Spies Slam Senate Report 

Yesterday's release of the Senate Intelligence Committee's so-called "torture report" certainly dominated the headlines. But one silver lining may be that former officials are now free to defend the controversial interrogation program. There has been surprising pushback to the report by former CIA officials, media commentators and even some Democrats. For example:
 

• Six former CIA directors and deputy directors, who served during the Clinton, Bush and Obama Administrations, co-authored an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal defending the interrogation program. In their estimation, the committee's report amounted to "a one-sided study marred by errors of fact and interpretation -- essentially a poorly done and partisan attack on the agency that has done the most to protect America after the 9/11 attacks." 
   
• Jose A. Rodriguez, Jr., lauded as one of the CIA's best agents, served as the director of the CIA's National Clandestine Service. When news broke in April that Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee were determined to publish a report, Rodriguez wrote in the Washington Post, "I ran the CIA interrogation program. No matter what the Senate report says, I know it worked." 

  In a separate column last week, Rodriquez ripped into liberal leaders for their "great hypocrisy," reminding us that these same anti-torture crusaders once essentially urged the CIA to "do all that it could" to destroy Al Qaeda. For example, in May 2002, Sen. Dianne Feinstein told the New York Times "we have to do some things that historically we have not wanted to do to protect ourselves." 
   

• Even liberal journalists can see the duplicity of Senate liberals. NBC's chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel told MSNBC last night:

  "I think this is really about changing the narrative of American history. This process went on, it was a brutal process, it was legal at the time... the CIA was asked to do it. The CIA was passing on its intelligence to the president. So, everyone in the world knew what was going on, including by the way, the Senate, which is pretending to be a bit of a babe in the woods. They knew what was going on at the time."

• Former Senator Bob Kerrey (D-NE), a decorated Vietnam veteran who served on the Senate Intelligence Committee and the 9/11 Commission, blasted the "the partisan nature of this report." According to Kerrey, liberal members of the committee, "started out with the premise that the CIA was guilty and then worked to prove it."

  To give you some indication of just how politically biased the report is, various left-wing groups, including the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), are using the report to call on the United Nations to prosecute former Bush Administration officials for war crimes. 

  The ACLU, realizing that such trials are unlikely to happen, is asking President Obama to pardon George W. Bush! But I doubt President Bush has any interest in being "pardoned" by anyone for what he did to protect America after 9/11. 

  The Unreality Of A Palestinian State 

  President Obama, Secretary of State Kerry and our State Department continue to prattle on about how homes for Israeli Jews in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria are a threat to peace. Nonsense! The real reason there is not a Palestinian state is that Palestinian society and the "man on the street" are too infected with raw hatred to be anyone's peaceful "neighbor." 

  A new poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research finds that80% of Palestinians support recent attacks on Israeli Jews, including stabbings and driving cars into crowds of Israeli women and children. 

  In addition, if Palestinians held elections today, Hamas would win. Keep in mind that our government officially considers Hamas to be a terrorist organization.

  Of course, none of these facts matter to the American left, which is increasingly infected by anti-Israel bias. It continues to bash our Israeli friends and demand more concessions -- all to ensure the creation of another Islamist terror state in the Middle East. 

  Grilled Gruber 

  There were many noteworthy moments during yesterday's House hearing featuring Dr. Jonathan Gruber. Among them was Dr. Gruber's apology for his "glib, thoughtless and sometimes downright insulting comments." (Watch this video for a refresher on Grubergate.) 

  The most poignant moment came when Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY) noted how she and her husband got caught up in the same "glitches" that ensnared so many other Americans during Obamacare's rollout. Ultimately, her husband died in part because their new Obamacare policy kept rejecting recommended tests and couldn't get their coverage straight.

  Rep. Lummis concluded her remarks by telling Dr. Gruber that the implementation of Obamacare had real consequences and that he should "get over your damn glibness." You can watch her remarks here.