Senate Intelligence Vice Chairman Kit Bond (R, Mo.) held a conference call with bloggers today on the release of CIA documents and photographs. He offered a healthy dose of rhetoric — such as the amusing “President Obama has sent the message to the CIA that it’s time to CYA” — but he also suggest that if Democrats had raised objections to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques, it might have had a real effect on what the CIA did.

“We know, from the experiences we’ve had, when we tell the CIA that we don’t like their plans — believe that they’re inappropriate or risky — they don’t do them.”

It is a moot question what sort of effect objections to waterboarding would have had, as no one on the intelligence committees appears ever to have objected.