John Nichols: Pelosi and Torture

[babylonsister]

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/29285

Pelosi and Torture
Submitted by davidswanson on Mon, 2007-12-10 22:04. Congress

By John Nichols, www.thenation.com

That House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been a disappointing leader for House Democrats, few serious observers of the congressional condition will deny. But, now, she appears to be something more troubling: a serious hindrance to the fight against the use of crudest and most objectionable torture techniques.

Democrats and Republicans with a conscience have gotten a good deal of traction in recent months in their battle to identify the use by U.S. interrogators of waterboarding - a technique that simulates drowning in order to cause extreme mental distress to prisoners — as what it is: torture. Arizona Senator John McCain, a GOP presidential contender, has been particularly powerful in his denunciations of this barbarous endeavor. And Senate Intelligence Committee chair Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, and key members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have effectively pressed the issue on a number of fronts.

Now, however, comes the news that Pelosi knew as early as 2002 that the U.S. was using waterboarding and other torture techniques and, far from objecting, appears to have cheered the tactics on.

The Washington Post reports that Pelosi, who was then a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee, was were informed by CIA officials at a secret briefing in September 2002, that waterboarding and other forms of torture were being used on suspected al-Queda operatives. That’s bad. Even worse is the revelation that Pelosi was apparently supportive of the initiative.

snip//

If this is the case, Pelosi has provided aid and comfort to the Bush administration’s efforts to deviate not just from the standards set by international agreements regarding war crimes but from the provision of the Bill of Rights that establishes basic requirements with regard to the treatment of prisoners who in the custody of the United States.

Those deviations are precisely the sort of impeachable offenses that Pelosi has said are “off the table.” Her association with the administration on the matter of torture necessarily calls into question the speaker’s credibility on questions of how and when to hold the administration to account. It also begs a more mundane political question: At a point when Republicans like John McCain are earning points with their forthright stances against waterboarding, isn’t the credibility and the potential effectiveness of the House Democratic Caucus as an honest player in the debate profoundly harmed by the involvement of its leader in behind-the-scenes meetings that by all accounts encouraged the use of that technique?



John Nichols is a co-founder of Free Press and the co-author with Robert W. McChesney of TRAGEDY & FARCE: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy — The New Press.

[Hydra]

1. One nitpick

John McCain seems to have sold out his scruples(if he had any) regarding torture last year.

[Canuckistanian]

7. At least he spoke out - that's more than Pelosi did

Not to excuse McCain at all, but at least he's on the record acknowledging that torture is reprehensible and anti-American (despite his later actions).

[Hydra]

8. It was a nice pose on his part

But he and Specter and the other guy that caved on the various torture bills during the 2006 Congress gave in when the Der Fuhrer told them to.

If this is correct about Pelosi, however, she's been a good little girl for the Fuhrer the whole time.

[Canuckistanian]

9. Spinelessness is not only for Dems, it seems

I too, breathlessy await Nancy's explanation/clarification/denial.

[democrank]

2. I really want the truth about all this

but that may be too much to ask.

[rocktivity]

3. NOW we know the REAL reason why is impeachment is off the table.

She can't do it without implicating herself. Call in an independent prosecutor or give your job to John Conyers, then. Better yet, Nancy, do both.

:headbang:
rocknation

[L. Coyote]

5. False conclusion. Pure BULLSHIT!

You got a mouse in your pocket. Who is this "we"? And "implicating herself" implies a crime. Please, do tell us and law enforcement, of course, what crime the Honorable Speaker has committed in your mind?

[rocktivity]

10. Expecting US to believe that the Dems are powerless

because they haven't got enough votes.

:headbang:
rocknation

[L. Coyote]

4. BULLSHIT ALERT: Nichols follows on an unreliable source and this is BS.

There is an obvious stretch of the facts in his assumptions, "Pelosi knew as early as 2002 that the U.S. was using waterboarding." How does he suport this assertion?

Article Link: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=258258

"The Washington Post reports that Pelosi, who was then a senior member of the House Intelligence Committee, was were informed by CIA officials at a secret briefing in September 2002, that waterboarding and other forms of torture were being used on suspected al-Queda operatives."

This is simply not what the WA Post says. Pelosi was informed that the CIA was considering "techniques" deemed legal.

John Nichols, I'm calling your bullshit. You were not in the room, you do not know what was said, and you are trusting sources with a definite stake in future criminal inquiries.

[babylonsister]

6. Did you read this?

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004869.php

Why is her 'spokesperson' so clueless?

[L. Coyote]

11. Yes, and I did not find it clueless. It is just what I understood to be the facts.

And it is an indictment of the inferences the WA Post foisted.

Aditionally, Porter Goss, as head of CIA, may be a criminal target of the investigations. I do not trust a word of his characterizations, and I thought he was not permitted to speak on this. How convenient that he can violate the would-be secrecy with such impunity, while others are adhering to their oaths.

[sendero]

12. What we have here...

.. is a leader who seems to not be able to do anything that was expected of her.

You cannot be surprised when an explanation, plausible but not necessarily provable, is readily accepted by a large number of people.

There has to be SOME reason Pelosi is such an enabler. Doesn't matter much to me, this one is as good a guess as any.