars your deserve, starting at the Speaker and working about.
Worse is the fact those liars have also committed teason by giving aid and comfort to our enemies. It matters not they do it under cover of the first amendment, which is wrested almost daily. The first allows political speech, but does not give cover to the divulging of state secrets needed to carry out the national defense.
I’m not really sure that ALL of us deserve what we’re getting…
No, alas. But we are outvoted, and the parties keep giving us evil people rather than a choice.
I truly hate to keep hearing “the government we deserve” when I know what I want and have argued for, lobbied for, and voted for it regularly despite receiving increasing disappointment in return for the most part.
Maybe I and we need to do more. Sure would help if the schools were not breeding little green socialists, too.
Lex, it was a tough couple days with you being gone or busy. Glad you’re back.
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil men is for good men to do nothing.
How many people stayed at home back in November because John McCain wasn’t “conservative enough” for their taste? I wonder how that’s working out for them now.
Decisions, like elections, have consequences. I fear “society” has been hammered into believing that you are not responsible for your decisions…look at Congress now, claiming they knew NOTHING! about the CIA doing what it had to do…yet the CIA Chief of the time is saying they knew, and knew full well.
It’s not Hillary’s fault, or Nancy’s…it was BUSH!
M6, John McCain was not conservative enough for my taste, but I did not stay home.
Hopefully conservatives will not stay home in 2010. And, hopefully, between now and the next elections conservatives will call, write, email their representatives on a continuous basis.
Do wish Palin (or Romney) had been #1 instead of McCain. Can also click my heels twice but I will still be in NC, not Kansas.
As Mark Twain said, Congress is the only hereditary criminal class ins America.
Slackjawed indeed. Until we start removing these clowns from office, and elect people with values and principals, this is what we’ll get. Political expedience? Hell, that’s their whole schtick. Consolodate power, remain in office, collect a paycheck. We’d be well served if the swine flu pandemic truly infected the swine in D.C.
Nancy Pelosi, more commonly referred to as the Madam of the House of the Rising Sun, is a professional politician. She can and does lie through her botoxed teeth whenever her lips are moving. She can crack the whip better than any other herder and will leave the truth in the dust at the first glance of potential political trouble.