Nancy Pelosi is no Dick Cheney, nor a George W. Bush. She was neither the author of a systematic policy of torture nor has she been, like Cheney and most top Republicans in Congress, an enduring apologist for its practice. It is a nonsensical distraction to place her failure to speak out courageously as a critic of the Bush policies on the same level as those who engineered one of the most shameful debacles in U.S. history.
But what she, and anyone else who went along with this evil, as lackadaisically as she now claims, should be confronted with are the serious implications of their passive acquiescence. Why did she not speak up, or if it were a matter of a lack of reliable information, demand an accounting from the executive branch, as befits a leader of the loyal opposition in Congress?
If the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, and later House Democratic leader, lacked the authority to publicly question a policy of torture, then how can we condemn, indeed imprison, ordinary soldiers who thought it their duty to follow orders?
Even though Abu Zubaydah had been waterboarded 83 times before the September 2002 briefing of Pelosi, she now claims she was told only that the practice might be used and that it had been approved by the Bush Justice Department as legal. Wasn't that approval in itself sufficiently alarming to justify a strong and public dissent? Certainly that would have been the appropriate response when Pelosi aide Michael Sheehy, along with Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., were informed by the CIA in no uncertain terms five months later that Zubaydah had been subjected to specific "enhanced" methods including waterboarding. Pelosi admits to possessing that information, but according to one of her aides quoted in Politico, after Harman's letter questioning the practice received "no response" from the CIA, "there was nothing more that could be done."
Why not? Does the CIA or the White House that directs its activities stand above the law without any congressional restraint, as mandated by the U. S. Constitution that Pelosi has sworn to uphold?
Should the members of the 9/11 Presidential Commission not have been informed that two of the "key witnesses" upon whom their report was based had provided the information critical to the report's conclusions only after being waterboarded a total of 266 times? On Page 146 of that report, there appears a boxed disclaimer that even the commissioners, possessed of high security clearances, were not allowed to meet, let alone cross-examine, the witnesses or even talk with those who did the interrogations.
As the presidential commissioners conceded in their report, "We submitted questions for use in the interrogations, but had no control over whether, when or how questions of particular interest would be asked. Nor were we allowed to talk to the interrogators so that we could better judge the credibility of the detainees and clarify ambiguities in the reporting."
In short, the basic narrative of the origins and conduct of the 9/11 attack that so fundamentally perverted American politics relied on cherry-picked information that the White House and its operative in the field chose to release to the commission. As a result, we the public still know nothing of certainty about the financing of the terrorist organization emanating from Saudi Arabia and the UAE or the logistical support supplied to the Taliban and al-Qaida by agencies of the government of Pakistan.
What the public was offered was not an unvarnished look at the available evidence concerning the attack but rather a fear campaign justifying an undifferentiated and illogically constructed international war on terror. As Steve Elmendorf, chief of staff to Rep. Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., the Democratic leader following 9/11, put it: "You have to remember, in the 2002 period, the whole atmospherics, it was all about scaring people every day."
That fear-mongering drove a majority of Democrats to support the president in his invasion of Iraq, the one Arab nation where al-Qaida had been most brutally oppressed by its sworn enemy, Saddam Hussein, who had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack. The "key witnesses" affirmed that reality even after being subjected to torture, which would have proven deeply embarrassing to the Bush administration were it revealed in open court proceedings.
By acquiescing to the cover-up of unpleasant truths in the treatment of prisoners, Pelosi contributed to the betrayal of the ideal of public accountability that is the bedrock of our system of governance, which Congress is charged with protecting.
Survival is easy, let us discuss living and what that means, that seems the more compelling topic. Survival is breathing, eating, and sleeping, the basics, but what of the quality of food, the source of food, the idea of food, the morality of food? If I scorch earth for food at what point is that by which I survive slated for depletion? If I ransack the village for a place to lay my head, how long before the village is no more? In other words, if survival requires me to eat my foundation for life, what good is mere survival?
Perhaps there is an endless supply of consumers to be consumed by the consumption system, but is that really the best we can do concerning an economic system, a social system, a system that promotes ideas beyond mere survival, such as life liberty and the realization of happiness...what it means, what it consists of, where it emanates from... Is the best we can be, a consumer in a system who is tracked by a number and a name from day one to days gone? As a mere grain of sand, I see more potential for this beach of life.
Liz is embarassment. Such a string of nonsequiters and lies.
- Tom
Her behavior may very well explain why impeachment was "off the table!"
We the people need to go forward regardless of these hindrances.
They all remain innocent untill prooven guilty, thats the Law, and my own view on the matter.
But these issues are SO very fundamental to our Nation we can not allow any more obfsucation.
It is long past time to lift the veils and take a good hard honest look at what was done by whom, when and why.
Include in that effort the desire to learn what was known, by whom, and when.
Let the chips fall where they may, then take all that are prooven guilty, be they Executive branch, Legislative, Judicial, CIA, Military, or anyone at all, and HANG them.
Other than Cheney (whom I admire for his gumption in this) nobody seems willing to step forward and if needed pay the price for freedom.
All these patriots trying to hide behind memos and orders and National Security Secrets.
Isn't it always the way?
The ones that call for a thing are the first to abjurr and deny it.
I just did jury duty and marveled at how every jurror told the truth.
No kidding.
We all of us served honorably and I am proud of us.
Even while everyone that has power LIES.
They have ENRONised our world.
Remove their power from them and take it for our selves.
Instead we shall continue to tell the truth only, as we are led to the slaughter house.
For we are honest sheep.
“No more obfuscation” is the call and has always been the call, yet here we are. It is kind of like “Better education for all”, often stated, seldom seen. It smacks of “Stop the killing” as shots ring out in the night, blood rolls red, and tears roll down the cheeks of those caught in the grip of sorrow from murdered life. “No more obfuscation” is quite similar in boldness to “Big business does not run America”.
What concerns me is that her behavior during the briefings and now her outright lies about the role she played (as well as her lame attempts to cover her hindquarters, as witnessed by her stuttering and dismissive remarks during recent press conferences) might point to Obama's real reasons for not holding the Bush administration accountable on this score. I fear Obama wants to skirt this issue because he knows that Pelosi and many other big-name Dems will be implicated in approving torture. Pelosi tellingly still refers to torture as "enhanced interrogation," which seems to make her complicit with the Repubs in diminishing the horrors of torture so that, once the truth comes out, the damage to her and other Dems will be less.
Thus Pelosi has now lost any credibility and integrity she may still have had. I hope the Dems will start thinking about electing another Speaker. (But If her district were to vote her out....) I also hope the Dems won't find that their leadership's terrible decisions don't catch up to them too soon, namely in the 2010 or 2012 elections.