She’s lying. She (and other Dems) played a dangerous game, acceding to torture when it seemed to fit the national mood. Now that the winds have shifted she’s left exposed.

California, I wrote a post about poll numbers.  I’m not sure how I “glossed over the real issue” unless I’m supposed to write every post about every possible issue.

(And, incidentally, I’m willing to believe both that the CIA lied and that Pelosi still bowed cravenly to a torture regime when she did find out about it.  Ha!)

The “Real” issue is blatant law breaking by the previous administration, regarding torture, domestic spying, contract awards, wars of aggression, lying to Congress, etc.

If Pelosi had a hand in any of those things, fry her ass.

But we KNOW Cheney, Bush, and their evil underlings who did naughty things for which they should be tried and punished.  So going off on Pelosi is currently just a distraction to deflect blame from those who really deserve it…

I wonder how many people even know who Nancy Pelosi is.  Do they ask people if they know when polling them?

Yeah, what MikeEss said up there. 

There should be an independent investigation to find out who knew what when and who authorized what and when and then everyone found to have been involved with this crap needs to go.  Preferably to prison for a really long time, or to the Hague to be tried for War Crimes.  And if Pelosi did have something to do with or caved early on and is trying to cover her ass now, then she should go too.

But this is just a distraction by the republicans in charge and Fox news to get the spotlight off them and the way, way, way worse things they did over the past several years.

“The “Real” issue is blatant law breaking by the previous administration, regarding torture, domestic spying, contract awards, wars of aggression, lying to Congress, etc.

If Pelosi had a hand in any of those things, fry her ass.

But we KNOW Cheney, Bush, and their evil underlings who did naughty things for which they should be tried and punished.  So going off on Pelosi is currently just a distraction to deflect blame from those who really deserve it…”

This a thousand times. Burn them all. Anyone who acceded to torture, Republican or Democrat. Just follow the damn law.

If we could put lie to the idea in this country that the powerful are not accountable and are a law unto themselves, that would go down in history as a pretty damn fine hour.

You have to be impressed with two never-before-seen trolls jump into this thread in the first two comments to push some GOP talking points.

I’m all for Obama having Nixon-level popularity. If we’re talking about his November 1972 popularity.

She’s lying. She (and other Dems) played a dangerous game, acceding to torture when it seemed to fit the national mood. Now that the winds have shifted she’s left exposed.

Yeah, once that anti-torture wind picks up in the American voting community, those anti-torture voters are just going to dump pro-torture Dems right out of office in favor of all the anti-torture Republicans that will be running against them.

Oh… Wait… DAMN YOU TWO PARTY SYSTEM!!!

However, this does lead to one potential benefit - if Pelosi’s being mentioned in the same breath as Gingrich…

It means the Republican talking points machine has been reduced to - once again - relying on its own name as an epithet.  “Nancy Pelosi is bad.  Really bad.  Leader of the ‘94 Republican Revolution, bad.”  Reminds me of the “Obama is just like Bush” talking point.  And it belies who they think their audience really is.  For all that talk of “America is a majority center right country”, the punditocracy is trying really really hard to speak to the liberals.  Because if the majority of Americans were trending conservative, you’d think it would be a bad idea to compare a Democrat leader favorably to one of the Republican’s most lauded standard bearers.

I’m so confused.

I thought Newtie was popular again.  He’s on TV all the time.  And he was BMOC in his first year as speaker, so how is comparing her numbers to his a knock on the Dems?

At any rate, I’m am so with the rest of you: if Nancy knew about the torture and acquiesced to it, fry her.  If her exposure on torture is the reason impeachment was off the table, fry her.

I don’t care what party they belonged to.  This isn’t sports.  This is human lives and our country’s soul.  Investigate, prosecute, convict and then fry all the torture supporters.

It’s the only way to be sure.

