Over the last few days, the mainstream media, the talking-head shows on cable news, the left side of the blogosphere and the Obama Justice Department have been going ape over a 5-year-old CIA inspector general’s report that outlined some of the outrageous lengths CIA interrogators went to to try and get information to save American lives.

Among the “crimes” that the Holder-led “Justice” Department will apparently investigate is:

• The intentional infliction of secondhand smoke on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks.

Seriously, I can’t make that up. Apparently we can expect a lawsuit sometime soon against the manufacturer of the cigar in question – hopefully it was a Cuban cigar.

• That an interrogator threatened to do really mean things to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s family if he didn’t talk.

This is possibly the most troubling of the charges. Didn’t the CIA officer know who he was talking to? What’s the likelihood of a man who exulted in the murder of 3,000 innocents – including women and children – would give a damn about what you did to his “family.”

• An interrogator threatened to use a power drill on a terrorist.

Not that he actually used the power drill on the terrorist. He just threatened to use it on the prisoner. The only thing I can imagine that is worse is if he’d threatened to throw a football at the terrorist – it being a “pigskin” after all.

• An interrogator lied to a terrorist, telling him that day was “shoot a terrorist day” and then went into the next cell and fired his gun into the air – leaving the terrorist with the impression that his buddy was now face-to-face with Allah.

This one is serious. Why would he fire into the air? That’s dangerous. He should’ve found a terrorist and shot him, it’s safer that way – no innocent person gets hurt.

If all of these rather tame incidents are far beyond the pale and prosecutable offenses, then what does that say about this country?

It says we’re being led by a bunch of pussies. Seriously, Attorney General Eric “Coward” Holder who promised he wouldn’t go back and criminalize policy differences, has gone back on his word – either to appease the rabid left-wing pussy base or to distract from the big failure of a government takeover of the health care industry.

Either way, Eric Holder is a pussy.

Of course, if Holder’s being a pussy, it’s only because his boss is allowing his pussiness. Barack “Big Pussy” Obama appears to actually believe that the U.S. is the bad guy in this whole conflict.

I can remember back in 2004 calling into Michael Medved’s radio show when he was asking callers to name one thing that President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry had in common. I got on the line and stated that both men loved their country. Medved snarked: “Yeah, France.” But I believe that was true.

I can’t say the same for Obama. I don’t think he loves this country at all. I think Obama’s perfectly fine with letting hundreds or thousands more Americans die at the hands of terrorists so long as his buddies in the college faculty lounges and salons of Europe think he’s a nice guy with the way he treats those poor misguided souls who were picked up because they just happened to be in the wrong terrorist training camp at the wrong time.

Really, what does one expect when Obama hasn’t found a single country in the world that he won’t apologize to on behalf of the United States for some perceived historical wrong. Just don’t blame Obama personally.

In the midst of a war and a prolific spending binge, the only thing the Obama administration is cutting is the military.

Of course, the kicker is that with all of this hand-wringing over waterboarding and the like, it turns out it worked. Actionable intelligence was gained and plots were foiled.

Americans are going to die because of what Big Pussy and his pussycats are doing this week. Who in their right mind would volunteer for the obviously unpleasant duty of interrogating one of these evil terrorists when their likely reward will be prosecution and bankrupting legal bills.

For now, all interrogations of terrorists will be handled by the FBI according to the Army Field Manual. The Field Manual basically limits interrogations to what you saw in the old WW II movies – name, rank, serial number. Because terrorists don’t really have formal ranks nor serial numbers, I guess we’ll just ask them for their names – nicely.

Give it a year before Hollywood – which gave us such blockbusters  like “Lions for Lambs” and “Stop-Loss” – comes out with a film showing the new, more understanding interrogation procedures. The interrogation where the terrorist reveals a plot to blow up LA because the nice interrogator converted to Islam and provided the terrorist with a goat for companionship.

And imagine their surprise when that film bombs too – because hateful terrorists don’t reveal their evil just because you’re nice to them.

Obama and Holder are turning the intelligence community into a neutered, impotent and broken guard dog.

Unfortunately, it’s the American people that will end up paying the bill.