Jack Bauer Meet John Kerry
Former Presidential candidate John Kerry takes issue with a Wall Street Journal editorial discussing the fact that some CIA agents now are taking out insurance policies- in case some future political lawsuit arises regarding their interrogation of terrorist suspects.
I imagine the WSJ editorial page must have had a rollicking good time as they pushed the 'print' button to unleash JFK's latest Po-Mo take on the world.
WWJBD? "What would Jack Bauer do?" is the question the Journal puts to us. The answer: buy insurance. John Kerry and the ACLU are then proposed in the article as the kind of folks who would subpoena Jack and require him to cash out his policy to pay his lawyers. The inference is that we need guys like Jack Bauer to help protect us from the current crop of Jihadis, and that people like John Kerry and the ACLU are out to get the guys like Jack Bauer, instead of the terrorists.
Leaving aside the political 'tone-deafness' in Kerry's decision to respond to an article about an imaginary TV character, he ridiculously cites The Valerie Plame Affair as an example of 'White House' culpability in doing damage to the CIA.
Says Kerry: "Former CIA case officer Jim Marcinkowski argued the Valerie Plame leak hurt "the credibility of our case officers…"
The anti-administration efforts of a thoroughly discredited Democratic political operative, who for a short time was a member of Kerry's Presidential campaign, assisted by an anti-war State Department malcontent, who was assisted by a liberal press has been in all the papers and all over the cool kid's blogs, but Kerry seems not to have noticed.
To recap in the real world outside the confines of Kerry's fevered imagination: Valerie Plame used questionable judgment, not to mention familial patronage, to recommend sending her unqualified husband on an important CIA fact-finding mission to Africa. Said husband, Joe Wilson, reported back his findings to the CIA, which then analyzed them in conjunction with other intelligence.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith then between them decided that they didn't like the government's final analysis, (which helped make the case to go to war against Iraq), and proceeded to 'leak' to the press how the government got it all wrong. In another time and place such an act might be considered treason.
This started a press inquiry to other government 'sources' as to the veracity these assertions. After much reporting and speculation Joe Wilson then 'came out' as the guy who went to Africa and 'disproved' the government's case for going to war against Iraq.
One anti-war (though not anti-administration) member of the press was then contacted by an anti-war member of the State Department and given some 'deep background' on the Wilsons that included the exposure that Valerie recommended Joe for the original job, which was subsequently reported.
Democrats and the New York Times screamed bloody murder at the name drop, a special prosecutor was appointed, a New York Times reporter went to jail, super-secret Valerie and her sidekick arranged to have their photos published in a stylish article and have been subsequently been discredited as hacks.
The only exposure that occurred was Joe Wilson being photographed signing copies of his book. Fitzmas was cancelled and the taxpayers were robbed again. In other words, the assertion that the White House is responsible for 'outing' Valerie Plame and that George Bush slept at the switch by not holding an imaginary White House figure responsible, is a refusal to read the papers at best.
But back to Jack.
"It's been reported that CIA officers refused to be trained in the administration's controversial interrogation techniques, and in at least one instance these techniques yielded questionable information aimed at pleasing the interrogators."
"It's been reported?" By whom and for what reason? Which CIA officers and which techniques? Was Jack himself involved? If this is a credible accusation I certainly want to know specifics.
For Kerry what seems to be important is that in at least "one instance" over the course of five years "these techniques yielded questionable information." It's obvious that Kerry hasn't a clue about intelligence work. I'm guessing that we've been fed "questionable information" in more than one instance during the past five days.
While Kerry considers another run for the White House his major concern seems to be fighting another military force: the Swiftboat Vets. According to another article published today in The Examiner, Kerry aims "to kick their ass from one end of America to the other.”
Something tells me that if Jack Bauer were a real agent he'd be kicking John Kerry's ass from one end of America to the other.
*Many of the links in this post were culled from Just One Minute, which has a comprehensive timeline devoted to The Valerie Plame Affair. Tom Maguire has been all over this from day one.
