I don’t often quote James Carville, but on the decision to name a special prosecutor to look at criminal charges against CIA operatives who utilized enhanced interrogation techniques, he is certainly worth hearing. His main concern is the political blowback that may ensue from the decision to go after the CIA:

Well, the first thing is this is terrible politics for the Obama administration and Democrats. The country—having said that, people go out and give speeches about we’re a nation of laws and somebody in the justice department actually believes that and they believe they’re warranted to open a preliminary investigation by way of Republican career prosecutors. So, I know the politics of this, a lot of people wish it would go away, be, as long as people believe speeches of being a nation of laws you run into this danger.

[. . .]

And, look, if it were up to me, I would say I kind of agree with the former CIA general counsel who said, you know, we ought to punish these people and move on. Somebody in there believes these speeches, and they’re pretty—they seem to be fairly adamant about pursuing it. Politically, I think it’s not very wise. Leon Panetta, the head of the CIA, according to reports that I read today, was very, very upset about this. And, look, but somebody, again, we don’t know all the facts and a preliminary investigation, they seem to be bound and determined to proceed with this.

This is a Democrat—one who won a couple of big elections and saw how a very messy impeachment did great political damage to the accusers. Carville is warning the administration: turn back. But Holder and Obama know better. They are in “Get the Bushies” mode. The country, however, is not and now barely tolerates the president. What will they think when the full force of the U.S. government is arrayed against low-level operatives who were trying their best to extract critical data from the worst of the worst terrorists? Why they might get the idea that the president cares more about his left-wing base than about protecting and supporting the intelligence community.

And Carville knows it.