Today in the Washington Post, Porter Goss informs us that he has remained largely silent on the public stage since leaving his post as CIA director almost three years ago, but now feels compelled to speak out because our government has crossed the red line between properly protecting our national security and trying to gain partisan political advantage. In doing so, Porter Goss insults our intelligence for his purposes are rather transparent.

I am speaking out now because I feel our government has crossed the red line between properly protecting our national security and trying to gain partisan political advantage. We can't have a secret intelligence service if we keep giving away all the secrets. Americans have to decide now.

I might inform Mr. Goss the rule of law is the bedrock of our national security. It is because of our commitment to the rule of the law that this felicitous union of the many has so endured and prospered through the ages. Nor is the left trying to secure some partisan political advantage. Should any Democrats, including the Speaker have been complicit in permitting the debasement of The Constitution and the laws that govern our conduct as a nation, then let them too face the wrath of the nation.

What secrets have we given away? We don't torture. That's not a secret unless you broke the law and tortured. In which case, you broke the law. What we can't have is a secret intelligence service that runs covert operations that are contrary to the principles of democratic governance.

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John Hinderaker of the far-right blog Power Line thinks that liberals do not just want to defeat conservatives at the polls but that we want to incarcerate them for their views. Actually, I want to make conservatism wholly irrelevant but to be frank conservatives are doing that job well enough on their own.

Many liberals don't just want to defeat conservatives at the polls, they want to send them to jail. Toward that end, they have sometimes tried to criminalize what are essentially policy differences. President Obama hinted at another step in that direction when he said today that he is open to the idea of bringing criminal charges against the Justice Department lawyers who wrote opinions to the effect that waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods could legally be used on al Qaeda detainees. Obama said the question was a complicated one, and the decision will ultimately be made by Attorney General Eric Holder.

The idea of prosecuting a lawyer because a wrote a legal analysis with which the current Attorney General disagrees is so outrageous that I can't believe it would be seriously considered. Still, President Obama and his party may achieve another objective by publicly making this kind of threat: deterring Republicans from serving in public life. For many Republicans considering whether to accept an appointment to government office, the prospect that they may be subjected to criminal prosecution if the next administration is Democratic could well tip the balance in favor of remaining in private life.

Waterboarding, or torture generally, isn't a policy dispute. It is a moral issue and moreover it just so happens to be both unconstitutional and illegal because the United States has ratified international treaties proscribing its use. What is outrageous is that some conservatives think torture is an acceptable instrument of the American state. I think we are a better country than that. At the very least, Jay Bybee should be impeached and disbarred.

Mr. Hinderaker's logic is specious. It is not Mr. Bybee's conservatism that is at issue. It is the fact that he wrote a memo attempting to provide legal justification for the use of practices that are unconstitutional and illegal.

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Our friends over at Firedoglake have put out a short post on the waterboarding of Al-Qaeda operative Khalid Sheikh Mohammed  who was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003. I have always wanted to meet Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for I have a number of questions to ask him. You see, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed killed one of my closest friends, Daniel Pearl. I don't remember actually meeting Danny but we became close and fast friends in the Spring of our freshman year at Stanford. We would rush and pledge the same fraternity, share our love of folk music from the world over, muse what it was like to be American and not be American for he and I are sons of immigrants, and talk politics for hours on end. I last saw Danny five months before he was butchered by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Those of us who knew Danny are very protective of Danny and his legacy because Danny Pearl was an exceptional human being. It is hard to talk about Danny and not wax eloquent. It is beyond belief to us that when Al Qaeda killed Danny they killed someone who actually was interested in having their grievances heard. Not that Danny or I sympathized with Islamic terrorism but  there are many who think it important to understand its causes so that we might be able to better mitigate its spread.

In thinking about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and the fact that he was waterboarded 183 times in the month of March of 2003, I cannot but express how this denigrates everything that Danny stood for. In waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, we have descended to the level of that butcher. We have proved that we are no better than them and I refuse to believe that. The West has a moral obligation to live up to the ideals that Danny Pearl embodied.

