Illegal, Immoral, Unlawful and Unforgivable

It doesn't matter what oath one swears to what or whom. There is a line. There has always been a line.

I swore an oath of loyalty once. Implicit within that oath was to maintain secret those things which were identified by others as secret. I did that because, given the situation, there was nothing unlawful surrounding the secrets involved. I retired from the service having agreed to maintain many of those secrets for a given number of years. Since there was no unlawful act involved by those who wished those secrets kept, I agreed.

However, had I ever been forced to keep secret an act or process which was, in my moral view, unlawful, it would have been my duty to disobey the command which held me to any oath. That isn't something which I invented. Service personnel are taught that. "You shall not obey unlawful commands."

And so, certain members of the Congress of the United States of America should no longer be allowed to call themselves "honorable".

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

Before I move on, I have a small problem. The only source I actually see quoted here is Porter J. Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. He is a Bush loyalist and is not beyond attempting to deflect the current shit-storm away from Bush and Cheney.

That said, there is something more than a little disturbing.

[Jane] Harman, who replaced Pelosi as the committee's top Democrat in January 2003, disclosed Friday that she filed a classified letter to the CIA in February of that year as an official protest about the interrogation program. Harman said she had been prevented from publicly discussing the letter or the CIA's program because of strict rules of secrecy.

"When you serve on intelligence committee you sign a second oath -- one of secrecy," she said. "I was briefed, but the information was closely held to just the Gang of Four. I was not free to disclose anything."

Wrong. Absolutely... wrong.

Harman had a choice and she chose to cover her own ass. Being held to secrecy, to hide from public view, illegal acts, is what an organized crime syndicate does. Agreeing to it makes you no better than the goon in the ski mask pouring water down the throat of an immobilized prisoner.

Harman might as well have sent a letter to Santa Claus for all the good she knew it would accomplish. The only act that would have had an impact would have been to resign and let it all out.

From Shake's Sis:

All along the way down this dark road we've traveled the past six years, there have been people in positions to say something, to do something, to take a stand and say no, enough, stop. And if any one of them had publicly done so, had taken that risk in service to the country we're supposed to be, we might still be that country.

To disobey the unlawful command of secrecy in this case was their duty.

They failed.