Either Nancy Pelosi Should Resign, Or The ‘Lying’ CIA Should Be Disbanded

We have a real crisis of credibility going on.  The bottom line: someone is telling a great big fat giant lie that is so damaging that it threatens the institutions of this nation.  Either it is Nancy Pelosi as leader of Congress, or it is the Central Intelligence Agency as the leading agency of our intelligence establishment. One of them has to go.

Pelosi’s FIFTH different story has taken her demagoguery to a whole new level.  During her weekly press conference today, she had this exchange with a journalist:

QUESTION: Madam Speaker, just to be clear, you’re accusing the CIA of lying to you in September of 2002?PELOSI: Yes, misleading the Congress of the United States, misleading the Congress of the United States. I am.

QUESTION: And also — and doing it again now, as they’ve released this list of briefings that says you were briefed on the interrogation tactics that were used.

In other words, it’s not just the CIA under Bush (along with the many career operatives who serve through both Democrat or Repbulican administrations), it is also Leon Panetta and the CIA under Obama that is continuing to lie if Nancy Pelosi should be believed.

Either Nancy Pelosi needs to resign, or the CIA needs to be disbanded.  Barack Obama could replace the agency with a herd of winged unicorns that fly hither and thither, gathering information and conveying it to him by means of their magical powers. That way, Obama would be able to obtain all the intelligence data the country needs to remain safe without ever doing a single unpleasant thing to any terrorist murderer ever again.

The CIA lies to people for a living, and they are still far more trustworthy than Nancy Pelosi.

After demagoguing the waterboarding issue as a partisan attack on Republicans, Nancy Pelosi finally got hung up on her own petard.  First she said she hadn’t been told about waterboarding; then she said she was told, but only that it “could be employed.”  Then she acknowledged that she had been told it had been employed, but felt that she shouldn’t protest because she didn’t want to step on any toes (and, after all, she was also busy trying to undermine the Bush administration so Democrats could win); then she basically waffled that she hadn’t been told after all; and now she’s saying that everyone and their little dogs too lied to her.

Here’s an article on the story via the AP.

Karl Rove offers a great take on this in the Wall Street Journal:

Congress and Waterboarding: Nancy Pelosi was an accomplice to ‘torture.’

By KARL ROVE    MAY 15, 2009

Someone important appears not to be telling the truth about her knowledge of the CIA’s use of enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs). That someone is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. The political persecution of Bush administration officials she has been pushing may now ensnare her.

Here’s what we know. On Sept. 4, 2002, less than a year after 9/11, the CIA briefed Rep. Porter Goss, then House Intelligence Committee chairman, and Mrs. Pelosi, then the committee’s ranking Democrat, on EITs including waterboarding. They were the first members of Congress to be informed.

In December 2007, Mrs. Pelosi admitted that she attended the briefing, but she wouldn’t comment for the record about precisely what she was told. At the time the Washington Post spoke with a “congressional source familiar with Pelosi’s position on the matter” and summarized that person’s comments this way: “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.”

When questions were raised last month about these statements, Mrs. Pelosi insisted at a news conference that “We were not — I repeat — were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used.” Mrs. Pelosi also claimed that the CIA “did not tell us they were using that, flat out. And any, any contention to the contrary is simply not true.” She had earlier said on TV, “I can say flat-out, they never told us that these enhanced interrogations were being used.”

The Obama administration’s CIA director, Leon Panetta, and Mr. Goss have both disputed Mrs. Pelosi’s account.

In a report to Congress on May 5, Mr. Panetta described the CIA’s 2002 meeting with Mrs. Pelosi as “Briefing on EITs including use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on [legal] authorities, and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed.” Note the past tense — “had been employed.”

Mr. Goss says he and Mrs. Pelosi were told at the 2002 briefing about the use of the EITs and “on a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission.” He is backed by CIA sources who say Mr. Goss and Mrs. Pelosi “questioned whether we were doing enough” to extract information.

We also know that Michael Sheehy, then Mrs. Pelosi’s top aide on the Intelligence Committee and later her national security adviser, not only attended the September 2002 meeting but was also briefed by the CIA on EITs on Feb. 5, 2003, and told about a videotape of Zubaydah being waterboarded. Mr. Sheehy was almost certain to have told Mrs. Pelosi. He has not commented publicly about the 2002 or the 2003 meetings.

So is the speaker of the House lying about what she knew and when? And, if so, what will Democrats do about it?

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.

Nancy Pelosi is a documented liar and demagogue.  She has no business serving as the Speaker of the House.  She needs to go.

I truly hate to say this, but I am quickly reaching the point where I no longer particularly care whether this country gets nailed by a massive terrorist attack or not.  With leaders like Nancy Pelosi in power, who has repeatedly demonized the very people who tried to keep the country safe, we frankly deserve to get hit.  We are literally playing Russian roulette with our future.  And Democrats are now turning the demagoguery and slander that they had previously been reserving for Bush officials onto the Central Intelligence Agency.

