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Lol on Dana Milbank’s account:

Nancy Pelosi is a woman of many talents. Yesterday, she performed the delicate art of backtracking while walking sideways.

The speaker of the House had just read a statement accusing the CIA of lying and was trying to beat a hasty retreat from her news conference before reporters could point out contradictions between her current position and her previous statements.

“Thank you!” an aide called out to signal an end to the session. Pelosi walked, sideways, away from the lectern and, still sidling in a sort of crab walk, was halfway to the door when a yell from CNN’s Dana Bash, rising above the rest of the shouting, froze her in the aisle.

“Madam Speaker!” the correspondent called out. “I think there’s one other question that I would like to ask, if that’s okay.”

“Sure, okay,” Pelosi said, in a way that indicated it was not okay. Pelosi had no choice but to sidle back to the lectern.

Over the next few minutes of shouted questions — “They lied to you? Were you justified? When were you first told? Did you protest? Why didn’t you tell us?” — the speaker attempted the crab-walk retreat again, returned to the lectern again and then finally skittered out of the room.

Karl Rove:

If Mrs. Pelosi considers the enhanced interrogation techniques to be torture, didn’t she have a responsibility to complain at the time, introduce legislation to end the practices, or attempt to deny funding for the CIA’s use of them? If she knew what was going on and did nothing, does that make her an accessory to a crime of torture, as many Democrats are calling enhanced interrogation?

Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy wants an independent investigation of Bush administration officials. House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers feels the Justice Department should investigate and prosecute anyone who violated laws against committing torture. Are these and other similarly minded Democrats willing to have Mrs. Pelosi thrown into their stew of torture conspirators as an accomplice?

It is clear that after the 9/11 attacks Mrs. Pelosi was briefed on enhanced interrogation techniques and the valuable information they produced. She not only agreed with what was being done, she apparently pressed the CIA to do more.

But when political winds shifted, Mrs. Pelosi seems to have decided to use enhanced interrogation as an issue to attack Republicans. It is disgraceful that Democrats who discovered their outrage years after the fact are now braying for disbarment of the government lawyers who justified EITs and the prosecution of Bush administration officials who authorized them. Mrs. Pelosi is hip-deep in dangerous waters, and they are rapidly rising.

And getting Krauthammered:

The reason Pelosi raised no objection to waterboarding at the time, the reason the American people (who by 2004 knew what was going on) strongly re-elected the man who ordered these interrogations, is not because she and the rest of the American people suffered a years-long moral psychosis from which they have just now awoken. It is because at that time they were aware of the existing conditions — our blindness to al-Qaeda’s plans, the urgency of the threat, the magnitude of the suffering that might be caused by a second 9/11, the likelihood that the interrogation would extract intelligence that President Obama’s own director of national intelligence now tells us was indeed “high-value information” — and concluded that on balance it was a reasonable response to a terrible threat.

And they were right.

You can believe that Pelosi and the whole American public underwent a radical transformation from moral normality to complicity with war criminality back to normality. Or you can believe that their personalities and moral compasses have remained steady throughout the years, but changes in circumstances (threat, knowledge, imminence) alter the moral calculus attached to any interrogation technique.

And something Thomas Sowell wrote recently that I liked:

One of the many signs of the degeneration of our times is how many serious, even life-and-death, issues are approached as talking points in a game of verbal fencing. Nothing illustrates this more than the fatuous, and even childish, controversy about “torturing” captured terrorists.

People’s actions often make far more sense than their words. Most of the people who are talking lofty talk about how we mustn’t descend to the level of our enemies would themselves behave very differently if presented with a comparable situation, instead of being presented with an opportunity to be morally one up with rhetoric.

What if it was your mother or your child who was tied up somewhere beside a ticking time bomb and you had captured a terrorist who knew where that was? Face it: What you would do to that terrorist to make him talk would make water-boarding look like a picnic.

You wouldn’t care what the New York Times would say or what “world opinion” in the U.N. would say. You would save your loved one’s life and tell those other people what they could do.

But if the United States behaves that way it is called “arrogance”– even by American citizens. Indeed, even by the American president.

There is a big difference between being ponderous and being serious. It is scary when the President of the United States is not being serious about matters of life and death, saying that there are “other ways” of getting information from terrorists.

I hope to see this on Lie To Me (program on TV about exposing liars). Nancy is nervous, scared and jittering because she is caught in a lie.

I’m sure right now she is sitting in the front row and smoothing out her petticoat and smiling sweetly.

The mainstream media wouldn’t do it. So we are trying to get your important messages to the American people. 25 This post is a suggested read at, http://aresay.blogspot.com/

Thanks Wordsmith, good thoughts!

