NYC Letter: Pants On Fire V, Part IV*

Day 112 of CHOPE

STUPIDER AND STUPIDER, LAMER AND LAMER
Best Defense Still: "I Am An Imbecile"

PELOSI DEFENSE: COULDN'T OBJECT IN '03

May 11, 2009 (POLITICO) - House Speaker Nancy Pelosi learned in early 2003 that the Bush administration was waterboarding terror detainees but didn’t protest directly out of respect for “appropriate” legislative channels, a person familiar with the situation said Monday.

The Pelosi camp’s version of events is intended to answer two key questions posed by her critics: When, precisely, did she first learn about waterboarding? And why didn’t she do more to stop it?

Pelosi has disputed a CIA document, released last week, that shows she was briefed in September 2002 on the “particular” interrogation techniques the United States had used on Al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah. Pelosi has said she was told then only that the Bush administration was considering using certain techniques in the future — and that it had the legal authority to do so.

But there’s no dispute that on Feb. 4, 2003 — five months after Pelosi’s September meeting — CIA officials briefed Pelosi aide Michael Sheehy and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), then the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, on the specific techniques that had been used on Zubaydah — including waterboarding.

... According to the Pelosi confidant, Sheehy told Pelosi about the briefing — and later informed Pelosi, the newly elected minority leader, that Harman was drafting a protest letter. Pelosi told Sheehy to tell Harman that she agreed with the letter, the Pelosi insider said. But she did not ask to be listed as a signatory on the letter, the source said, and there is no reference to her in it.

Sheehy has not responded to several calls and e-mails seeking comment on what he told Pelosi during this period. But the Pelosi confidant — who spoke to POLITICO on the condition of anonymity — insisted that Pelosi did all that she could have done:

She felt that the appropriate response was the letter from Harman, because Jane was the one who was briefed. [Pelosi] never got briefed on it personally, and when Harman got a ‘no response’ from the CIA, there was nothing more that could be done.

This is embarrassing. Ms. Pelosi is not even trying to lie credibly. Mr. Sheehy was Pelosi's appointed proxy. If Ms. Pelosi felt alarmed by Mr. Sheehy's report but not confident acting on second-hand information, she could have requested to be briefed personally, an "appropriate" channel for the minority leader.

And this is news. When the CIA fails to respond to a Congressional query, well, end of story.

Ms. Pelosi wants you to believe:

1. She was aware of what comprised waterboarding interrogation in 2002, was aware it had legal sanction, but did not know it was meant for use. Ms. Pelosi not dreaming for a moment that the CIA might find a use for (i) a developed interrogation praxis (ii) legally vetted (iii) during an open threat to national security.
2. She believes waterboarding is torture, a criminal evil. However in Ms. Pelosi's mind there is no connection between the planning of criminal evil with any prospect of its actual perpetration. Ms. Pelosi is content to be a moral cipher.
3. That her recollection of the briefing trumps anyone else's recollection to the contrary, the documented history, and the most modest demands of plausibility.
4. She learns from an aide that the CIA has used waterboarding. As the minority leader she leaves the heavy-lifting of a CYA letter to bitter rival Jane Harman.
5. That her influence as minority leader was so ineffectual, she never makes an effort to defund the waterboarding program. She is content to curb her conscience because she is hamstrung by "'appropriate' legislative channels".

[The silence of space.]

It gets lamer still. Here is another defense of Ms. Pelosi.

Steve Elmendorf, who served as chief of staff to former Minority Leader Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.), said that coming so soon after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, it would have been difficult politically for Pelosi to do more to protest interrogation techniques the Bush administration was using.

You have to remember, in the 2002 period, the whole atmospherics, it was all about scaring people every day. People were legitimately concerned that we were going to be attacked again, and there was a constant drumbeat coming from the Bush administration of, "Bad things could happen, bad things could happen." Nobody wants it to happen on their watch.

Mr. Elmendorf seems to be seriously arguing that moral cravenness is a respectable defense. [Pause.] He is so arguing.

And Mr. Elmendorf wants it both ways: "legitimately concerned" people and scary Mr. Bush. If "people were legitimately concerned", why would the Bush administration need to scare them everyday? What was the people's "legimate concern"? As we recall, it was that more attacks were planned -- which proved out. Mr. Bush wasn't scaring people everyday. He was giving expression to and acting on those "legitimate concerns".

But somewhere between people being "legitimately concerned" and Mr. Bush scaring them, Nancy Pelosi makes a political calculation and gives waterboarding -- something she believes morally abhorrent -- a pass. [Pause.] Do these people ever listen to what they say? Ms. Pelosi as an imbecile at least escapes moral culpability. Ms. Pelosi as a calculating moral coward makes her an accessary to the evil she pretends to decry.

CHOPE.

Stupider. More stupider. Nancy Pelosi.

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* Past I here; Part II here; Part III here.