Senator Bond Hearts Torture

Alright, Obama said that he wanted to look forward, not backward, and therefore wasn't going to investigate the Bush torture policies.  I got that.  But the Justice Department is the one that investigates crime, and they want to open a limited investigation of crimes that went beyond Bush's torture policies.  I got that.  Republicans don't want this, as they fear that an investigation will let everyone know that they were lying about how we were torturing folks all these years; and just want the whole mess to be forgotten about.  I've got that.  This all makes sense to me and was to be expected.

Senator "Kit" Bond of Missouri is upset because Obama pledged to not look back and now his Attorney General is looking back.  I got that.  Senator Bond is now arguing that having the DOJ investigate this is bad because it might hinder the Senate Intelligence Committee's own investigation into the matter.  Huh?  I understand if his argument is that he doesn't want us looking back, but he doesn't want us looking back so that his committee can keep looking back?  That doesn't make sense to me. 

And what he's saying is that, if these criminal tortuers believe they'll be prosecuted for their criminal activities, they won't want to confess their criminal activities to his committee.  And because they'll be reluctant to confess their criminal activity, it'll slow down their investigation, which will distract them from taking care of more important stuff; like Afghanistan and Iran.  And that's a bad thing, because he just doesn't think the work his committee is doing on this is of any particular importance, so the DOJ needs to step aside on its investigation, so his committee can rush through its own investigation and put the matter to rest.

In other words, it's wrong for the DOJ to do a thorough investigation which might lead to people being prosecuted for criminal activities because it could hinder his committee's less thorough investigation which will ignore confessions of criminal activities and probably shouldn't be done in the first place.  Right.  Look, I understand the need to have an opposition party, but could we please get an opposition that wasn't so entirely stupid?  Or a media that wasn't so shallow that they actually think these boneheads are geniuses?  Is that too much to ask for?  I mean, I understand why Bond's doing this.  I just can't figure out why he's comfortable saying this out loud.

And on a sidenote: If it's super-important that a few low-level ACORN employees attempted to aid a self-described pimp in his criminal activities, might it be at least a little important that a few Senators want to aid the criminal activities of torturers?  Probably not.