So Washington reports that an intelligence comittee of the Senate is finally going to conduct an investigation of the CIA policies of detention and interrogation under the Bush administration. Do they mean the special methods of questioning? Do they want to revise the enhanced interrogation techniques, perhaps examine whether someone did something bad? Why fix something that’s not broken? As it turns out, they don’t exactly intend to find out whether the CIA broke any laws, but rather to “learn lessons from the programs and see if there are recommendations to be made for detention and interrogations in the future” … Maybe they’re planning to tidy things up a bit, I’m sure there’s a screw that could be tightened somewhere in there. But the agency will be undergoing scrutiny while it’s busy having its head and both arms stuck into two wars in the Middle East and who knows how many clandestine facilities outside the US for a good (or very bad) reason. CIA director Leon Panetta says CIA officers “should not face prosecution if they were acting on orders in accordance with Bush administration legal opinions”, which is to day, before the investigation beings, the chief is already admitting that members of his staff have been doing nasty stuff worthy of legal action on human rights abuses. But because they “did their job, they did it pursuant to the guidance that was provided them”, as if Bush & co. were a fraternity of friars lecturing schoolboys, and as if we’ve learned nothing from history about the free will … after more than sixty years. But if we have, then surely the findings of the intelligence committee – if it does its job diligently – should fall back on Panetta himself and his superiors … They can probably rest assured that it won’t come that far, though. It seems we’re awfully slow learners.

To make matters worse, “[the Obama administration] having considered the matter, adheres to its previously articulated position” on the rights of detainees in Afghanistan, which continues to defy both logic and the Geneva Conventions. Battlefield detainees held without charges by the United States in Afghanistan are not entitled to constitutional rights to challenge their detention, a predicament even worse than that of the prisoners of Guantánamo. Snafu.