JUST A REMINDER OF WHAT'S COMING

Here's news that's going to be either buried or misused:

U.S. Practiced Torture After 9/11, Nonpartisan Review Concludes

A nonpartisan, independent review of interrogation and detention programs in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks concludes that "it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the practice of torture" and that the nation's highest officials bore ultimate responsibility for it.

The sweeping, 577-page report says that while brutality has occurred in every American war, there never before had been "the kind of considered and detailed discussions that occurred after 9/11 directly involving a president and his top advisers on the wisdom, propriety and legality of inflicting pain and torment on some detainees in our custody." The study, by an 11-member panel convened by the Constitution Project, a legal research and advocacy group, is to be released on Tuesday morning.

... The Constitution Project's task force on detainee treatment [was] led by two former members of Congress with experience in the executive branch -- a Republican, Asa Hutchinson, and a Democrat, James R. Jones....

In all likelihood this will be ignored -- but I wonder if, instead, the right-wing media will decide to highlight the report, just to make the point that we used to do "enhanced interrogation" in the glory days of Bush and Cheney and, well, nobody blew up any marathons, did they?

The very existence of the report will be blamed on "liberals," even though the co-chair, Asa Hutchinson, is a Republican (and the head of the NRA-funded group that recently issued a "school safety" report recommending more guns in schools). We'll be told that while liberals are engaging in this sort of handwringing and second-guessing, evil dark-skinned terrorists are killing Americans.

Maybe they'll even get Dick Cheney out of his crypt to make this case in person. The opportunity to do that sort of thing seems to be what's keeping him alive. If not, I'm sure his daughter will be only too happy to act as his surrogate.

If a jihadist is found to be responsible for this attack, the right will blame President Obama. If jihadists continue to be among the suspects, Obama will be blamed. Obama may even be blamed if the attack came from the American right wing (He drove the culprit to it!), but that'll be a harder sell. In that case, expect Fox to spend a lot of airtime focusing on Jodi Arias.