Covering who's ass?

From the NYT:

The CIA believed it was operating lawfully in detaining and interrogating 96 suspected terrorists at locations from Thailand to Europe, until the Supreme Court this summer demolished that legal foundation.

The CIA is now squarely in the middle of election-year politics as Congress tries to write new definitions that could reshape the intelligence agency's program.

"At the end of the day, the director -- any director -- of the CIA must be confident that what he has asked an agency officer to do under this program is lawful," CIA Director Michael Hayden wrote employees on Thursday.

President Bush was more blunt: "They don't want to be tried as war criminals," he said at a news conference Friday.

Two things: You're a despicable human being if you engage in torture. "Lawful" or not.

And "they" don't want to be tried as war criminals, Mr. President? Bush has never given two shits about the people who work for him - even if they are his type of scum. He'll trot out "concern" when he thinks it's to his political advantage, but let's make no bones about it: George W. Bush has never thought that he'd be tried as a war criminal, despite the fact that he either approved of the torture regime used in these secret prisons, or, once he knew about it, didn't find it necessary to stop it.

George W. Bush needn't worry about it. The man has spent his life lurching from failure to failure, and he's never been held accountable for any one of them. He always seems to fail upwards. Why start worrying now?

Preventing him from being able to do more damage, however, is an important start.