California NaNa, your concern is noted. The only people who think “she needs to go as speaker” are a bunch of Republican partisans (barely 25% of americans identify as Republicans), who are trying to create a controversy out of thin air. And part of this move is to obsessively propagandize their talking points by repeating them as though they are true… and the next stage has been for them to pretend that Pelosi is some kind of “controversial” unpopular figure. What they forget is that Newt and DeLay (majority leader, not Speaker, but the power behind the throne) didn’t become unpopular because of a Democratic PR blitz. They became unpopular because they were sleazy and supported things that were unpopular.

Pelosi’s legislative agenda has been more or less in line with what Americans voted for in 2006 and 2008. If anything, she’s been too timid and too accommodating of the Bush administration from ‘07 to ‘09 and too accommodating of Republicans.

Dear NaNa:

We generally don’t ask Republicans who we want as Speaker.  Let’s see the minutes from the 2002 meeting and then we’ll know.  Until then, STFU.  If Ms. Pelosi lied, let the chips fall where they may.

You Republics have no idea how utterly childish you sound.  “Yeah, well, I wasn’t the only one, she did it too, mom.”

“The devil is always in the details and no matter how much the meme “Bush Tortured” is repeated, it doesn’t make it so. No authority has ruled that what the Bush administration did was unlawful.”

...um, that’s why we need a thorough investigation to determine the facts and then, if necessary, put people on trial.  Unlike Cheney and Bush, the rest of us believe the legal system should be properly used, and not circumvented. 

But people did do the torturing — and don’t start with the crap about how “it’s not really torture”, etc.  we’ve prosecuted people from other countries and even Americans for doing these things — and people did order it to be done.  We need to know who they are and what they did and determine suitable punishment to discourage this from happening again. 

At least there’s always some Koolaid-guzzling wingnut to drop by and defend whatever the current Reichwing obsession happens to be.  Isn’t that special…

At least there’s always some Koolaid-guzzling wingnut to drop by and defend whatever the current Reichwing obsession happens to be.

The funny thing is that a koolaid-guzzling wingnut came here and created an account specifically to push the talking points of the current right-wing obsession. This is how they think they’re “serving the cause.”

Why not recycle your greatest hits, NaNa? What happened to Bill Ayers?

I don’t think I’m a troll, Tyro. I just think that if a Democrat does something awful, s/he needs to pay the consequences, same as if s/he were a Republican. As a reasonably progressive person, I do not think that either party represents my views very well, and I’m not willing to play the “let’s be quiet and pretend this person didn’t do what we all know she did” game just to keep one more D vote on deck.

I don’t think I’m a troll, Tyro. I just think that if a Democrat does something awful, s/he needs to pay the consequences, same as if s/he were a Republican.

Yes, if a Democrat ordered the use of torture and wrote legal memos to legally justify it and used torture to extract confessions of an Iraq-Al-Qaeda conspiracy, I’d be pretty upset.

The fact that you have a bunch of Republicans who aren’t outraged about any of that but are instead claiming to be more outraged that a constant boogeyman of theirs, Pelosi, might have heard about it somewhere along the way when she was in the minority party on the intelligence committee sounds pretty disingenuous. And when unknown commenters leap in out of nowhere to promote the GOP talking points on this matter, it sounds like a bunch of dishonest PR crap to me.

Republicans have had a bug up their ass about pelosi from day one. To satisfy this need for outrage, the Republicans manufactured some anti-pelosi outrage to sell to their torture loving followers. So what? Not my problem. And by all accounts, particularly according to the very reliable notes of Sen. Graham, Pelosi is right and the right-wing hate brigade is wrong.

But the Republicans are trying to manufacture Pelosi as some kind of unpopular lightning rod for controversy. What they forget is that PR didn’t make Newt unpopular. Newt’s unpopularity and opposition to a well-liked president made him unpopular.

The devil is always in the details, and no matter how much the meme “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques are Effective” is repeated, it doesn’t make it so. No authority (beyond decades of settled US law and centuries of Western legal tradition) has ruled that what the Bush administration did was unlawful, and if we don’t do it soon, The Hague might do it for us.

