Torture: What Nancy Pelosi knew
The significance of when the House speaker learned about waterboarding
For somebody who hates waterboarding, said Scott Johnson in Power Line, Nancy Pelosi sure loves to torture the truth. Despite the fuss that the House speaker and other Democrats are making about the Bush administration’s harsh interrogation methods now, Pelosi and others in her party received detailed CIA briefings on these tactics in September 2002. (read The Washington Post's story on the newly released CIA documents)
The timeline does seem to "undercut" Pelosi's claim that she hadn't been told that the controversial interrogation methods were actually being used, said Josh Gerstein in Politico. But it also suggests that former CIA chief Porter Goss and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) knew that videotapes of the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah were to be destroyed. That should make the criminal inquiry into the destruction of the tapes more interesting.
There's plenty of blame to go around, said Tony Campbell in The Moderate Voice. "Congressional leaders in both parties are as culpable" as Bush and former Vice President Dick Cheney. "If some on the Left want to file charges against Bush and Cheney, fine ... let's make sure we totally clean house and rid ourselves of everyone who had a part to play in this messy business."
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