CIA's counterterrorism chief fired for opposing torture

Amazing stuff. The administration is so far gone that they're not just filling positions with unqualified hacks, but giving the axe to any who try to uphold the rule of law.

The CIA’s top counter-terrorism official was fired last week because he opposed detaining Al-Qaeda suspects in secret prisons abroad, sending them to other countries for interrogation and using forms of torture such as “water boarding”, intelligence sources have claimed.

Robert Grenier, head of the CIA counter-terrorism centre, was relieved of his post after a year in the job. One intelligence official said he was “not quite as aggressive as he might have been” in pursuing Al-Qaeda leaders and networks.

Vincent Cannistraro, a former head of counter-terrorism at the agency, said: “It is not that Grenier wasn’t aggressive enough, it is that he wasn’t ‘with the programme’. He expressed misgivings about the secret prisons in Europe and the rendition of terrorists.”

Grenier also opposed “excessive” interrogation, such as strapping suspects to boards and dunking them in water, according to Cannistraro.

And some Democrats still think that this White House will change its policies if they're pressured by pleasant requests. I remember in 2000 when a staunchly Democratic friend of mine claimed after the election that the Bushies would have to be more centrist because they didn't have a popular mandate. In stunned disbelief I told him that they obviously didn't give a damn about public approval. More than five years later, some still haven't acknowledged that simple fact. And I still wish I'd been wrong back then.