Yep, even current Speaker of State Nancy Pelosi thought it was a good idea. Check this out from Fox News:WASHINGTON — Four top members of Congress, including now-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, got a close look at CIA overseas detention sites and interrogation techniques in September 2002 and offered no challenge to their legitimacy, according to a news article out Sunday.
On the contrary, at least two lawmakers involved in the briefing that day questioned whether the CIA was pushing hard enough, even after hearing the details of the now widely criticized technique known as waterboarding, two U.S. officials told The Washington Post.
"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," one official is quoted saying
Hmmmm...sounds like we have selective outrage when it is politically expedient. Hmmm..sounds a little like hypocrisy. But what do you expect? From the original Washington Post Article:
Yet long before "waterboarding" entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.
With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).
Individual lawmakers' recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support. "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement."
Don't think this is either a case of "have you forgotten" incompetence or a case of political manuevering and strateegery? Check out this quote from the Post article:
But there was no objecting, no hand-wringing. The attitude was, 'We don't care what you do to those guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people.' "
Only after information about the practice began to leak in news accounts in 2005 -- by which time the CIA had already abandoned waterboarding -- did doubts about its legality among individual lawmakers evolve into more widespread dissent. The opposition reached a boiling point this past October, when Democratic lawmakers condemned the practice during Michael B. Mukasey's confirmation hearings for attorney general.
GOP lawmakers and Bush administration officials have previously said members of Congress were well informed and were supportive of the CIA's use of harsh interrogation techniques. But the details of who in Congress knew what, and when, about waterboarding -- a form of simulated drowning that is the most extreme and widely condemned interrogation technique -- have not previously been disclosed.
Pelosi declined to comment directly on her reaction to the classified briefings. But a congressional source familiar with Pelosi's position on the matter said the California lawmaker did recall discussions about enhanced interrogation. The source said Pelosi recalls that techniques described by the CIA were still in the planning stage -- they had been designed and cleared with agency lawyers but not yet put in practice -- and acknowledged that Pelosi did not raise objections at the time.
OK, Nancy, so it is ok in theory but not in practice? Uh, huh? Say what? Sounds like someone is trying to play fast and loose with the facts again....
Why Do Democrats Hate Intellectual Honesty and the Truth?