Pelosi’s problem is that she may not have said enough in the past, but finally she’s gotten shrill and now we need to find out what really happened. And the worst part of all is listening to anyone, anywhere, lament that the CIA has been slandered.

She’s in a pickle, and if she can’t navigate her way out of this manufactured outrage, or if she is shown to have abdicated her responsibility of oversight, then she probably needs to go as speaker. And if she is shown to have abetted the torture regime then she deserves to be prosecuted.

people like California NaNa who don’t live, work, or think outside of the rarefied community of right-wing talking-points-repeaters are a microcosm of the media. The Republicans say stupid stuff that makes no sense. But not being exposed to anything outside the world of the right-wing talking points, they think it makes sense, and they repeat it verbatim.

Many people at CNN don’t hear from many other people outside of their Republican beltway friends who are convinced that Pelosi is unpopular. All the Republican PR people they speak to say the same thing, so it must be true! However, this is all just an invented fringe believe of the right-wing community. Most americans either like Pelosi because she’s a democrat, have reservations about her because she has given too much power to the Blue Dogs, or haven’t heard of her much at all. The CNN producers and reporters who created this story don’t really have the perspective of what’s going on in reality, so the story they put together of course isn’t going to make much sense.

I think Pelosi might have known, so I think there should be an investigation.

I think Panetta is right when he says that Congress needs to evaluate the evidence, so I think there should be an investigation.

It is possible that Pelosi knew and lied, so I think there should be an investigation.

How many times must it be said that the initial after a lawmaker’s name is not potentially exculpatory evidence?

Do you believe that Pelosi probably knew since it is documented that she was told?

Error.  It doesn’t matter what you or I or anybody else “believes.”  We haven’t seen the documents related to the 9/02 meeting.  We don’t know.  STFU.

Do you now believe that Obama’s hand-picked CIA chief is lying?

See answer above.

If it is documented that Pelosi knew and lied, is that called a cover-up?

No.  It might be proof of a lie but it is not a cover up because nothing is being covered up.  It could be a CYA.

If you don’t think the CIA lies to Congress, I have some ocean-front property in Arizona I’d like to sell you.

I specifically refer you to the statements of Sen. Barry Goldwater, then head of the Senate Inteligence committee, regarding the CIA lying to him about mining the harbors in Nicaragua.
Aren’t Republicans allowed to have memories?  I guess not because they would interfer with the daily plasticity of the party line.

Look, California CaCa, here’s the deal: 

Standard Republican Talking Point #1 is that we did not and never will torture.  This is supported by the claim that “waterboarding”, etc., is not really torture.  So if what Pelosi was told is not really torture, then where’s the problem?

If, OTOH, the knee-jerk supporters of the destruction of America’s moral standing in the world are willing to admit that this really was torture, then we can start going after people.  But if we tortured, there are people way higher up the list who need to get nailed before we even look at Pelosi.

Come up with a tape of Pelosi using a cattle prod on some detainee’s nads while laughing manically, and you’ve got something.  Claiming that she knew all about it in explicit detail (when there are already questions about the CIA’s trustworthiness) but didn’t stop an out-of-control administration…what else have you got?...

Do you admit we used torture?  Go after everyone involved…and go all the way to the top…

Still claiming it’s not torture?  Then there was no crime committed by anyone, including a bystander like Pelosi…

Oh, for fuck’s sake.  We just got rid of a troll who refused to engage arguments and just kept repeating his talking points.

Can I call for a pre-emptive stick rule?  Another couple weeks of some asshole Franklining every thread is just too tiring to contemplate.

When Republicans are particularly firmly backed into a corner, they will indignantly scream “everyone does it! politicians are terrible!” in order to justify not supporting Democrats while they stubbornly continue to vote for the lying, warmongering, dishonest, destructive republicans they’ve always supported.

This is just another instantiation of that—yes, DeLay and Newt were bad guys, one of whom was indicted, the other of whom had a major ethics problem and left office in ignominy after running a jihad against Clinton while carrying on an affair himself. But Pelosi is “just as bad!” because Reupblicans don’t like her, meaning she’s “unpopular.”

