The inmates are officially running the asylum in Washington now. Those pillars of black smoke wafting down Constitution Avenue are from the torches lit by the far left Democrats on the Hill have for a partisan witch hunt . Now unencumbered by any shred of fairness or concern for national security, the congressional Democratic leaders are racing to outdo each other in setting up committees to publicly investigate Bush administration and intelligence community officials involved in authorizing "torture" of captured al-Qa'ida terrorists by the CIA. I use "torture" in quotes because the hyperbolic, red-faced allegations by Democratic leaders such as Patrick Leahy, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi—and even President Obama—that the interrogation methods authorized by the Bush administration to use against terrorists constitute torture are beyond laughable; by their definition, anyone who has ever served in the military, or even rushed a fraternity has been tortured. Here's a list of the so-called "torture" techniques detailed by the Senate Armed Services Committee:

- Waterboarding (Yeah, it's uncomfortable and freaks people out, but hundreds of US servicemen get waterboarded in survival training every year)
- Face-slapping (I guess the Three Stooges must have also been torture aficionados)
- Sleep deprivation (Hmm, well I guess thousands of college students are "tortured" every year when they pull all nighters; or for that matter parents are "tortured" by their newborn infants who deny them restful sleep for weeks on end)
- Sitting in uncomfortable positions (has anyone ever been stuck in a crappy government office chair day in and day out?)
- Exposing prisoners to hot and cold temperatures (well anyone who has ever been in the infantry has thus been tortured...)
- Food deprivation (ditto)
- Hooding prisoners during interrogation (reminds me of my fraternity initiation)
- Stripping prisoners naked (ditto)
- Shaving heads and beards (Really? This is torture? Well, by all means, let's go ahead and arrest every military barber)
- Slamming prisoners against walls (what is often omitted from press reports is that prisoners were slammed against false walls that were softer than normal walls and the prisoners were restrained to prevent injury from the impact...and again just like fraternity initiation)

If you like the Stooges, then you must like torture...

It seems that the Armed Services committee omitted the part about the prisoners being struck in the hindquarters with large wooden paddles while being forced to say "Thank you, sir, may I have another?" or being forced to make 3 am runs to 7-11 to pick up hot dogs for the guards at Gitmo. Just as a mental exercise, imagine for a minute if you took someone who survived being in an Iraqi prison under Saddam and asked him whether he would chose being subjected to the American interrogation playbook or Saddam's interrogation playbook, which one would he choose? I can almost imagine the laughter. And let us not forget, these were techniques employed against terrorists who are committed to our destruction.  What's even funnier is that Obama's own Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair admitted in private memo to intelligence employees that the interrogations had yielded "high value information" against al-Qa'ida.

Make no mistake, this is about political retribution, pure and simple. And Nancy Pelolsi and the rest of the Democratic leadership are committed to press forward with their "Truth Commissions" (read: show trials) to villify the Bush administration, no matter what the cost to national security by revealing to all the world—including our enemies—how our nation conducts intelligence operations and what the government will and will not do to captured terrorists. As a candidate, President Obama promised to "reach across the aisle," but that appears to be an empty promise as he appears to be content to just stand idly by while these partisan witch hunts move forward. This is worse than politics as usual, this is just outright shameful. The American people should be outraged at this abuse of power and, even worse, the endangerment of American national security.

UPDATE (4/23/2009):
An unnamed Congressional staffer leaked to the media today an outline of how Speaker Pelosi's Truth Commission will be implemented: