CIA Says Pelosi Was Briefed on torture
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| Fri, 05-08-2009 - 12:26am |
It looks to me like a number of prominent Democrats starting with Ms. Pelosi will have to go on trial for torture. I wonder, dare we ask, "What did Barack know, and when did he know it?"
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitol-briefing/2009/05/cia_says_pelosi_was_briefed_on.html
CIA Says Pelosi Was Briefed on Use of 'Enhanced Interrogations'
Intelligence officials released documents this evening saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was briefed in September 2002 about the use of harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda prisoners, seemingly contradicting her repeated statements over the past 18 months that she was never told that these techniques were actually being used.
In a 10-page memo outlining an almost seven-year history of classified briefings, intelligence officials said that Pelosi and then-Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) were the first two members of Congress ever briefed on the interrogation tactics. Then the ranking member and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, respectively, Pelosi and Goss were briefed Sept. 4, 2002, one week before the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The memo, issued by the Director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency to Capitol Hill, notes the Pelosi-Goss briefing covered "EITs including the use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah." EIT is an acronym for enhanced interrogation technique. Zubaydah was one of the earliest valuable al-Qaeda members captured and the first to have the controversial tactic known as water boarding used against him.
The issue of what Pelosi knew and when she knew it has become a matter of heated debate on Capitol Hill. Republicans have accused her of knowing for many years precisely the techniques CIA agents were using in interrogations, and only protesting the tactics when they became public and liberal antiwar activists protested.
In a carefully worded statement, Pelosi's office said today that she had never been briefed about the use of waterboarding, only that it had been approved by Bush administration lawyers as a legal technique to use in interrogations.
"As this document shows, the Speaker was briefed only once, in September 2002. The briefers described these techniques, said they were legal, but said that waterboarding had not yet been used," said Brendan Daly, Pelosi's spokesman.
Pelosi's statement did not address whether she was informed that other harsh techniques were already in use during the Zubaydah interrogations.
In December 2007 the Washington Post reported that leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees had been briefed in the fall of 2002 about waterboarding -- which simulates drowning -- and other techniques, and that no congressional leaders protested its use. At the time Pelosi said she was not told that waterboarding was being used, a position she stood by repeatedly last month when the Bush-era Justice Department legal documents justifying the interrogation tactics were released by Attorney General Eric Holder.
The new memo shows that intelligence officials were willing to share the information about waterboarding with only a sharply closed group of people. Three years after the initial Pelosi-Goss briefing, Bush officials still limited interrogation technique briefings to just the chairman and ranking member of the House and Senate intelligence committees, the so-called Gang of Four in the intelligence world.
In October 2005, CIA officials began briefing other congressional leaders with oversight of the intelligence community, including top appropriators who provided the agency its annual funding. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam and an opponent of torture techniques, was also read into the program at that time even though he did not hold a special committee position overseeing the intelligence community.
A bipartisan collection of lawmakers have criticized the practice of limiting information to just the "Gang of Four", who were expressly forbidden from talking about the information from other colleagues, including fellow members of the intelligence committees. Pelosi and others are considering reforms that would assure a more open process for all committee members.

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You seem to excuse Clinton era torture in Waco claiming it wasn't intentional in your post - http://messageboards.ivillage.com/n/mb/message.asp?webtag=iv-elinthenews&msg=15722.8
Yet, when I follow your logic, and indicate Republicans will use the same defense. Suddenly it isn't acceptable. What is wrong with not having a double standard?
I have no objection to going after Republicans and Democrats.
It is clear Democrats claim they knew aggressive interrogation was or is torture, and that they passively or actively supported or enabled it. As such, the party who knowingly tortures (Democrats) would seem to me as the easiest to prosecute.
Wouldn't you agree?
So let me get this straight. They crowded people in Waco, blasted loud music on them day and night, spied on them, rationed food, and kept ordering residents at Waco to surrender. This somehow isn't torture, when done to Americans, but if done to someone picked up on a battlefield shooting at Americans it would be torture.
Sigh, the views of liberals are so difficult for me to understand sometime.
Wow. Change the wording, claim you don't accept the new definition as unlawful or immoral, and that makes the deed more acceptable? I can go into a store, take whatever I want without paying, say I "believed" it was just "borrowing", and my actions can't be prosecuted. It's the same sort of reasoning--flimsy and foolish.
You do know that the whole depraved episode makes a mockery of our form of government, right? Bush and Cheney had an executive branch appointee, John Yoo, write a legal opinion which gave the executive branch even greater powers with exceedingly loose restrictions and definitions. That's tyranny, not democracy. Shame on anybody who winks at such blatant distortion of our system of government.
Then there's the moral aspect. I am dumbfounded by the number of people who consider themselves moral and upright, who nonetheless seem willing to gulp down the grotesque and criminal behavior of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" and justify those practices by claiming that fear for our safety lets us do just about any damn thing. No integrity or values whatsoever.
Years from now, those who read the history of "enhanced interrogation" are going to marvel at the depths of sophistry, deceit, and self-exoneration.
Jabberwocka
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