And sure, Bush, Cheney, and the rest of the executive branch colluded to propose, justify, and order the use of torture on a large scale, lying about how often it was used, and specifically used it— a war crime—to extract false information about Iraq/Al-Qaeda conspiracies that they wanted to hear. But Democrats are “just as bad!” because members of the minority party at the time might have heard something about it at some point!

All I know is that when Republicans did hear about the use of torture, they continued to be full-throated supporters of the Bush amdinistration, voting to re-elect him in 2004 and generating a significant amount of opposition to John McCain, in part on that basis, when he ran in the primaries. So trying to gin up outrage about Pelosi is pretty weak sauce on this score (who, it turns out, opposed Bush, supported kerry, and passed a bill to make it clearly illegal for the CIA to use torture but which Bush vetoed). But they need their boogeymen.

If Pelosi sneezed, they’d be outraged. But the anti-pelosi brigade tolerated lies, the use of torture, and quagmire of a war out of Bush, and they still supported him. Calling for Pelosi’s resignation because you don’t like her strikes me as a bit of hypocritical disingenuousness.

I don’t think I’m a troll, Tyro. I just think that if a Democrat does something awful, s/he needs to pay the consequences, same as if s/he were a Republican.

Nobody has said that Pelosi should get away with anything.  You’re putting up a straw man argument.  If Pelosi did something wrong, then she should be punished for it, as long as Cheney, Bush, and all others involved are also punished.  By implying that we want to let a Democrat get away with something, you’re being a troll.

Can I call for a pre-emptive stick rule?  Another couple weeks of some asshole Franklining every thread is just too tiring to contemplate.

Hmm, I thought NaNa was Franklin.  S/he acts just like him, except the commenting is a little more frequent.

<u>Do you believe that Pelosi probably knew since it is documented that she was told?</u>

Sadly, no.

In a statement today, a CIA spokesman neither accepted nor denied Pelosi’s claim. Instead, he cited a letter to Congress from Director Leon Panetta. In it, Panetta said records of the briefings represent “the best recollections of those individuals.”

“This information, however, is drawn from the past files of the CIA and represents [memorandums for the record] completed at the time and notes that summarized the best recollections of those individuals. In the end, you and the Committee will have to determine whether this information is an accurate summary of what actually happened.”

Leon Panetta, Director of the CIA. 05/07/2009

Not only that, it’s worth mentioning that Sen. Bob Graham, whose habit of extensively documenting his life is and was well-known for years,  found that 3 of 4 intelligence briefings that the CIA claimed it gave him didn’t happen. 
 
<u>Do you now believe that Obama’s hand-picked CIA chief is lying?</u>

Hard to tell from what he said, he doesn’t affirm that the CIA version is the truth.  See the above.

If it is documented that Pelosi knew and lied, is that called a cover-up?

Link

“Fiat iustitia ruat caelum.”

Let justice be done though the heavens fall.

the thing about torture or “enhanced interrogation” is that it can be effective, as long as a)leading questions like who, what, where, when and why are used instead of yes or no. b)the one being interrogated values his/her life more than the cause. c)the interrogators don’t go too far and just get off on causing pain and suffering, causing a mental breakdown thus resulting in the interrogated getting desperate and saying what the interrogator wants to hear just to make it stop.

this is the problem encountered now; those being interrogated are so devoted to their cause, they do not fear pain or death. in fact, they want to die so they can be martyrs and get their stable-full of virgins. it also doesn’t help that the american people became unhappy at the fact that we haven’t been served Osama-on-a-stick yet, and the government has gotten desperate.

The devil is always in the details and no matter how much the meme “Bush Tortured” is repeated, it doesn’t make it so. No authority has ruled that what the Bush administration did was unlawful.

