BWare

Hard to believe you could write for the NYT and write this uncritically without thinking of Judy Miller. Though I guess she’s turned that into a good gig on Fox.

Mr. Brennan, a son of Irish immigrants, is a grizzled 25-year veteran of the C.I.A. […] a top agency official during the brutal interrogations of the Bush administration[…]

“If John Brennan is the last guy in the room with the president, I’m comfortable, because Brennan is a person of genuine moral rectitude,” Mr. Koh said. “It’s as though you had a priest with extremely strong moral values who was suddenly charged with leading a war.”

If you, at some point in your past, had not only known of, but been in charge of, black prisons in remote counties unfettered by any law or moral, torture, rendition (a nice word for kidnapping), and murder, it’s hard for me to credit “genuine moral rectitude.” But then I was always suspicious of that Saul character and late Damascan conversions.

ObXKCD (a meme I’d like to revive). Hover for the punchline.