Nancy Pelosi is the Central Issue

[thedrifter]

May 18, 2009
Nancy Pelosi is the Central Issue
By William A. Jacobson

Nancy Pelosi recently accused the CIA of misleading Congress as to interrogation techniques employed against three al-Qaeda leaders. The CIA pushed back, claiming that Pelosi was given truthful details at briefings at least as early as September 2002. Democratic leaders and left-wing blogs have portrayed the controversy as a distraction. To the contrary, what Pelosi knew, when she knew it, and how she reacted are essential to putting events in historical context, rather than engaging in disingenuous moralizing or political theater.

The battle over interrogations takes place on legal, moral and political fronts. On the legal front, the issue is definitional. What constitutes unlawful "torture" as opposed to lawful interrogation? The criminal statute defining torture, 18 U.S.C. sec. 2340, is vague and leaves much to interpretation. Torture is defined as "an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering...."

The key wording in the statute is "specifically intended" and "severe." A generalized intent to cause harm, but not necessarily severe pain or suffering, is not a crime. Similarly, a specific intent to cause some, but not severe, pain or suffering also is not a violation. There are no guidelines as to what constitutes severe pain or suffering.

The four previously-classified legal memoranda released by President Obama in April were an attempt by Justice Department lawyers to interpret this vague statute in the context of specific interrogation techniques the CIA believed were necessary to prevent future attacks. The memoranda go through a detailed analysis, which some inaccurately describe as banal, in order to apply the law to the specific set of facts.

Despite calls for prosecution of the authors of the memoranda, and those who relied on them, it appears that there will be no prosecutions. There likely were no crimes committed under the specific wording of the law, and Obama does not want his agenda sidetracked by the desire of some to get revenge on the Bush administration.

Lacking a legal remedy, many people have resorted to a different front, moral indignation. This indignation is genuine in some and feigned in others. In this view, whether waterboarding and other harsh methods constituted torture under the law is irrelevant; keeping someone awake for days, in uncomfortable positions for long periods, or using waterboarding, never is justified even to save lives.

People who refuse to use harsh interrogation methods (whether "torture" or not) as an honest matter of conscience, deserve respect, much like conscientious objectors. This is why when we had a draft we distinguished someone who simply didn't want to serve in the military from someone who had such a profound believe that killing was wrong regardless of circumstance that he could not in good conscience serve in the military.

The moral high ground, however, is not what is at play in the current interrogation debate. No prominent politician, Democratic or Republican, is willing to sacrifice a city for the sake of moral purity. The same people who decry the waterboarding of the mastermind of 9/11 are silent when Obama orders missile attacks on Pakistan which inevitably cause civilian casualties. To continue the analogy, in this debate there are many draft evaders and few conscientious objectors.

The real front in this battle is not the law or morality, but politics. The response of many leading Democrats in Congress, including Nancy Pelosi, is to call for a "truth commission" to expose the use of harsh interrogation methods. A truth commission cannot prosecute, but it can humiliate. When Democrats talk about bringing out the truth, what they really mean is that they want a political circus aimed at the Bush administration alone. To accomplish this mission, the interrogations must be viewed in isolation from the historical events in which they took place, with morality used in hearings as a sword not a principle. To these Democrats, the only truth which matters is what was done to whom and when.

In reality, what was done to whom cannot be viewed outside the context of when it took place. The use of nuclear weapons against Japan is a good example. One could take the position that the use of nuclear weapons, with the inevitable civilian casualties, never is justified. But in the context, the alternatives were the survival of an Imperial Japan with its legacy of brutal pillage throughout Asia or a bloody invasion of the Japanese mainland which would have killed more people (both American and Japanese). In this context, the moral wrong of a nuclear weapon was the lesser of two evils, and was the only politically acceptable solution at the time.

So too, the use of waterboarding and other interrogation methods cannot be viewed in isolation from the historical events in which they were used. In 2002-2003, when most of the controversial interrogations took place, the nation justifiably was fearful of imminent attack from al-Qaeda. The three individuals subjected to waterboarding were believed to have information vital to stopping attacks which were in the planning or operational stages. Waterboarding these three was viewed at the time as the lesser of two evils, the alternative being more dead Americans.