California NaNa

On December 10, 1948 the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Article 5 states, “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” Since that time a number of other international treaties have been adopted to prevent the use of torture. Two of these are the United Nations Convention Against Torture and for international conflicts the Geneva Conventions III and IV.

Article 1
1. For the purposes of this Convention, the term “torture” means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

As the United States Constitution recognizes customary international law, or the law of nations, the U.S. Alien Tort Claims Act also provides legal remedies for victims of torture in the United States. Specifically, the status of torturers under the law of the United States, as determined by a famous legal decision in 1980, Filártiga v. Peña-Irala, 630 F.2d 876 (1980), is that, “the torturer has become, like the pirate and the slave trader before him, hostis humani generis, an enemy of all mankind.”

Poor, poor wingnuts.  So blind to the fact reality has a liberal bias.

“Pelosi is third in line to the throne. How much “higher up the list” can you go? Two?”

I realize mental density is a common malady among the Koolaiderati, but since when was Pelosi participating in the formation of Cheney/Bush administration policy on interrogating prisoners?  And how does the succession scheme encoded in the Constitution describe Pelosi’s official position in the Cheney/Bush administration (of course she has never had a position in the Cheney/Bush administration)?

Again, if Pelosi was sitting next to Condi while Cheney, Rummy, Jr., etc., were deciding to torture people, fry her.  But fry Cheney, Rummy Bush Jr., and Condi (and whoever else was involved) too.  And getting the facts to fry Pelosi would involve getting devastating facts about the behavior of the Cheney/Bush administration.  I want to go there, do you?

The whole Pelosi thing is nothing more than a public blog troll maneuver in the physical world.  If the Pelosi distraction doesn’t work, maybe you assholes can switch over to blaming Hillery, or Clinton’s dick, or somehow Jimmy Carter, or some other ridiculous distraction…

Republican trolls: you don’t see liberals getting outraged at one some random republican congressman might or might not have heard about torture back in 2002, do you? No, instead you see the focus of ire (from all sides) about torture being on the eople who conceived of it, justified it, and ordered it: and they were the ones in the executive branch.

It’s the right-wingers being hypocrites here looking for a convenient target just because that target might have a “D” after his or her name.

“Pelosi’s actions transcend the polical parties and strike at the heart of our system.”

...and in 1996-2000, it was “Bill Clinton’s actions transcend the polical parties and strike at the heart of our system.”

Same shit, different year.

Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was…

NaNa:

STFU.  You don’t know what went on in that meeting and neither do i.  You have no rational reason to believe she’s lying.  Your masters told you what to believe and so you believe.  If you have any proof, show it.  Oh, I forgot, trolls don’t argue in good faith.  Never mind.

<bockquote>No authority has ruled that what the Bush administration did was unlawful. </blockquote>

Oops, wrong again.  Actually, the Committee against Torture, the UN body charged with monitoring compliance with the Convention against Torture, has said that waterboarding is torture.

I can’t honestly say I’ve ever liked Pelosi much—I’ve always seen her as being a slightly different beast from the inept Reid or the spineless Daschle, by virtue of the fact that she has the leadership ability but seldom uses it in ways that make a significant difference. (Matter of fact, I’ve long said that every time she tries to actually show some partisan leadership, she probably gets a fat manila envelope on her desk with a Karl Rove return address.)

I’m inclined to think she was lied to about the whole matter of torture—I’m inclined to think that most of Congress was—but I really have no use for her.

NaNa:

You’d better listen to your own NPR again, and again.  Your buddy Porter Goss is beginning to backtrack.  Show me the notes from the meeting or STFU.  You got nothing new in those links.

When Republicans are particularly firmly backed into a corner, they will indignantly scream “everyone does it! politicians are terrible!” in order to justify not supporting Democrats while they stubbornly continue to vote for the lying, warmongering, dishonest, destructive republicans they’ve always supported.

