More Idoicy from Madam Pelosi

[RanchHQ]

I have read some stuff pretty tough on Madam Speaker Pelosi(D-CA) but Investors Business Daily really hits hard:

"Lying to Congress is a crime. Lying from Congress is not. Otherwise, House Speaker Pelosi would rightfully belong in the same facility that Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff was sent to for being found guilty of having a faulty memory."

Ouch!


Enhanced Lying
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY Posted Friday, May 08, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Interrogations: Not since Bill Clinton has there been a bigger fib told by a public official. A report from the director of national intelligence confirms Nancy Pelosi knew waterboarding had already been performed.

Lying to Congress is a crime. Lying from Congress is not. Otherwise, House Speaker Pelosi would rightfully belong in the same facility that Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff was sent to for being found guilty of having a faulty memory.

Just as Bill Clinton swore he never had sex with that woman, Pelosi wagged her finger at an April press conference and swore she was advised only on the legality of waterboarding — that it might be used but not that it had.

In December 2007, after the Washington Post reported that she had knowledge of these procedures and did not object, Pelosi admitted she'd been "briefed on interrogation techniques the administration was considering using in the future."

When asked about a September 2002 meeting with intelligence officials and then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss, Pelosi proclaimed: "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."

How is it then that a memo issued by the director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency says the Pelosi-Goss briefing covered EITs, an abbreviation for enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, a technique successfully used on Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheik Mohammed.

The meeting is described in the 10-page memo as a "briefing on EITs, including the use of EITs on Zubaydah, background on authorities and a description of particular EITs that had been employed." "Had been" is past tense. According to the interrogation memos recently released, Zubaydah was waterboarded in August 2002, a month before Pelosi was told about it.

The memo outlines many other briefings with members of Congress, including Rep. Jane Harman, who became the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee when Pelosi became minority leader.

"Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," recalls Goss, who chaired the committee from 1997 to 2004 before becoming CIA director. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement."

Congress twice had a chance to specifically proscribe waterboarding, but passed on it.

It could have done so in the Detainee Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Instead it passed the buck, settling on opposition to vague "cruel, human and degrading" practices. When Democrats, led by Pelosi, seized control of Congress in 2006, they ignored the subject.

Brendan Daly, a Pelosi spokesman, says Pelosi's recollection of the 2002 meeting is different from the way it was described in the report from the DNI's office.

In a Washington Post op-ed, Goss was left "slack jawed" that any member so briefed could "claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed."

"It must be hard," Goss wrote, "for most Americans of common sense to imagine how a member of Congress can forget being told about the interrogation of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed. In that case, though, perhaps it is not amnesia but political expedience."

History, it has been said, is a lie agreed upon. Nancy Pelosi is attempting to rewrite history.

LINK (Not FOX News): IBDeditorials.com: Editorials, Political Cartoons, and Polls from Investor's Business Daily -- Enhanced Lying

[RanchHQ]

Madam Speaker Pelosi's Story continues, now with a rewrite:

"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi(D-CA) learned in early 2003 that the Bush administration was waterboarding terror detainees..."

Stupid: Pelosi didn’t object to waterboarding in order to respect “appropriate” channels

Please, make it stop. I can handle lying, but I can’t handle bad lying. At least not this much of it.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi(D-CA) learned in early 2003 that the Bush administration was waterboarding terror detainees but didn’t protest directly out of respect for “appropriate” legislative channels, a confidant of the San Francisco Democrat said Monday…

[T]here’s no dispute that on Feb. 4, 2003 — five months after Pelosi’s September meeting — CIA officials briefed Pelosi aide Michael Sheehy and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), then the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, on the specific techniques that had been used on Zubaydah — including waterboarding.

Harman was so alarmed by what she had heard, she drafted a short letter to the CIA’s general counsel to express “profound” concerns with the tactic — going so far as to ask if waterboarding had been personally “approved by the president.”

According to the Pelosi confidant, Sheehy told Pelosi about the briefing — and later informed Pelosi, the newly elected minority leader, that Harman was drafting a protest letter. Pelosi told Sheehy to tell Harman that she agreed with the letter, the Pelosi insider said. But she did not ask to be listed as a signatory on the letter, the source said, and there is no reference to her in it…

“She felt that the appropriate response was the letter from Harman, because Jane was the one who was briefed,” said the person. Pelosi “never got briefed on it personally, and when Harman got a ‘no response’ from the CIA, there was nothing more that could be done.”

