Joe Lieberman is one of the more idiotic fatuous asses in the Senate. Strong evidence in support of that proposition comes from the statement he produced yesterday in condemnation of the very narrow investigation Attorney General Eric Holder has authorized into detainee abuse by CIA interrogators.

The terms of the investigation are that a special prosecutor will re-examine less than a dozen cases in which interrogators clearly exceeded even the torture-permissive guidelines of the Bush regime, looking at “whether there is enough evidence to launch a full-scale criminal investigation of current and former CIA personnel who may have broken the law in their dealings with detainees.”

Here’s Lieberman’s carefully considered comment:

I respectfully regret this decision by Attorney General Holder and fear our country will come to regret it too because an open ended criminal investigation of past CIA activity, which has already been condemned and prohibited, will have a chilling effect on the men and women agents of our intelligence community whose uninhibited bravery and skill we depend on every day to protect our homeland from the next terrorist attack.
[...]
We cannot take for granted the fact that our homeland has not been attacked since September 11, 2001. That has occurred only because of the constant vigilance and unflinching efforts by those brave individuals in our military, civilian homeland security and counterterrorism agencies, and the intelligence community. These public servants must of course live within the law but they must also be free to do their dangerous and critical jobs without worrying that years from now a future Attorney General will authorize a criminal investigation of them for behavior that a previous Attorney General concluded was authorized and legal.

They must, of course, live within the law. And when they don’t, they should face absolutely no consequences.

For the record, even Alberto Gonzales was not willing to conclude that causing a detainee to freeze to death by ordering that he be stripped and shackled to a concrete floor without blankets in the dead of winter was authorized and legal.

Joe Lieberman, though, is willing to lie that he did.