The stupid fucking thing is that the wingnuts are screaming “Pelosi should be investigated!” and it’s as if they simply cannot hear us saying “Yup, go ahead - as well”.  I’m coming to the conclusion that they really believe that the only reason we’re objecting to America torturing prisoners is due to partisan politics - we’re only commenting on the fact that the US has tortured the innocent, and tortured prisoners to death as a way of scoring points.

Once again, wingnuts cannot get past projecting their own twisted crabbed little mindsets onto other people.

The stupid fucking thing is that the wingnuts are screaming “Pelosi should be investigated!” and it’s as if they simply cannot hear us saying “Yup, go ahead - as well”.  I’m coming to the conclusion that they really believe that the only reason we’re objecting to America torturing prisoners is due to partisan politics - we’re only commenting on the fact that the US has tortured the innocent, and tortured prisoners to death as a way of scoring points.

This. I don’t like Pelosi, and wouldn’t give her a high approval rating. I had high hopes when we got a Democratic Congress and my innocent naive spirit was crushed when it basically failed to be any different from a Republican Congress. I mean, why was impeachment “off the table” again? Ugh.

I’m perfectly willing to believe that any Congresscritter, including Pelosi, is lying about this. And I am perfectly okay with investigations. More that “okay”, actually - I insist on it.

Only - and here is where the Republicans will get upset - I want them to be actual investigations and not witch hunts to determine if Pelosi ever had an affair, failed to cross a ‘T’ on one of her tax forms, etc. I’m partisan like that.

Just out of curiosity, and not because I expect any great enlightenment…

Let’s say that irrefutable proof is found that Pelosi is a very bad person, who cheats while playing bridge, puts Dijon mustard on her burger, who is collecting 101 dalmatian puppies to turn into a coat, etc., and it turns out the head of the CIA himself personally explained in great graphic detail all of the tortures that had already been used, and those that had been planned for use in the future.

What exactly would Pelosi be “guilty” of?...

MikeEss:

The usual shit. Implausible deniability. (And being a Democrat.)

elephant-butt

Well aren’t you the little ass-tard? Good luck in your future bannings.

The “Real” issue is blatant law breaking by the previous administration, regarding torture, domestic spying, contract awards, wars of aggression, lying to Congress, etc.

If Pelosi had a hand in any of those things, fry her ass.

But we KNOW Cheney, Bush, and their evil underlings who did naughty things for which they should be tried and punished.  So going off on Pelosi is currently just a distraction to deflect blame from those who really deserve it…

This.

I can’t believe that we’re actually letting the Goposaurs win this message battle.

The fuckers want a full investigation on Pelosi’s role in what she did or did not know about the torture debacle?

Fine, assholes, a full investigation you want, a full investigation you should get.

And by full investigation, we mean investigate EVERYONE.  You want to bring down Pelosi for her potential missteps on this matter, be fucking prepared to see your heroes Bush, Cheney, Rummy, Ashcroft, Rove, Wolfowitz, Gonzo, and the rest of the bastards before a war crimes tribunal.

“Lying to the public
Lying to her constituancy
Covering up by lying about the CIA and trying to hang it on them.”

...which, even if they were true, are crimes how?

Why is what she did/didn’t do or is blamed for doing/not-doing worse than TELLING YOUR OWN PEOPLE TO TORTURE PRISONERS, KNOWING PERFECTLY WELL IT’S ILLEGAL BASED ON AMERICAN LAW, LET ALONE INTERNATIONAL LAW?  How about lying to Congress, which the Bushites raised to a fine art?  How can you tell when Bush is lying?  His lips move. How can you tell when Cheney is lying?  His scowl moves. 

The Cheney/Bush administration began with a lie (“We won the election!”), continued on lies for 8-years, ended on lies, and is still lying (“Obama is going to release the Evil Terrorists from Gitmo into your neighborhood, where they will kill your whole family and then rape your dog!”).

As usual, the Reichwing is nothing but a mass of sniveling, hypocritical, authority-worshipers who don’t care if something is right or wrong, just as long as their team wins.  Thanks for providing plenty of examples to back up this statement. 

