A Blow For Justice, Or A Naked Warning?

Via BooMan, Newsweek is reporting that AG Eric Holder may be finally ready to appoint an independent prosecutor to look into the Bush torture regime. However, it's clear that the Village is warning strongly against Holder doing so.

These are not just the philosophical musings of a new attorney general. Holder, 58, may be on the verge of asserting his independence in a profound way. Four knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that he is now leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration's brutal interrogation practices, something the president has been reluctant to do. While no final decision has been made, an announcement could come in a matter of weeks, say these sources, who decline to be identified discussing a sensitive law-enforcement matter. Such a decision would roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama's domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform. Holder knows all this, and he has been wrestling with the question for months. "I hope that whatever decision I make would not have a negative impact on the president's agenda," he says. "But that can't be a part of my decision."

Now, let's think about this. We're supposed to imply that there's a choice here, and the implied choice is between Obama's domestic agenda and cleaning up Bush's mess, you can't have both.

Really?

Says who? Says the Village, apparently. The logic here is that if Eric Holder goes against his President's wishes and digs too deep in the past, he may scuttle health care and climate change legislation. Really? What do the two subjects have to do with each other? Why is this an either/or choice?

This is a warning from the Village, plain and simple, and the article is full of subtle and veiled threats, with the White House on one side (represented by Rahmbo) and the DoJ and Eric Holder on the other.

It's a pretty masterful stroke here. In this paragraph, we're supposed to believe that the White House is run by Rahmbo's strong-arm tactics, that he's basically Obama's Dick Cheney, and we're not supposed to root for them.

Any White House tests an attorney general's strength. But one run by Rahm Emanuel requires a particular brand of fortitude. A legendary enforcer of presidential will, Emanuel relentlessly tries to anticipate political threats that could harm his boss. He hates surprises. That makes the Justice Department, with its independent mandate, an inherently nervous-making place for Emanuel. During the first Clinton administration, he was famous for blitzing Justice officials with phone calls, obsessively trying to gather intelligence, plant policy ideas, and generally keep tabs on the department.

But at the same time a few paragraphs down, we're supposed to believe that Eric Holder is a tool of the Left and that he's risking everything to wreck the bipartisanship and comity of Washington, so we clearly can't be on his side.

It was soon clear to Holder that he might have to launch an investigation to determine whether crimes were committed under the Bush administration and prosecutions warranted. The obstacles were obvious. For a new administration to reach back and investigate its predecessor is rare, if not unprecedented. After having been deeply involved in the decision to authorize Ken Starr to investigate Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, Holder well knew how politicized things could get. He worried about the impact on the CIA, whose operatives would be at the center of any probe. And he could clearly read the signals coming out of the White House. President Obama had already deflected the left wing of his party and human-rights organizations by saying, "We should be looking forward and not backwards" when it came to Bush-era abuses.

The article gets worse with several examples of how Holder "miscalculated" and "made mistakes". We clearly can't trust the guy's decision to install an independent prosecutor, is the bold implication.

Holder and his team celebrated quietly, and waited for national outrage to build. But they'd miscalculated. The memos had already received such public notoriety that the new details in them did not shock many people. (Even the revelation, a few days later, that 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and another detainee had been waterboarded hundreds of times did not drastically alter the contours of the story.) And the White House certainly did its part to head off further controversy. On the Sunday after the memos were revealed, Emanuel appeared on This Week With George Stephanopoulos and declared that there would be no prosecutions of CIA operatives who had acted in good faith with the guidance they were given. In his statement announcing the release of the memos, Obama said, "This is a time for reflection, not retribution." (Throughout, however, he has been careful to say that the final decision is the attorney general's to make.)

Note in that last paragraph how Holder "miscalcuated" the "national outrage". This one's subtle but nasty, you're supposed to nod your head and go "Yeah, what national outrage? Nobody really seemed to care about all this torture nonsense, right?"

How quickly we forgot the month of April. You're supposed to. The Village has told you that nothing happened, that the outrage was "miscaluculated". Dirty F'ckin Hippies.

Ahh, but back to out hit piece. In fact the article goes to great lengths to portray the White House and the Justice Department as implacable foes.

The miscues began to reinforce a narrative that Justice has had a hard time shaking. White House officials have complained that Holder and his staff are not sufficiently attuned to their political needs. Holder is well liked inside the department. His relaxed, unpretentious style—on a flight to Rome in May for a meeting of justice ministers, he popped out of his cabin with his iPod on, mimicking Bobby Darin performing "Beyond the Sea"—has bred tremendous loyalty among his personal staff. But that staff is largely made up of veteran prosecutors and lawyers whom Holder has known and worked with for years. They do not see the president's political fortunes as their primary concern. Among some White House officials there is a not-too-subtle undertone suggesting that Holder has "overlearned the lessons of Marc Rich," as one administration official said to me.

And that all goes towards a finishing blow:

The next few weeks, though, could test Holder's confidence. After the prospect of torture investigations seemed to lose momentum in April, the attorney general and his aides turned to other pressing issues. They were preoccupied with Gitmo, developing a hugely complex new set of detention and prosecution policies, and putting out the daily fires that go along with running a 110,000-person department. The regular meetings Holder's team had been having on the torture question died down. Some aides began to wonder whether the idea of appointing a prosecutor was off the table.

But in late June Holder asked an aide for a copy of the CIA inspector general's thick classified report on interrogation abuses. He cleared his schedule and, over two days, holed up alone in his Justice Depart ment office, immersed himself in what Dick Cheney once referred to as "the dark side." He read the report twice, the first time as a lawyer, looking for evidence and instances of transgressions that might call for prosecution. The second time, he started to absorb what he was reading at a more emotional level. He was "shocked and saddened," he told a friend, by what government servants were alleged to have done in America's name. When he was done he stood at his window for a long time, staring at Constitution Avenue.

This is one hell of a hit piece, frankly. It savages Holder as a populist Leftist loon you're supposed to pity for just trying to do his job while being manipulated by Dirty F'ckin Hippies, and impales the White House as being beholden to the same political motives that drove the last Administration. You're supposed to ask "Man, isn't there anyone in Washington we should be listening to on this issue?"

And the answer, also implied, is the Serious Washington Centrists. Look at the disarray in Washington! Look at Obama lose control! Look at Eric Holder about to ruin his President's agenda by looking into the past! If only we had listened to the Wise Men of Washington!

So sayeth the Village. So sayeth us all. The implication here is that the Serious Centrists are supposed to step in and put a leash on both Rahmbo and Holder, and maintain the peace of the status quo. Otherwise, well, if Holder goes through with this, Obama could lose health care, cap and trade, the whole thing...

And you wouldn't want that, would you? Clearly, we need an intervention here from those moderate and well-respected lawmakers in the middle. You'll see this meme played out all over tomorrow's Sunday shows, and all the way up until Holder "makes his final decision". There's no doubt as to what the Village and the Centrists believe that final decision will be. At the same time, they get free shots at the naughty, overly partisan behavior of Rahmbo and the White House. After all, somebody has to rein these guys in, and who else has the credibility and the gravitas for that?

But I'm not falling for it. I don't think Obama is that stupid either. Does Holder have the stones for this? God I hope so. It's the right thing to do and always has been. Obama has left this in Holder's court for some time now. I'm hoping that it meant all along that Holder's job was to clean this mess up and that Obama will not interfere like the Village clearly wants him to do.

We will see. Obama has so far disappointed me on civil liberties. Holder's investigation could have been the card he was holding all along. Perhaps the White House and Holder are outsmarting the Village after all.

Things just got a hell of a lot more complicated. We'll see what happens.