Given this level of shocking moral stupidity, I must confess to a growing sense of apathy.  Between repeated instances of frankly treasonous actions by the Democrats; unsustainable mind-boggling spending on pork projects and socialism as Obama nearly doubles the 11 trillion national debt with well over $9 trillion of his own deficits; genuinely fascist takeovers of one sector of the economy after another; and coming heavy taxation that will punish productivity while rewarding sloth, I am seeing increasingly little chance that this country will survive.  And it seems to me that we will have destroyed our own way of life long before terrorism ever could.

What I DO know is that if we DO get hit again, it will be ENTIRELY due to the contemptible efforts of the Obama administration to undermine virtually every single measure that successfully protected us, and Democrats like Nancy Pelosi, Jack Murtha, and many others who have been far more interested in demagoguery than defense, partisanship than patriotism, and slander than security.

Documented Liar Pelosi Was Briefed On Enhanced Interrogations That ‘HAD BEEN EMPLOYED’

Nancy Pelosi is a demagogue, a liar, and a hypocrite.  While that has always been true, it is now a documented fact. Pelosi demonized Bush officials, literally leading the rabid dog pack out for Bush blood.  Then it was pointed out that she had been briefed on the waterboardings, as had been documented in a Washington Post article from 2002.  And why didn’t she raise a complaint then when it would have actually mattered beyond political demagoguery? Finally she was forced to admit that she had in fact received a briefing, but quibbled in a “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is” manner by claiming she was told the enhanced interrogation techniques “could” be performed, not that they “would” be performed:

In a Thursday press briefing, Pelosi flatly denied that she was ever told waterboarding would be used. “My colleague [Porter Goss], the chairman of the committee, has said ‘if they say that it’s legal you have to know they are going to use them,'” she said. “Well, his experience is that he was a member of the CIA, later went on to head the CIA and maybe his experience is that if they tell you one thing they may mean something else. My experience is that they did not tell us they were using that. Flat out. And any — any contention to the contrary is simply not true.” “Pelosi said her recollection was, ‘They told us they had opinions from the [Justice Department’s] Office of Legal Counsel that they could, but not that they were’ using so-called enhanced techniques, ‘and that if and when they were used, they would brief Congress at that time,'” reported Congressional Quarterly. “She said she was never told that such techniques were actually being used.” “‘As a member of Intelligence, I thought I was being briefed. I realized that was not true when I became ranking member’ and got more information, she said,” according to CQ Politics.

Now the Demagogue of the House is even being revealed to be lying about her qualification regarding her earlier lies. A newly released official report dated September 4, 2002 by the Director of National Intelligence reveals that one Nancy Pelosi was in fact briefed by the CIA, with said briefing including (and see here for the actual memo):

“Briefing on EITs including use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed.”

No “could” or “would” Nancy.  Try “had been employed.”  She was briefed on what had in fact already occurred.  And so were other Democrats, such as Jay Rockefeller.  Right from the start.  And there is no record whatsoever that they offered any objections or even had any qualms about what was going on.

Even if Pelosi’s position were accepted at face value, Pelosi is still being blatantly dishonest.  In her own acknowledgment, she was told waterboarding “could” happen.  Here’s the question: where was her outrage at what she and her party now say was such a barbaric and immoral practice?  Where are the letters expressing her moral qualms, such as Jane Harmon sent in the similar matter of destroying CIA tapes of the interrogation sessions?  She expressed none.  Legally, the failure to object is implied consent.  And here she is just a few years later helping to demonize Republicans?  And the fact is, we don’t have to accept Pelosi’s position, because we have the official record that confirms she has been lying about what she knew and when she knew it.

This represents two moralities: the post-9/11 morality, which held that the United States would go to certain lengths to protect itself from terrorist attacks; and the 2008-2009 morality, which holds that Democrats who agreed with the post-9/11 morality can now hypocritically and for sheer partisan political purposes attack Republicans for harboring a view that key Democrats themselves harbored when it served their interests to do so.

And we can add Barack Hussein and Hillary Clinton to the list of liars whose lies keep changing. Obama released the so-called “torture memos” as nothing less than a blatant partisan attempt to criminalize political differences and demonize the opposition party.  They got their pound of flesh, I presume.  But now that Obama is backing away from the show trial liberals want, it is time for conservatives to counter-attack.

Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi are the worst kind of liars, demagogues, and hypocrites.  That is now a documented reality.  As Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi is charged with representing her country more than her party, but from the start she has chosen to demagogue rather than perform her duty.  She should resign.  After launching their vile and despicable attack on Bush officials and Republicans, Democrats need to be held accountable for their deplorable and dishonorable political tactics.

Updated May 8, 11:30 a.m.