Fitzgerald "Irony" or "poke-in-the-eye"?

Back in late 2008, the most popular question posed on President-Elect Obama's Change-dot-Gov web-Question Box, in 'round 2, came from Bob Fertik, of New York City, which read:

Will you appoint a Special Prosecutor (ideally Patrick Fitzgerald) to independently investigate the gravest crimes of the Bush Administration, including torture and warrantless wiretapping?

According to the July/August 2010 Mother Jones magazine, Fitzgerald has been assigned to investigate the CIA and torture. Unfortunately, the investigation is targeted not at the torturers, but at human rights investigators whose trails led them to CIA operatives.

You see, if, as a human rights attorney, your trail leads you to CIA personnel, and you put pictures of them in photo line-ups for your torture-victim clients to identify... then maybe you're exposing the identity CIA personnel even if you don't expose the person's name. Yes, as predicted by George Orwell and others, it's a wicked web that has been woven by the powers-that-be.

But it strikes me... is this simply irony that Fitzgerald would be given this assignment, or is it a poke-in-the-eye of the people calling for a full investigation of the US torture activities?

Sources:

Mother Jones Magazine, July/Aug. 2010.