Pelosi Feigns Ignorance of Torture → Washingtons Blog
Pelosi Feigns Ignorance of Torture - Washingtons Blog

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Pelosi Feigns Ignorance of Torture


Nancy Pelosi said today:

The Bush administration did not inform Congress that it had waterboarded detainees in classified briefings, after the agency had already done so...

Pelosi told reporters that the administration officials only told her and those in a classified briefing in the fall of 2002 that they believed they had the legal authority to do so, based on Office of Legal Counsel memos which have recently been released by the Obama administration.

"In that or any other briefing...we were not, and I repeat, were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation techniques were used," said Pelosi. "What they did tell us is that they had some legislative counsel...opinions that they could be used, but not that they would."

However, that is likely untrue.

As noted by the above-linked article at Huffington Post:

Her assertion contradicts a recently released Senate committee report that cited CIA records to claim that senior members of Congress in both parties were briefed on the waterboarding, which had already been done to detainee Abu Zubaydah.
Moreover, the Washington Post wrote in 2007:

6 comments:

  1. You are on a roll! Great job linking these lies and crimes.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've been thinking that Obama is making a really big mistake going after this. Better to say that the US no longer condones the behavior and move on. This issue will define his Presidency, create huge partisan divides both in congress and the general public and make moving his social agenda much harder than it needs to be.

    I say this, but in the back of my mind it keeps knocking around that maybe Obama wants to create a physical confrontation with his opponents now that he has the levers of power?

    Payback for Clinton? Manufacturing another crisis to take advantage of? Who knows.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The bottom line, Torture is a war crime and all those who originate or cooperate with the procedure are guilty of a war crime. It's downright amusing to me to watch the news this week and see this torture stuff as new news. As a retired military man I have kept my focus on the goings on because this is so wrong and cannot be swept under the rug.
    Anybody who wanted to know and followed this knows they had meeting in the white house to discuss methods to be used on specific persons. The senior members of the Intelligence Committee were briefed early on and under the threat of being prosecuted for revealing the information.

    Bottom line , investigate with a special prosecutor and charge and convict all who participated.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks for the info.

    Great blog.. keep up the great analysis.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I'm amazed this woman sat through dozens of briefings over the course of seven years yet claims she didn't know about waterboarding. She's just playing ring around the Pelosi.

    ReplyDelete

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