Say Anything Blog

Which means that the whole kerfuffle isn’t nearly as scandalous as the self-righteous diatribes from Democrats, coupled with breathless reporting from their allies in the media, have led us to believe.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the program which Democrats were so angry about turns out to be an effort “to carry out a 2001 presidential authorization to capture or kill al Qaeda operatives.” Excuse me, but this is the Democrats’ idea of a scandal? Most Americans would not only expect, but demand, that the CIA do everything in its power to kill al-Qaeda operatives before they strike our country. Indeed, the Obama administration itself has reportedly escalated targeted killings of al-Qaeda terrorists in Pakistan using Predator and Reaper drones. These targeted killings are not assassinations — they are legitimate strikes against an enemy that has declared war on us and attacked us where we live.

That Congressional Democrats are outraged by this program speaks volumes about the state of their party on national security. The fact that the CIA was trying to kill al-Qaeda operatives should not be a point of outrage — it should be a point of pride.

Indeed, though as I’ve been saying for the past couple of days this controversy manufactured by the Democrats has less to do with what the CIA and/or Cheney did than it has to do with them muddying the waters surrounding their own lies about their knowledge of CIA interrogation techniques including waterboarding.  Pelosi, for instance, continues to insist that she was not aware that waterboarding was happening despite repeated disclosures from the CIA indicating that the opposite was true.  She’s been caught in a lie, and now she and other Democrats are launching a war on the CIA to distract from that lie.

And, what’s more, it’s a conveniently timed war.  After weeks of intense media and public scrutiny of their domestic agenda - from the “stimulus” spending spree to the cap and trade carbon tax to government health care - the Democrats aren’t doing so hot.  The cap and trade tax is stalled.  Government health care is stalled.  The public is increasingly becoming aware that the “stimulus” spending spree was a boondoggle.  And Obama’s poll numbers are slipping.

So what better time to drag out their favorite targets, Cheney and the Bush administration?  Since the media loves a good CIA conspiracy theory, and has probably grown to miss the Bush-bashing of the last eight years, they’ll no doubt get on board with it too.

Because that’s a lot easier to right about than the Democrats’ failed domestic agenda.