Other possible “appropriate responses,” right off the top of my head: (1) Pelosi could have demanded to be briefed personally to learn more about this alarming new development; (2) Pelosi could have written her own letter; (3) Pelosi could have co-signed Harman’s letter; (4) Pelosi could have demanded a CIA response to Harman’s letter; (5) Pelosi could have pressured the GOP leadership to inquire further; (6) Pelosi could have leaked the details about waterboarding to the press, which wouldn’t have been “appropriate” per se but would at least have signaled the depth of her alleged concern. Instead, she let it lie. How come, Madam Speaker?

Update: Has anyone asked yet why, if “torture” was such an epochal issue, Pelosi was sending staffers to CIA briefings in her place instead of going herself? What urgent business of state prevented her from carving out a bit of time to find out how apocalyptic jihadists were being treated by the country’s chief intelligence agency?

LINK (Not FOX News): Hot Air Blog Archive Stupid: Pelosi didn’t object to waterboarding in order to respect “appropriate” channels

[RanchHQ]

Remember, this woman is two heartbeats away from The Presidency.

"Another day, another version of the “truth” about the briefings on the enhanced interrogation methods from Nancy Pelosi."


Who Would Have Thought?
JENNIFER RUBIN - 05.12.2009 - 10:40 AM
Another day, another version of the “truth” about the briefings on the enhanced interrogation methods from Nancy Pelosi. First, she never knew anything. Then, she was told that they weren’t waterboarding anyone but obtained a legal opinion stating they could. (I know, it makes no sense but it gets better. . . er. . . worse.) The latest installment in the Nancy Chronicles from Politico:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi learned in early 2003 that the Bush administration was waterboarding terror detainees but didn’t protest directly out of respect for “appropriate” legislative channels, a person familiar with the situation said Monday.

What?? She couldn’t write a letter like Jane Harman? Or pick up the phone to call the CIA chief or president? Or move to cut off funding? Apparently she so respected the legislative process that she was utterly paralyzed to do anything.

There are some morsels from nervous Democrats, who must suspect that all of this sounds incredibly lame. This from Dick Gephardt’s former chief of staff:

“You have to remember, in the 2002 period, the whole atmospherics, it was all about scaring people every day. . . People were legitimately concerned that we were going to be attacked again, and there was a constant drumbeat coming from the Bush administration of, ‘Bad things could happen, bad things could happen.’ Nobody wants it to happen on their watch.”

So that atmosphere excuses only Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic colleagues, but none of the Bush officials who were concerned about a new attack on America? Or perhaps he is saying the Democrats were easily cowed and too meek to question the basis for the administration’s claims of imminent danger.

How did this go south so badly for Pelosi ? It seems it never crossed the minds of the Speaker and her team that the public would care about her hypocrisy:

Democratic insiders acknowledge that Pelosi has not handled the media furor surrounding the interrogation briefings — and what she was told and when — in a timely or aggressive manner.

“I don’t know whether the story is overplayed or they’re misjudging it,” said a Democratic leadership aide. “I don’t know, maybe they haven’t been aggressive enough.”

This aide added: “I think they’re good at walking and chewing gum — that’s not the problem. I don’t think they recognized that this issue has the legs that it does.”

Yeah, who would have thought that lying about your involvement in a policy decision for which you are trying to prosecute others would be such a big deal? Not since Dennis Hastert have we seen a Speaker so overwhelmed by events and looking quite so hapless. And remember what happened to him.

LINK (Not FOX News): Commentary Blog Archive Who Would Have Thought?

[Smiley1]

And Bidens only one heart beat away from the Presidency. Biden lies, or exagerates, about conversations with Bush that never happened. Hillary is #4? in line and is both a liar and a thief. Either way, it's scary to think those three idiot liars are so close to running this country. Not that Bambam is any better, don't misunderstand that for one second. He's not fit and totally unqualified.

Mick

[Robert]

The last president did not lie, right?

[RanchHQ]

It is President Bush's fault that Madam Speaker has her truths all tied up in a knot, but President Bush can do nothing to effect both mine and my Childs future.

Let it go, it will set you free.

[Robert]

Big answer for a simple question...I'll take that as a 'yes' ?

[Robert]

Originally Posted by RanchHQ

It is President Bush's fault that Madam Speaker has her truths all tied up in a knot, but President Bush can do nothing to effect both mine and my Childs future.
.

You're right, he's screwed it up enough...let it go and maybe someone else will fix it.

[RanchHQ]

Originally Posted by Robert

The last president did not lie, right?

Right.


Big answer for a simple question...I'll take that as a 'yes' ?

I tend to be a bit windy, but I was just agreeing with you, "The last President did not lie".

[RanchHQ]

Originally Posted by Robert

You're right, he's screwed it up enough...let it go and maybe someone else will fix it.

Could you be a bit more specific?