Earlier this morning I was thinking she either got hit in the head by that moral compass the dems are now tossing in the face of the opposition or was swimming in that swamp(“dangerous waters”) instead of draining it, low and behold I noticed these remarks by Rove and Krauthammer.

Or you can believe that their personalities and moral compasses have remained steady throughout the years

Mrs. Pelosi is hip-deep in dangerous waters, and they are rapidly rising

Heh,

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_6s6CdLQRCP0/Sg0yxrtx_VI/AAAAAAAAAZw/EdsFLCG-TNc/s1600-h/Pelosi_Monkeys.gif

The much-despised mainstream media are currently in the process of sharpening their knives over this. Pelosi’s credibility is permanently gone. I look for her to have a serious challenge for the Speakership.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA

@openid.aol.com/runnswim: Larry, unfortunately, the story has gone widely unreported. Many people (many Democrats) don’t even know who Pelosi is.

Contrast that with the MSM reporting of everything controversial that Newt Gingrich said as Speaker.

@Wordsmith: Good roundup Wordsmith.

I especially liked this from Thomas Sowell:

One of the many signs of the degeneration of our times is how many serious, even life-and-death, issues are approached as talking points in a game of verbal fencing. Nothing illustrates this more than the fatuous, and even childish, controversy about “torturing” captured terrorists.
People’s actions often make far more sense than their words. Most of the people who are talking lofty talk about how we mustn’t descend to the level of our enemies would themselves behave very differently if presented with a comparable situation, instead of being presented with an opportunity to be morally one up with rhetoric.

Dems may yet get put in the same situation that the Bush Adminstration found itself in in late 2001 and 2002. If they fail to protect the American people they will be toast. If they DO succeed in foiling a plot people will start asking whether they violated any of these terrorist’s “rights.”

They have created a dangerous set of precedents all for political advantage. And it may come back that in the end they are politically destroyed by their craven use of this issue.

P.S. Missy: That graphic is great!

Photobucket

“Torture” is against the laws and Constitution of the United States of America. A Special Prosecutor with wide ranging power should be appointed. It is the only way to fix responsibility for the torture. Congress can/will not investigate itself and there are too many conflicts of interest within the Department of Justice. SPECIAL PROSECUTOR NOW !!

And what is “torture”, John Ryan?

Pssst…..

John ryan…..

The US Constitution doesn’t apply to the battlefield or to prisoners captured there.

Thanks for playing though.

@MataHarley:

I think that reading John ryan’s brainless drivel fits that definition.

Where do I file my claim?

Hey John Ryan: Why not appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate Pelosi FIRST?

Then, we can investigate Republicans.

Otherwise, we all know what will happen. Some GOP guy will forget what he had for breakfast 7 years ago and be charged for perjury like Scooter Libby and Nancy Pelosi will skate free.

I’m not a big fan of Special Prosecutors but I do have a better idea: Make Obama release ALL the CIA memos related to this topic.

That way we will know what Pelosi knew and when and we will also know what the waterboarding OF JUST THREE TERRORISTS did to save American lives.

Why hasn’t Obama released those memos????

You got a clue John Ryan?

It was mentioned awhile ago that powerful Pelosi stopped a CIA covert operation in 2004. So, if she was so opposed to waterboarding, she really could have done something about it. She’s now attempting to drag down CIA agents to save her sorry self, better he than me. Pathetic.

Panetta slaps back:

Panetta, President Obama’s pick to run the clandestine agency and President Clinton’s former chief of staff, wrote in a memo to CIA employees Friday that “CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing ‘the enhanced techniques that had been employed,'” according to CIA records.

“We are an agency of high integrity, professionalism and dedication,” Panetta said in the memo. “Our task is to tell it like it is — even if that’s not what people always want to hear. Keep it up. Our national security depends on it.”

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/cia-director-fires-back-at-pelosi-2009-05-15.html

@Missy: Thanks for that update Missy.

Pelosi is LYING and the CIA isn’t going to stand still and let her get away with it.

Even Leon Panetta, an Obama/Pelosi stooge if ever there was one, won’t stand by and watch the Agency he now heads be destroyed.

If I were a CIA employee, analyst, agent or case manager, the last thing I could possibly need is a lecture from a career political hack like Panetta. He still has his training wheels on and is a foreigner and interloper in the Intelligence community.

@ John Ryan I know John isn’t going to respond to this. He just drops bloviation bombs and leaves. Since he wishes to keep bringing up the constitution and torture, I’m guessing he’s the great defender of the constitution. Maybe he can tell us why he isn’t challenging President Obama’s continuous assault on the 5th amendment. Obama isn’t flirting with the 5th amendment, he’s jumping right in a gutting it. What say ye John Ryan? Or do you only care about the constitution as it relates to your idea of torture?