“I'm a liberal on this show. I have no problem with it. To be honest with you, these are terrorists. We're trying to protect ourselves. You got to do what you got to do.”

◼ Liberals on MSNBC Panel Trash Senate Dems’ CIA Report

Morning Joe regulars Donny Deutsch and former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D., Tenn.) weighed in Friday on the recent CIA report, which has been harshly criticized as a strictly partisan report.

“I’m a liberal on this show. I have no problem with it,” Deutsch said. “To be honest with you, these are terrorists. We’re trying to protect ourselves. You got to do what you got to do.”

“I don’t know if I’m turning into a right-winger in my old age. We are not privy to a lot what’s going on in the world. I wonder how many people who lost friends and family — if we had done some of this earlier maybe we could have saved them,” Deutsche said. “If you said to me tomorrow, it’s a gray area but maybe doing this would save my children or my friend’s children, I go yes.”

◼ Chuck Todd on CIA report: 'You've got to remember the way things felt in the moment' - Eddie Scarry/Washington Examiner

NBC's "Meet the Press" host Chuck Todd said Friday Americans are likely to be "very forgiving" about a new congressional report that says the CIA has in the past used extreme interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists.

◼ What Dianne Did - Roger L. Simon/PJM

Roger L. Simon agrees with Dennis Miller about Senator Dianne Feinstein and the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on enhanced terror techniques:

"Indeed just who would want to join our intelligence agencies, knowing they could be so easily sabotaged by people they thought were supporting, not to mention employing, them?"

The dust is far from settled regarding the condemnatory Senate report on the Central Intelligence Agency’s use of so-called torture with terror detainees. CIA Director John Brennan is disputing the report’s claim that those enhanced terror techniques were worthless and netted no information, while Intelligence Committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein insists that her report is correct. Former DCIA Michael Hayden and, not surprisingly, Dick Cheney had weighed in on Brennan’s side the day before.

My first thought was that this was all much ado about nothing. We have been hearing the same arguments about waterboarding and the like for the last six — or is it ten — years with the same people lined up pro and con. None of it is very new, although Feinstein and the media are pretending it is. Moreover, the release of the report was clearly timed to distract from the embarrassing appearance of Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber before Congress. It also was rushed out before the new Republican Congress can deep six it after they are sworn in next year. (They had a point. No Republicans or, more importantly, CIA operatives who actually participated in the actions in question were interviewed for the report.)

All this is SOP in heavily politicized Washington...

But still I put this all down to the usual liberal roundelay with Dianne Feinstein competing against many of her ilk for “Moral Narcissist in Chief,” until I heard an outraged Dennis Miller on the radio Wednesday. He was treating this report as if it was the end of our country as we know it — and he had a point. His reason: who would join the CIA now knowing your own government doesn’t have your back? And we need the CIA more than ever in the covert struggle against the likes of ISIS, Iran, al Qaeda, North Korea, China and Russia.



◼ Cheney: Senate Report ‘Full of Crap’ - Washington Free Beacon

“We did exactly what we needed to do to catch those who were guilty on 9/11 and to prevent a further attack, and we were successful on both parts.”

◼ Ex-CIA Directors: Interrogations Saved Lives - Wall St. Journal

The Senate Intelligence investigators never spoke to us—the leaders of the agency whose policies they are now assailing for partisan reasons.

◼ CIA Director Calls Enhanced Interrogation Techniques Something ‘We Need To Come To Terms With’ - MRCTV

◼ A Tortured Report - Stephen Hayes and Thomas Joscelyn/Weekley Standard
◼ Thrice-married Mrs. Feinstein has given us a stunningly dishonest account. - Discussion at Lucianne

◼ Democrats’ CIA gambit backfires - Jennifer Rubin/Washington Post
◼ Somehow you knew this would happen. - Discussion at Lucianne