"... and, as Digby ironically notes, it is the Right, far more than the Left ..."

I pointed this out in the comments there, but I'll do it here as well. Nothing makes the point better than the book put out from Regnery - a publishing company that apparently resides in some parallel universe - which basically asserts the CIA as an organization is treasonous. It came out last year.

http://www.regnery.com/books/sabotage.html

Sabotage: America's Enemies Within the CIA

How Bush-hating CIA Bureaucrats Are Sabotaging the War on Terror

Since the attacks on September 11, 2001, intelligence collection has become the number-one weapon in the effort to defeat al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. A plot penetrated is an attack stopped. And to the outside observer, the CIA has performed well as a key partner in the Bush administration’s War on Terror. But as Rowan Scarborough reveals in this groundbreaking new book, significant elements within the CIA are undermining both the president and national security through leaks, false allegations, and outright sabotage.

"Why, contrary to popular belief, the CIA has become predominantly liberal"

Right, because when it comes to treasonous subversive activity it's got to have liberals involved!

"detainees continue to die under extremely suspicious circumstances"

From The Dark Side by Jane Mayer

One year of the Afghan prison operation alone cost an estimated 100 million, which Congress hid in a classified annex of the first supplemental Afghan appropriation bill in 2002. Among the services that U.S. taxpayers unwittingly paid for were medieval-like dungeons, including a reviled former brick factory outside of Kabul known as "The Salt Pit." In 2004, a still-unidentified prisoner froze to death there after a young CIA supervisor ordered guards to strip him naked and chain him overnight to the concrete floor. The CIA has never accounted for the death, nor publicly reprimanded the supervisor. Instead, the Agency reportedly promoted him.

"Law and its due process lie at the heart of the possibility of rights because, without them, the idea of rights is, in any practical sense, empty." - AC Grayling

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/04/udhr-ac-grayling-human-rights

From The Dark Side by Jane Mayer

During the week that [Goldsmith] deliberated [resigning], Goldsmith twice called James Comey, in whom he had huge faith, for advice. Comey was traveling at the time, but in a series of late-night phone calls, the two worked out a plan. They were both so paranoid by then about the powerful backlash they had provoked inside the administration that they actually thought they might be in physical danger. Goldsmith and Comey, who knew more about the domestic surveillance program than practically anyone else in America, also feared that their communications were being monitored. To foil possible surveillance, they talked in codes. Together they devised a strategy of timing the withdrawal of the torture memo to Goldsmith’s resignation letter. If the White House refused Goldsmith’s advice to withdraw the torture memo, they knew, Goldsmith’s resignation would look as if he quit in protest. The threat was implicit that he could go public, setting off another political storm.

Look, if two of the highest ranking members of the Justice Department fear for their physical safety - and fear that they must talk in code because they are targets of surveillance - when they do their jobs of giving objective legal analysis and fail to participate in a conspiracy to commit crimes - because that's exactly what the rest of the administration lawyers were doing (see the account of Philippe Sands in Torture Team) - that isn't exactly a good sign. That's something you might expect to hear in a banana republic, or some former Soviet satellite or Putin's Russia. This is why I find it so bizarre for Goldsmith to not get this: the administration has put the Rule of Law in danger. Who cares what their motivations were? Are we intent to preserve the Rule of Law - the whole basis of which is what our country is supposed to be about - or not?

Ok, imagine this. They're a killer lose in some U.S. city. A local police chief thinks he can't catch the killer and save lives playing by the rules. So he starts kidnapping suspects and torturing them in his basement, keeps them their for months. Maybe "interrogates" one of them to death. Is anyone possibly going to argue that he should not be punished because he meant well? Would anyone possibly take seriously the argument that the police chief can't be charged with crimes because then other law enforcement officer will be afraid to do their jobs?

I remember Unclaimed Territory started after I first started blogging - and that was in 2005.