Christiane Brown interviews Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in this audio clip.
Reid says torture has been committed, but that the top priority should be delaying, and that certain people just shouldn’t be prosecuted, even if that means failing to follow the law. Brown is brilliant and relentless. Reid is as pathetic as you’d think he’d be when confronted by a real journalist. Reid wants nothing done until November 2009 when the Senate Intelligence Committee produces its report, after which he’s open to starting more committee investigations, panels, or commissions, but not necessarily prosecutions.
Here’s a key segment:
Reid: Listen, if you ask me my opinion.
Brown: Yeah.
Reid: What went on, waterboarding, torture, of course it was. I don’t want to be drowned. I I think that as afraid of – as afraid of – as afraid as I am with water, frankly probably you could drown me and I would confess to a lot of things that weren’t true….
Brown: Isn’t it the responsibility of the United States to enforce criminal law if it appears that war crimes have occured?
Reid: No matter how I personally feel about torture, I think that we as you’ve indicated that we are a nation of law. And that’s why we have to get the facts and then have people render legal decisions which certainly don’t take very long, render opinion as to whether or not what was done was wrong, illegal, immoral, and you know all the other issues.
Brown: Well let me ask you, Senator Reid, you’ve seen the evidence come forward. We’ve heard Dick Cheney himself say he waterboarded and he’d waterboard again…. Isn’t that therfore an obvious and admitted crime right there in the face of the American people?
Reid: Something everyone has to weigh is this, we’re a nation of laws and no one can dispute that, but I think what we have to, the hurdle we have to get over is whether we want to go after people like Cheney. That’s a decision that has to be made….
Brown: …Isn’t it our obligation if he’s violated the law … ?
Reid: There are a lot of decisions that are made that are right that may not be absolutely totally within the framework of law. For example with President Nixon….