And it is this historical context which the Democrats wish to evade, and which makes what Nancy Pelosi knew and when she knew it absolutely critical.

Far from being a distraction, the information provided to Pelosi, and her acquiescence in the interrogation methods, puts the whole debate in proper historical context. If Pelosi, who states that she is against "torture" under any circumstance, was willing to go along with the interrogation methods, then the planned political circus falls apart. Nancy Pelosi was the classic example of a person who opposed certain interrogation methods in principle, but under certain circumstances and certain places in time was willing to go along or look the other way because the alternative was worse.

Historical context and national self-defense are essential to the truth of how we should view the interrogation of al-Qaeda leaders. But these are the very topics which would be avoided or obscured unless what Nancy Pelosi knew, when she knew it, and how she reacted are the central focuses of any inquiry.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

May 16, 2009, 7:00 a.m.

Fun with Dick and Nancy
Cheney has been entirely consistent on waterboarding. Pelosi has not.

By Mark Steyn


Uh-oh. Nancy Pelosi’s performance at her press conference re waterboarding has raised, according to the Washington Post, “troubling new questions about the Speaker’s credibility.” The dreaded T-word: “troubling.”

I doubt it will “trouble” the media for long, or at least not to the extent of bringing the Pelosi speakership to a sudden end — and needless to say I’m all in favor of Nancy remaining the face of congressional Democrats until November 2010. But her inconsistent statements do suggest a useful way of looking at America’s tortured “torture” debate:

Question: What does Dick Cheney think of waterboarding?

He’s in favor of it. He was in favor of it then, he’s in favor of it now. He doesn’t think it’s torture, and he supports having it on the books as a vital option. On his recent TV appearances, he sometimes gives the impression he would not be entirely averse to performing a demonstration on his interviewers, but generally he believes its use should be a tad more circumscribed. He is entirely consistent.

Question: What does Nancy Pelosi think of waterboarding?

No, I mean really. Away from the cameras, away from the Capitol, in the deepest recesses of her (if she’ll forgive my naivete) soul. Sitting on a mountaintop, contemplating the distant horizon, chewing thoughtfully on a cranberry-almond granola bar, what does she truly believe about waterboarding?

Does she support it? Well, according to the CIA, she did way back when, over six years ago.

Does she oppose it? According to Speaker Pelosi, yes. In her varying accounts, she’s (a) accused the CIA of consciously “misleading the Congress of the United States” as to what they were doing; (b) admitted to having been briefed that waterboarding was in the playbook but that “we were not — I repeat — were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used”; (c) belatedly conceded that she’d known back in February 2003 that waterboarding was being used but had been apprised of the fact by “a member of my staff.” As she said on Thursday, instead of doing anything about it, she decided to focus on getting more Democrats elected to the House.

It’s worth noting that, by most if not all of her multiple accounts, Nancy Pelosi is as guilty of torture as anybody else. That’s not an airy rhetorical flourish but a statement of law. As National Review’s Andy McCarthy points out, under Section 2340A(c) of the relevant statute, a person who conspires to torture is subject to the same penalties as the actual torturer. Once Speaker Pelosi was informed that waterboarding was part of the plan and that it was actually being used, she was in on the conspiracy, and as up to her neck in it as whoever it was who was actually sticking it to poor old Abu Zubaydah and the other blameless lads.

That is, if you believe waterboarding is “torture.”

I don’t believe it’s torture. Nor does Dick Cheney. But Nancy Pelosi does. Or so she has said, latterly.

Alarmed by her erratic public performance, the speaker’s fellow San Francisco Democrat Dianne Feinstein attempted to put an end to Nancy’s self-torture session. “I don’t want to make an apology for anybody,” said Senator Feinstein, “but in 2002, it wasn’t 2006, ’07, ’08, or ’09. It was right after 9/11, and there were in fact discussions about a second wave of attacks.”

Indeed. In effect, the senator is saying waterboarding was acceptable in 2002, but not by 2009. The waterboarding didn’t change, but the country did. It was no longer America’s war but Bush’s war. And it was no longer a bipartisan interrogation technique that enjoyed the explicit approval of both parties’ leaderships, but a grubby Bush-Cheney-Rummy war crime.

