Former Nebraska Democrat Governor and Senator Bob Kerrey blasted his former Democrat colleagues in the Senate over yesterday’s release of the CIA torture report in an op-ed for USA Today: For many years, Kerrey sat on the Senate Select Intelligence Committee and was also a member of the 9/11 Commission. So his criticisms cannot be easily dismissed:

I do not need to read the report to know that the Democratic staff alone wrote it. The Republicans checked out early when they determined that their counterparts started out with the premise that the CIA was guilty and then worked to prove it.

When Congress created the intelligence committees in the 1970’s, the purpose was for people’s representatives to stand above the fray and render balanced judgments about this most sensitive aspect of national security. This committee departed from that high road and slipped into the same partisan mode that marks most of what happens on Capitol Hill these days.

Kerrey assailed Senate Democrats for not interviewing CIA personnel allegedly involved in these incidents and for not making any recommendations. This reinforces my argument yesterday that Senate Democrats simply wish to give the CIA, the Bush Administration and the incoming Republican Senate a black eye while making us less able to deal with those who wish to destroy us.