Just in time for Grubergate, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California has decided to horn in on the show with the release of the Senate’s report on the “enhanced interrogation techniques” of the Bush administration. Those would be the same techniques that eventually led to the discovery and killing of Osama bin Laden, but never mind. Today of all days, the Ugly Truth must be told, in all its media-ready glory.

Still, stop and ask yourself why. Why now? Who cares? The vast majority of Americans will lose not one wink of sleep over the fates of the prisoners in Guantanamo or those stashed away in rendition prisons in various dark and savage corners of the world. They’re getting what’s coming to them. They asked for it.

Then think about Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and its famous Rule No. 4: “Make the enemy live up to his own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity.” To the Obama administration and most of the surviving Democrats in Congress, the “enemy,” of course, is conservatives and Republicans, not radical Islam. (Hillary Clinton recently said in a speech that, based on her crackerjack stint as secretary of state, the U.S. needs to “respect” and “empathize with” our “enemies,” by whom she meant our Islamic friends we just haven’t met yet. )

What the Democrats are doing is classic Alinskyism, posturing as the defenders of the American Way and hoping like hell that nobody remembers that rendition prisons began under the Clinton administration. But let the ACLU tell it:

Beginning in the early 1990s and continuing to this day, the Central Intelligence Agency, together with other U.S. government agencies, has utilized an intelligence-gathering program involving the transfer of foreign nationals suspected of involvement in terrorism to detention and interrogation in countries where — in the CIA’s view — federal and international legal safeguards do not apply. Suspects are detained and interrogated either by U.S. personnel at U.S.-run detention facilities outside U.S. sovereign territory or, alternatively, are handed over to the custody of foreign agents for interrogation. In both instances, interrogation methods are employed that do not comport with federal and internationally recognized standards.

“This program is commonly known as ‘extraordinary rendition,'” the ACLU added.

Add to this the Agency’s proven track record in deception, disinformation and double-talk. Conservatives have long been wrong about the Company — it’s not “conservative” or even particularly “patriotic” in any meaningful sense. It fell in love with its “enemy,” the KGB, and did its damnedest to prop up the Soviet Union’s self-esteem until the day it collapsed, which was why the sudden fall of the U.S.S.R. came as such a surprise to Langley. The Agency never much liked the Bush administration, and the Bush administration never much liked it, which is why the administration tried to counter the CIA by setting up its own intelligence force at the Pentagon, the Defense Clandestine Agency, as part of the also-ran Defense Intelligence Agency:

The Pentagon has scaled back its plan to assemble an overseas spy service that could have rivaled the CIA in size, backing away from a project that faced opposition from lawmakers who questioned its purpose and cost, current and former U.S. officials said. Under the revised blueprint, the Defense Intelligence Agency will train and deploy up to 500 undercover officers, roughly half the size of the espionage network envisioned two years ago when the formation of the Defense Clandestine Service was announced. The previous plan called for moving as many as 1,000 undercover case officers overseas to work alongside the CIA and the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations Command on counterterrorism missions and other targets of broad national security concern.

The Agency was not about to let that happen. And, confronted with a dying but still vengeful Democrat soon-to-be minority in Congress, and controlled by an Obama appointee, John Brennan — perhaps the least respected man in the entire Intelligence Community — it decided to get out front with this politically opportune mea culpa to keep its Democrat civilian masters happy and the Pentagon wolf from the door. Look — shiny!

Somewhere in Hell, Hillary’s mentor and Barry’s role model is smiling.