Dianne Feinstein has provided the least worst explanation for her colleague’s behavior. The alternative — that Speaker Pelosi is a contemptible opportunist hack playing the cheapest but most destructive kind of politics with key elements of national security — is, of course, unthinkable. Senator Feinstein says airily that no reasonable person would hold dear Nancy to account for what she supported all those years ago. But it’s okay to hold Cheney or some no-name Justice Department backroom boy to account?


Well, sure. It’s the Miss USA standard of political integrity: Carrie Prejean and Barack Obama have the same publicly stated views on gay marriage. But the politically correct enforcers know that Barack doesn’t mean it, so that’s okay, whereas Carrie does, so that’s a hate crime. In the torture debate, Pelosi is Obama and Dick Cheney is Carrie Prejean. Dick means it, because to him this is an issue of national security. Nancy doesn’t, because to her it’s about the shifting breezes of political viability.

But it does make you wonder whether a superpower with this kind of leadership class should really be going to war at all. Over at the New York Times, the elderly schoolgirl Maureen Dowd riffed off Cheney’s defense of waterboarding and argued that, no matter when the next terrorist attack comes, the former vice president would be the one primarily responsible. He is, she said, “a force multiplier for Muslims who hate America.”

Really? Last week, while Speaker Pelosi was preoccupied with her what-did-I-know-and-when-did-I-know-that-I-knew-it routine, the Daily Telegraph in London reported what is believed to be the second mass poisoning of Afghan schoolgirls, this time at Ura Jalili High School for Girls in Charikar. Fifty students had to be hospitalized after a mysterious “poison gas” infected the classrooms. As you may recall, under the Taliban it was illegal for girls to attend school, and Afghan insurgents have made a sustained effort to make the price of female education too high. So, in an effort to identify the poison, blood samples have been taken to Bagram air base to be analyzed by the U.S. military, taking time off its hectic schedule of mass torture.

Does waterboarding so outrage the Muslim world that it drives millions of young men into the dark embrace of al-Qaeda? No. But the media fetishization of U.S. “torture” is certainly “a force multiplier” for Muslims who don’t so much “hate” as despise America, not least for its self-loathing.

One of the few U.S. commentators to pick up on the Afghan schoolgirls story was Phyllis Chesler, who wrote about it under the headline “The High Cost Of Western Idealism.” America and its few real allies fight under the most constrained and self-imposed rules of engagement ever devised, and against an enemy that rejects every basic element of the Geneva Conventions. Perhaps we are so rich, so smart, so advanced that we can fight with one arm and both legs tied behind our back and still win — eventually. Along the way many innocents will suffer. But better that than that a Gitmo detainee with a fear of insects should have a caterpillar put in his cell.

Watching the Democrats champing at the bit last week, I thought perhaps we could cut to the chase and handcuff Cheney and Pelosi to a radiator in the basement of a CIA safe house somewhere. But on reflection this would be an unacceptable level of torture. It would be ungallant to say for whom.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

May 18, 2009, 4:00 a.m.

Just the Facts, Ma'am
By the Editors


Conducting an ill-considered press conference last Thursday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi upped the stakes in her war of words with the CIA. Shifting among several inconsistent explanations of what she knew in 2002 about the interrogation techniques the agency was using on al-Qaeda captives, Pelosi accused the CIA of lying to her and “misleading the Congress of the United States.” Pelosi concedes that she attended a CIA briefing on interrogation tactics in September 2002, when she was the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. Though al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah already had been subjected to waterboarding by that time, Pelosi claims that the CIA lied to her, saying that the simulated-drowning tactic had not yet been used. This is a serious charge: Lying to Congress is a crime, as is failing to make a report of covert activity when doing so is required. Worrisome business, but Pelosi was not content to leave it at that and went on to accuse the agency of routinely lying to Congress: “They mislead us all the time,” she charged.



