Pelosi on waterboarding: I knew nothing

posted at 5:39 pm on April 23, 2009 by Allahpundit
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Or rather, almost nothing. She admits she was told that waterboarding could be used but insists she was never told it would be used, which I can only take to mean she was sufficiently comfortable with the practice in theory as not to call a halt to it in the conceptual stage.

Needless to say, according to Porter Goss, she’s a liar:

Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who in 2002 was the ranking Democrat on the House committee, has said in public statements that she recalls being briefed on the methods, including waterboarding. She insists, however, that the lawmakers were told only that the C.I.A. believed the methods were legal — not that they were going to be used.

By contrast, the ranking Republican on the House committee at the time, Porter J. Goss of Florida, who later served as C.I.A. director, recalls a clear message that the methods would be used.

“We were briefed, and we certainly understood what C.I.A. was doing,” Mr. Goss said in an interview. “Not only was there no objection, there was actually concern about whether the agency was doing enough.”

That jibes with WaPo’s blockbuster from December 2007 describing a virtual tour Pelosi (among others) was given of one of the CIA’s black sites, replete with descriptions of waterboarding used on detainees. And it jibes with Pete Hoekstra writing today in the Journal that Congress knew a lot more about all of this than its more “enlightened” members would have you believe. But then, as MKat reminds us, we’ve seen this movie before: The Democrats start strong on foreign policy ventures, drift left as their base’s shrieking grows noisier, and then play dumb to get themselves off the hook. The more I think about the show trials Obama wants for “torturers,” the more I think they’re going to blow up in his face: Much of the GOP is up front about its support for enhanced interrogation but revelations about how Democrats backed it too will be genuinely shocking. By all means, more sunshine on their hypocrisy, phony sanctimony, and opportunism. Pelosi’s just the beginning.

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