ABC news reports the latest from Robert Gibbs:

“We’ve had a at least two-year policy disagreement with the Vice President of the United States of America. That policy disagreement is whether or not you can uphold the values in which this country was founded at the same time that you protect the citizens that live in that country,” said Gibbs.  “The President of the United States and this administration believes that you can. The Vice President has come to, in our opinion, a different conclusion.”

So now they have chosen to criminalize that policy disagreement. Is this really what Democrats want? Plenty of Democrats seem to be getting nervous. Josh Gerstein reports:

President Barack Obama’s attempt to project legal and moral clarity on coercive CIA interrogation methods has instead done the opposite — creating confusion and political vulnerability over an issue that has inflamed both the left and right.

And even if Democrats doubt the damage the disclosure has inflicted, they certainly can’t avoid the political risk that this will swamp their entire agenda. Gerstein again:

[W]ith Cheney joining those seeking the disclosure of even more information about the CIA anti-terror program, White House officials’ fears that a cascading series of disclosures will distract from Obama’s ambitious domestic agenda seem even more prescient than before.

Democrats may be indifferent to the wreckage left behind at CIA, but, gosh, if healthcare might be imperiled this could be serious! What is serious is the leap into the abyss of destructive investigation the president has made — within twenty-four hours of a damage-control visit to CIA. No campaign-style rally or triage visit can solve this now.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009 at 6:05 PM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.