CIA director Leon Panetta, a Democratic heavyweight who once served in the same California congressional delegation as Pelosi, issued a blunt refutation. In a memo he made public, Panetta explained that “CIA officers briefed [Pelosi and others] truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing the ‘enhanced techniques that had been employed.’”

It is telling that Panetta emphasized that particular techniques, such as waterboarding, had been discussed. The CIA’s own records of the Pelosi briefing document that those in attendance were informed not only of the fact that waterboarding and other techniques had been discussed, but also that they had been used. This is also the recollection of former CIA director Porter Goss, who in 2002 was the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and attended the same briefing as Pelosi. Goss maintains that both he and Pelosi, together with their Senate counterparts and staffers, were fully informed about the enhanced-interrogation techniques. Far from raising objections, Congress ensured that the CIA had bipartisan support and funding for its programs.

Updating Congress on the interrogation program, Goss points out, was not a one-time event but “an ongoing subject.” This is borne out by Panetta’s disclosure of a chronological chart summarizing some 40 separate briefings for members of Congress and their staffers. These include eleven briefings between the first one (which Pelosi attended) and early 2005, before John McCain’s crusade against harsh interrogation measures led to legal changes that effectively ended the CIA program late that year.

It has become the fashion among Democrats in Washington to call for a “truth commission.” We’d prefer the plain truth. At this point, what we’ve got is Pelosi’s multiple conflicting accounts of what she knew, and when, about waterboarding and other enhanced-questioning methods, along with a stark inconsistency between her versions of events and both Goss’s recollection and CIA records. The situation is further complicated by the Obama administration’s disingenuous disclosure practices — which have revealed our methods (thereby forearming our enemies) but still deny the American people critical information about how the CIA program improved national intelligence and served to thwart terrorist operations.

On that last point, the administration has denied another request by former vice president Dick Cheney for the disclosure of memoranda that document the interrogation program’s effectiveness. Obama’s rationale — a purported reluctance to interfere with litigation pending under the Freedom of Information Act — is laughable: If the president had been concerned about pending FOIA litigation, he wouldn’t have revealed details about the interrogation methods in the first place.

It is past time for a full disclosure of the briefing notes and other communications between the CIA and all members of Congress and staffers who were informed about the interrogation program, coupled with a detailed account of the program’s effectiveness. It is absurd that, with the Obama administration announcing it will resume military-commission trials against al-Qaeda detainees, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s lawyers should be given insights about his interrogations while Americans are kept in the dark. We don’t need a committee of Washington solons to tell us how to think about the relevant information. We need the relevant information.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Top 10 Reasons to Scorn Nancy Pelosi
by Human Events (more by this author)
Posted 05/18/2009 ET


1. Attacked the Bush administration for waterboarding terrorists even though she was briefed on the practice and did nothing.

2. Sent a so-called stimulus package to President Obama that was filled with pork and didn’t give members of Congress time even to read it.

3.Vocally opposed the Iraq surge in 2007.

4. Undercut the Bush administration by traveling to Syria and then misstating the Israeli position in talks with Syrian President Bashar Assad.

5. Insisted on using large military aircraft for her own travels, treating the Air Force like her personal airline.

6. Pushed for an increase in the minimum wage that sought to exclude American Samoa, where Del Monte Foods (headquartered in Pelosi’s district) is a major employer.

7. Has failed to effectively police her Democratic caucus with members Jane Harmon (spies and wiretaps scandal), John Murtha (earmarks for contributions) and Charles Rangel (tax evasion) under suspicion for misconduct.

8. Supports reinstating the Fairness Doctrine for broadcasters.

9. Wants to reinstitute the assault-rifle ban and place restrictions on the manufacture, sales and ownership of guns.

10. Despite her Roman Catholic faith, she is rabidly in favor of extending abortion rights.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Why Pelosi Should Step Down
by Newt Gingrich (more by this author)
Posted 05/20/2009 ET


The case against Nancy Pelosi remaining Speaker of the House is as simple as it is devastating:

The person who is No. 2 in line to be commander in chief can’t have contempt for the men and women who protect our nation. America can’t afford it.

