Some very senior Dept. of Justice employees will be running for the hills, or at least for their lawyers, after a report on the legality of certain post-9/11 detentions is (finally!) released on Monday. Among those named, I was quite surprised to see Michael Chertoff, head of DOJ’s Criminal Division, who I mainly knew from his really top-notch job as US Attorney in New Jersey. For a Republican he seemed okay but apparantly he got caught up in the DC morass and went way past the bounds of decency.
In related news, the Bushites are pushing Colin Powell out front to defend their use of intelligence leading up to the Iraqi War as more and more of the games they played with the data come out. Powell, of course, is seen as the out of the inner circle moderate and I suppose Rove and Company hope to leverage his credibility to deflect what they can’t discredit.
A senior unnamed national security official told the Mercury News: “If many more months go by and our troops are still there, the Iraqis are still fighting each other and us, and we still haven’t found any WMD there will be hell to pay.” I see no reason that this won’t come to pass and perhaps end up as the key in leading the Democrats back to power, White House and Senate, in 2004. Assuming that they can find a candidate who is better than a bowl of lukewarm oatmeal to run for President–Dean may be able to pull this off but I don’t see Lieberman or Kerry making the cut.
BillSaysThis 