Nancy Pelosi and a torture truth commission

last updated 8 January 2015

If Nancy Pelosi is trying to "build momentum for a 'truth commission' on Bush-era torture," said Stephen Stromberg in The Washington Post, she's succeeding. "Even the Republican brass is warming to the idea" now that the Democratic speaker of the House is in a fight with the CIA over how much she knew about the use of harsh interrogation techniques in 2002. The question now is who a truth commission would hurt more, Pelosi or the GOP.

Which is why "the drive for a 'truth commission'" is dead, said Jonah Goldberg in the Los Angeles Times, as long as Nancy Pelosi is speaker of the House. "Pelosi is blocking the road to ritual human sacrifice because there's ample evidence that she was complicit in what she righteously condemns as torture." Democrats can't give Pelosi a pass while "setting up a Nuremburg trial" for Republicans who were just trying to keep America safe.

Changing the subject to Pelosi was a "masterful" stroke of "political gamesmanship," said Matthew Yglesias in The Daily Beast, "but in their zeal to score a tactical win, the right has made a truth commission more likely, not less likely." Pelosi can't drop her support for an investigation now "without looking like she's cravenly attempting to save her own skin."