To test how much damage Speaker Pelosi has done to the defense of our nation, ask yourself this: If you were a young man or woman just starting out today, would you put on a uniform or become an intelligence officer to defend America, knowing that tomorrow a politician like Nancy Pelosi could decide you were a criminal?

Would you?

This Isn’t About Politics. It’s About National Security

The controversy swirling around Speaker Pelosi isn’t political -- she may think it is, other liberal Democrats may think it is, and the media may want it to appear that way.

But this isn’t about politics. It’s about national security.

At issue is whether Speaker Pelosi was informed, at a briefing by intelligence officers on September 4, 2002 when she was the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, that the CIA had used and was using enhanced interrogation techniques -- specifically waterboarding -- on captured al Qaeda terrorists.

From a Question of Memory to a Question of Criminality

Prior to her now infamous press conference last week, Speaker Pelosi insisted that the CIA had not told her in 2002 that waterboarding and other enhanced techniques were being used. At last week’s press conference she went beyond this position to assert that “the only mention of waterboarding at [the September 2002] briefing was that it was not being employed.”

In contrast, Leon Panetta, the current CIA director, wrote a memo last Friday to CIA employees in which he stated that “our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of [Al Qaeda terrorist] Abu Zubaydah, describing ‘the enhanced techniques that had been employed.’”

And so the question, prior to her rambling press conference, was one of memory: Did Speaker Pelosi remember correctly the briefing she received in 2002?

If she had confined the controversy to her memory versus the CIA’s, Speaker Pelosi may have saved herself. She would be guilty of irresponsibility and incompetence perhaps, but that would basically be it. Not good, but not disqualifying.

Pelosi on the CIA: “They Mislead Us All The Time”

But Speaker Pelosi did not confine the question to the reliability of memory. Instead, she made the allegation last week that the CIA intentionally misled her -- misled Congress -- and not just once, but routinely.

“They mislead us all the time,” she said.

She charged that the CIA, deliberately and as a matter of policy, violated the law by lying to Congress.

And with that allegation, Speaker Pelosi disqualified herself from the office she holds.

Why Did Pelosi Escalate the Controversy into a Full Scale War With the CIA?

And the question that remains is why? Why would Speaker Pelosi escalate the small skirmish she found herself in over the 2002 briefing into a full-scale war with the CIA?

Perhaps it’s because if America knew that Speaker Pelosi consented, fully informed and without complaint, to waterboarding back in 2002, it would reveal the current liberal bloodlust over interrogations for what it is: The Left’s attempt to hunt down and purge its political opponents.

Remember what America was like in September, 2002, less than a year after 9/11.

America was terrified. As I said on ABC Radio last week, our entire defense, intelligence and justice establishment expected that there would be additional al Qaeda attacks, we just didn’t know where and we didn’t know when.

If Pelosi Consented to Waterboarding in 2002, the Bush Policy Is Vindicated

If Nancy Pelosi believed that waterboarding was justified in 2002 -- just like Porter Goss, President Bush, Vice President Cheney and CIA Director Tenet -- then a policy of selectively using enhanced interrogation techniques in carefully circumscribed ways in order to prevent future attacks -- in other words, the Bush Administration policy -- is vindicated.

But rather than admit that President Bush, when faced with an array of difficult choices, made the hard choice that kept the nation safe, Nancy Pelosi has instead retreated into the cheap sanctity of ignorance. She didn’t know, so she claims. That’s why she didn’t do anything about it.

But President Bush did know. It was his job to know, and he made the tough choices needed to save American lives.

It was Nancy Pelosi’s job to know too. But to avoid culpability for the choices she supported, she’s now telling us she didn’t know. And she’s calling the intelligence officials who say otherwise liars and criminals.

Shame on her.

Speaker Pelosi Has Made America Less Safe

Speaker Pelosi has damaged America’s safety.

She’s made America less secure by sending a signal to the men and women defending our country that they can’t count on their leaders to defend them.

And every day they spend worrying about being politically persecuted is a day we are made more vulnerable to a nuclear attack on one of our cities, a biological attack on one of our subways, or a bomb going off in one of our malls.

America is losing ground because of Nancy Pelosi’s contempt for those who defend her.

Democrats owe it to their country and our national security to replace Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House.