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It was a day bereft of happiness, a day that the City on Hill shone less brightly for in truth today marks a moment in our national history where we must confront failure, the failure of some amongst us to live up to the ideals of this felicitous union we call the United States. While I have never shared the view that the United States represents the last best chance for mankind nor that the American Republic is without sin, for its history is littered with ignominious episodes that reflect poorly on our national character, I do, however, take the view that this noble experiment in human association we call a government of the people, for the people and by the people is one worth fighting for and perfecting. We can get it right if we so endeavor.

I have read the President's Statement of Memos a half dozen times, perhaps more. I have searched my conscience and I must admit that I am troubled by the closing paragraphs of the President's statement.

This is a time for reflection, not retribution. I respect the strong views and emotions that these issues evoke. We have been through a dark and painful chapter in our history. But at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past. Our national greatness is embedded in America's ability to right its course in concert with our core values, and to move forward with confidence. That is why we must resist the forces that divide us, and instead come together on behalf of our common future.

The United States is a nation of laws. My Administration will always act in accordance with those laws, and with an unshakeable commitment to our ideals. That is why we have released these memos, and that is why we have taken steps to ensure that the actions described within them never take place again.

No doubt this is a time for reflection. Our system, that nation of laws, failed. But I am afraid that I am perplexed by the President's call to allow injustice to simply pass. It's not retribution that should be sought but justice. To pretend that we can close this "dark and painful chapter in our history" as the President notes by simply shutting the door on justice further stains our national enterprise. It is because the United States aspires to be a nation of laws at all times for all and not just at select moments for some that it is required that the intellectual authors of these unAmerican and illegal practices that have shamed our national honor and impugned our national character be punished.

To this end, I welcome Senator Leahy's call for a  Reconciliation Process and Truth Commission.

We need to get to the bottom of what happened -- and why -- so we make sure it never happens again.

One path to that goal would be a reconciliation process and truth commission.  We could develop and authorize a person or group of people universally recognized as fair minded, and without axes to grind.  Their straightforward mission would be to find the truth.  People would be invited to come forward and share their knowledge and experiences, not for purposes of constructing criminal indictments, but to assemble the facts.  If needed, such a process could involve subpoena powers, and even the authority to obtain immunity from prosecutions in order to get to the whole truth.  Congress has already granted immunity, over my objection, to those who facilitated warrantless wiretaps and those who conducted cruel interrogations.  It would be far better to use that authority to learn the truth.

During the past several years, this country has been divided as deeply as it has been at any time in our history since the Civil War.  It has made our government less productive and our society less civil.  President Obama is right that we cannot afford extreme partisanship and debilitating divisions.  In this week when we begin commemorating the Lincoln bicentennial, there is need, again, "to bind up the nation's wounds." President Lincoln urged that course in his second inaugural address some seven score and four years ago.  

Rather than vengeance, we need a fair-minded pursuit of what actually happened.  Sometimes the best way to move forward is getting to the truth, finding out what happened, so we can make sure it does not happen again.  When I came to the Senate, the Church Committee was working to expose the excesses of an earlier era.  Its work helped ensure that in years to come, we did not repeat the mistakes of the past.  We need to think about whether we have arrived at such a time, again. We need to come to a shared understanding of the failures of the recent past.

It is not the CIA agents who need to be brought to justice, it is the purveyors of evil who served in the Bush Administration that provided the intellectual underpinnings for violations of domestic laws and international treaties even if that means bringing the former President before an inquiry. The first of the memos, from August 2002, was signed by Jay S. Bybee, who oversaw the Office of Legal Counsel, and gave the C.I.A. its first detailed legal approval for waterboarding and other harsh treatment. Three others, signed by Steven G. Bradbury, sought to reassure the agency in May 2005 that its methods were still legal, even when multiple methods were used in combination, and despite the prohibition in international law against "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment.

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