Spare us the hand-wringing please. The CIA is a spy organization. Think about that for a minute. It is organized to operate outside the rule of international and sovereign law (just ask Gautemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, etc, etc.) The CIA has assassinated democratically elected foreign heads of state. Given the mission to work outside the laws of sovereign nations, why in the world would anyone suppose the CIA would respect the laws of the United States? They respect one law — their own. The end justifies the means… even when the end is failure.

The Iraq invasion was not an intelligence failure, it was a policy failure…and young men and women continue to die years after. Visit my DECLASSIFIED SECRETS site and I'd enjoy hearing your opinions.
http://www.declassifiedsecrets.blogspot.com/

George W. Bush used the people's and the congresses belief that all presidents have the integrity to separate defense of country, from defense of politics. He bullied the congress into accepting his viewpoint. The congress would back down, believing that no one who had been elected president could so blatantly lie and distort the facts. Bush's lies are still being defended to this day.

The CIA has problems and they should be addressed, but Congress must accept that it was deceived and made a fool of by George W. Bush. Congressional oversight of the CIA really became CIA oversight of the CIA during the Bush Administration. Porter Goss, a former CIA operative, was the head of the House Intelligence Committee before becoming head of the CIA. The CIA's man in the U. S. Senate (Bill Nelson D-Fl), in a rare show of non-partisanship, immediately supported the republican Goss's nomination. The CIA penetration of the House and and Senate allowed it to disrupt, divide, and lie to the Senate and Congressional committees. With the blessings of the Bush administration the CIA wouldn't have to worry about any non-Bushies looking over their shoulders.

Most of the CIA leadership was smart enough not to have anything to do with the Bushies, but a few did come forward and offered up their souls to the Bushies. These are the people who are fighting any investigation within the CIA. All the power that they had accumulated during the Bush administration would be lost. They could find themselves at the mercy of the laws and the people that they had stepped on in getting to their present positions.

Congress must face the fact that they had been fooled and that the soldiers in intelligence community were doing what they were told to do. Congress must now take the difficult road of investigating and prosecuting the people who gave those orders. Some suggestions: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, Douglas Feith, John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee.

P.S. Did I mention that the CIA's man in the U. S. Senate (Bill Nelson D-Fl) said Leon Panetta was a close friend.

We want Dick Cheney and Dubya put on trial. It's as simple as that.

There is no comparison with U.S. water-boarding torture and the death of, (how many?), captives to the Yugoslav combatant’s blatant murder of thousands of unarmed civilians. Not fair to compare these even if the same point of law was broken in each set of circumstances.

I want my pound of flesh out of the Bush-Cheney regime for what they did in my name and what it has done to our country, but I’m not willing to sacrifice the good graces Briton, our closest and most beloved ally, on principal.