A Tangled Web Indeed

Wow, what a mess.

So here it goes. After September 11, 2001, the US captured some very mean, nasty, and high ranking members of the Al Qaeda network. Evil men by all accounts. It was believed that these men were in a position to know information about possible attacks that could be significant. The Bush administration asked their legal team about the possibility of “enhanced interrogation techniques” and the team weighed in on a number of techniques including waterboarding. The time came, the order was given, the technique was used, useful information was gained, and innocent American lives (possibly hundreds of thousands of lives but the current administration won’t release that info) were saved and no permanent damage was done to the bad guys.

The far left base of the Democratic Party has been apoplectic about this for years now, so when Barack Obama became president they started lobbying for him to prosecute President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and whoever else might have been involved. He very quickly ruled out prosecuting the executive leadership, for good reason; the whole idea is absurd and it would set a very bad precedent. He also very quickly ruled out prosecuting the CIA agents that actually performed the waterboarding. All of this enraged the leftists who worked so hard and contributed so much to Democratic campaigns. So the administration opened up to the idea of prosecuting, get this, not the people who gave the ORDER to do the waterboarding, or the people who DID the waterboarding, but the LAWYERS who gave a legal opinion to the President, that waterboarding was not illegal.

Well, it became obvious very quickly that this strategy was not going to work, would put egg all over the face of the administration, and would fail to appease the base. So… they appealed to the home state Bar Associations of these lawyers for them to consider ethical complaints against the attorneys. In the view of those searching for blood, President Obama failed to deliver.

So… here comes the queen of the leftists, Speaker Pelosi. She demands a truth commission be set up to find out who was involved and bring them to justice. One problem; the CIA says that they briefed her on this subject repeatedly since 2002 and she never raised any concerns about the techniques being used. Oops. She denied, then says that she new they thought the technique was legal, but that it wasn’t being used… oh wait she knew it was being used but not until 2003 and only because some random staff person told her… no wait it was another member of congress that told her… spinning, spinning, spinning…

Then yesterday the wheels came off the bus and the Speaker’s finger pointing was everywhere. She was flustered and had to read repeatedly from her prepared statement because it was obvious that she was lying through her teeth and turned abruptly and unexpectedly on the CIA saying that they had lied to Congress in the past and were lying now. Here is a quote from the press conference:

QUESTION: Madam Speaker, just to be clear, you're accusing the CIA of lying to you in September of 2002?

PELOSI: Yes, misleading the Congress of the United States, misleading the Congress of the United States. I am.

QUESTION: And also -- and doing it again now, as they've released this list of briefings that says you were briefed on the interrogation tactics that were used.

PELOSI: I'm saying -- I'm quoting what the head of the CIA has said. This is -- we don't know if this information is accurate that he's talking about.

What they briefed us on -- and perhaps they should release the briefings. I would be very happy if they would release the briefings. ...

But I'm telling you that they talked about interrogations that they had done and said, "We want to use enhanced techniques, and we have legal opinions that say that they are OK. We are not using waterboarding." That's the only mention, that they were not using it. And we now know that earlier they were.

So, yes, I am saying that they are misleading -- that the CIA was misleading the Congress.

Now the Speaker has lost her credibility (with the few people that still held her in any regard).

Pundits are now taking bets on how long she will last.

Unfortunately I’m not sure that it is going to work that way. The Democratic Party doesn’t have the same kind of ethics standards that the Republicans have. I think Speaker Pelosi will be there for some time to come.

But I hope I’m wrong. She needs to go.