Holder To Appoint CIA Prosecutor

Eric Holder

US Attorney General Eric Holder, a man who has met very few terrorists that he didn’t like, is about to take CIA interrogators to task by launching an investigation with a prosecutor into CIA use of Enhanced Interrogations and its handling of terrorist suspects.

The announcement comes hot on the heels of Obama administration efforts to keep new photos of detainee abuse from going public, citing the publication of such pictures could endanger the lives of Americans abroad. Holder has come out in favor of their publication.

One official told The Los Angeles Times that Holder is leaning toward a narrowly focused investigation that would look into “whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized.”

Nancy Pelosi

Politically, the Obama administration seems to be playing a very cyncial game here. While there is the rhetoric of torture, which was used last Spring by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others in a very cavalier manner, there is also the legal definition of torture, which is what prosecutors have to use to convict a CIA interrogator. While it is one thing to sloppily throw the word around in a debate or press conference, it is an entirely different matter to stick it in an indictment without being able to, in good faith, prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

And it would seem that Holder and his office simply does not have the goods.

Even if you go by what Holder himself has said in Congressional testimony, and what his department has filed in the US courts where they address this issue, they haven’t got a chance to prove a torture case against any CIA agent.

This puts the Obama administration in a quandary. It is afraid to close the case down because that would make their rabid, anti-Bush, anti-war base go berserk.The easiest thing in that case is for Holder to appoint a prosecutor to “look into it” as if this has not been investigated for the last nine years. The prosecutor will ultimately return no charges against the CIA.

What this does is it creates the illusion of movement for the Obama base; it makes them think that perhaps they will get the “reckoning” that was promised them during the campaign. And in the meantime, it gets them off of Holder’s back for the next 18 months or so.

Despite the visceral nature of the anti-Bush-war movement (which is has become suddenly non-existant in now that the war belongs to Obama), Bush’s anti-terrorist legislation remains favorable and is credited with keeping America safe since the terrorist attacks of 9-11.

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