So in the end, we’re back to this whole thing being nothing more than a living example of Reichwing trollery…

A politician <strike>lied</strike> mispok?.  Really?  It can’t be!  Such things don’t happen!  *faints dead away*

By the way, NaNa, Pelosi didn’t say the CIA lied to her.  She said “mislead” the Congress.  That could as easily be a sin of omission as comission.  Which is what these agencies usually do.  Or they will take a beautiful shining little piece of truth and cover it with piles of steaming obfuscations, CYAs,  euphamisms, etc., etc., and leave the poor Congresspeople to have to dig through it.  It would be just like the CIA to bury something on page 139 of a report and say “See, we told you.”

Effin grow up, it’s the way the game is played.

How can you tell when Cheney is lying?

Because someone, somewhere, is screaming and someone, somewhere, is richer.

NaNa, let’s just say that given your lack of outrage about the use of torture and lying on the part of the Bush administration, which we know about, your accusation that Pelosi might not have been totally forthcoming about something (you merely don’t believe her and claim she’s lying, so you hav nothing but an accusation fed to you by right-wing partisans), it’s hard to take your claims at all seriously.

It’s like if you show no concern for someone whom you know committed murder but instead freak out because you heard from someone that the victim might have been jaywalking.

Your outrage is fake and fed to you by the right wing for the purpose of regurgitating amongst your right wing friends and repeated in the hope that it will intimidate liberals.

But nope, Bush, Cheney, Yoo, et al.: they still advocated torture and we’re still determined to get to the bottom of it.

DTG:

That makes sense to me. Full investigation. Drag all the skeletons out into the open. (And then, just for fun, see which side has more. Somehow I don’t think the GOP wants that—it’ll reduce The Base to cranked-out rednecks and teenage boys who enjoy torturing rats.)

It’s also a fact that no judicial body has adjudicated these techniques as ‘torture’.

Uh-huh.

Interestingly, we weren’t nearly as blithe about waterboarding when it happened to our own guys during World War II. Then, we considered it a war crime and a form of torture.

In “Drop by Drop: Forgetting the History of Water Torture in U.S. Courts,” Judge Evan Wallach of the U.S. Court of International Trade has documented the trials in which the United States used evidence of water-boarding as a basis for prosecutions. The article, still in draft form, will be published soon by the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law.

Among the numerous examples, Wallach cites one involving four Japanese defendants who were tried before a U.S. military commission at Yokohama, Japan, in 1947 for their treatment of American and Allied prisoners. Wallach writes, in the case of United States of America vs. Hideji Nakamura, Yukio Asano, Seitara Hata and Takeo Kita, “water torture was among the acts alleged in the specifications ... and it loomed large in the evidence presented against them.”

Hata, the camp doctor, was charged with war crimes stemming from the brutal mistreatment and torture of Morris Killough “by beating and kicking him (and) by fastening him on a stretcher and pouring water up his nostrils.” Other American prisoners, including Thomas Armitage, received similar treatment, according to the allegations.

Armitage described his ordeal: “They would lash me to a stretcher then prop me up against a table with my head down. They would then pour about 2 gallons of water from a pitcher into my nose and mouth until I lost consciousness.”

Hata was sentenced to 25 years at hard labor, and the other defendants were convicted and given long stints at hard labor as well.

Wallach also found a 1983 case out of San Jacinto County, Texas, in which James Parker, the county sheriff, and three deputies were criminally charged for handcuffing suspects to chairs, draping towels over their faces and pouring water over the towel until a confession was elicited. One victim described the experience this way: “I thought I was going to be strangled to death. ... I couldn’t breath.”

The sheriff pleaded guilty and his deputies went to trial where they were convicted of civil rights violations. All received long prison sentences. U.S. District Judge James DeAnda told the former sheriff at sentencing, “The operation down there would embarrass the dictator of a country.”

Not to mention international law.

The United States has tortured prisoners to death, <strike>Franklin</strike>NaNa.  deal with it.

Here’s another angle. *If* Bush is found to be dishonest and all of this is deemed to be ‘torture’, then Pelosi would be an accomplice by knowing of this unlawful act and not saying anything and in fact, covering it all up.

What’s your point? I’m pretty sure plenty of Democrats wanted nothing further to do with James Traficant or William Jefferson as well. (Did I hear you mention Juanita Broaddrick or Kathleen Willey? Not even Ken Starr found them <strike>credible</strike> useful. Mary Jo Kopechne? Guilty or not, Ted Kennedy has spent years making up for it, so there’s a lot of water gone under that bridge. And I didn’t see many Republicans rushing to nail Jack Abramoff or Tom Delay to the wall for their blatant, in-your-face corruption.)

The Republicans have mastered doublespeak to an amazing degree.

Their argument boils down to “Nancy Pelosi is compllicit in torturing our captives because the CIA once briefed her on “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.” And their response to the obvious question is, “Well, we’re not saying it was torture. But it was Pelosi’s duty to investigate and STOP US. Doesn’t she know how crazy we get when there’s no adults around to supervise?”

No authority has ruled that what the Bush administration did was unlawful.

The Nuremberg Trials—not just for Nazis any more.

I wonder how many people even know who Nancy Pelosi is.  Do they ask people if they know when polling them?

Good point - I’ll wager most don’t know who she is or why we should care that she might have known, only that she is EEEEVIL LIBRUL GIRL.

the thing about torture or “enhanced interrogation” is that it can be effective, as long as a)leading questions like who, what, where, when and why are used instead of yes or no. b)the one being interrogated values his/her life more than the cause. c)the interrogators don’t go too far and just get off on causing pain and suffering, causing a mental breakdown thus resulting in the interrogated getting desperate and saying what the interrogator wants to hear just to make it stop.

d) the interrogators have a large enough body of information to know that a crime is being planned, that that specific person is involved, and that that specific person has specific information that they need, but not enough to actually prevent the crime.

Wasn’t there a Calvin and Hobbs cartoon - or series of cartoons - where Calvin rate’s his dad’s performance in terms of an approval rating?

Kind of like that.

Here’s another angle.

Isn’t that your problem? You’re looking for “angles” with which to accuse Pelosi of something, instead of dealing with the reality of an executive branch hell-bent on using torture.

Wasn’t there a Calvin and Hobbs cartoon - or series of cartoons - where Calvin rate’s his dad’s performance in terms of an approval rating?

Polling among six-year-old boys shows your approval ratings as Dad slipping, Dad.

“You’re looking for “angles” with which to accuse Pelosi of something, instead of dealing with the reality of an executive branch hell-bent on using torture.”

...The Pelosi thing won’t last too much longer. 

I’m sure there are elite squads of College Republicans parachuting into Washington (temporarily setting aside their claims of being Libertarians) to help the cause and figure out some way they can bring Bill Clinton’s Penis of Destiny (there’s always an echo effect when you say it) into this and derail any possibility of further investigations of torture.  It’s what Ronald Reagan would want…

I don’t know how this jackass/these jackasses keep finding temporary e-mail address providers, but it must take up a lot of his/their day.

Bill Clinton’s Penis of Destiny (there’s always an echo effect when you say it)

I believe you’re thinking of Hillary’s Man-Eating Vagina of Doom when you mention the echo effect…

“the thing about torture or “enhanced interrogation” is that it can be effective, as long as…”

uhhh….The Gray Train, NO!
In fact an actual CIA interrogator wrote a book (using the pseudonym Matthew Alexander)about how torture or “enhanced interrogation” is ineffective. He details how they were able to find Abu Musab Al Zarqawi using “respect, rapport, hope, cunning and deception.” He also explains that he would have to go in and clean up the mess made by interrogators torturing people.

Not only is the “end justify the means” argument for torture wrong, the underlying assumption that torture works is wrong.  So even making the argument that torture can work but maybe we shouldn’t use it with a certain group is adding to the “ticking clock scenario” meme.