You can almost *smell* the relief coming from this Salon Prevarigate piece…

[UPDATE]: And welcome, Protein Wisdom readers.  You may be amused by Morgan Freeman doing a Barenaked Ladies cover.

…because now they have an acceptable devil figure to blame it all on. Via @vermontaigne (and Protein Wisdom):

Cheney’s torture trap for Democrats

[Note: Salon defines ‘waterboarding’ as ‘torture’ throughout this article. Please calibrate your semantic filters accordingly. – ML]

You might have thought getting torture back in the news would be a bad move for any Republican; after all, it was the Bush administration that authorized the torturing. But the last few days have shown Dick Cheney knew exactly what he was doing when he went on TV last week and started talking about “enhanced interrogation”: It was a masterstroke of bureaucratic warfare.

[snip multiple paragraphs that dance around the fact that Pelosi Knew All Along.]

Cheney, safely ensconced in his McLean, Va., mansion, must be chortling all the way to his cave every night. After three decades in the top levels of U.S. government, he knows better than most how to set his opponents against themselves.

You have to understand that this sort of thing is the product of a certain kind of mindset. Let’s say that you’re a person who has adopted a particular set of beliefs – for whatever reason – that you have come to depend on as being an integral part of why you consider yourself to be a good person. And let’s say that these beliefs have been reinforced and validated by certain outside individuals, through a series of deliberately provocative statements and actions. And let’s finally say that it becomes clear that those people have been lying to you with those statements and actions – and without them, the set of beliefs that you’re relying on now come into serious question. You have two options at this point. The first is to critically examine your beliefs, and be prepared to change them; the second is to find something else that would validate them.
Continue reading You can almost *smell* the relief coming from this Salon Prevarigate piece…

Lieberman doesn’t know where Pelosi’s getting this ‘misled’ thing from…

[UPDATE] Welcome, Instapundit readers. The theme song for this affair is here.

…he’s been getting briefings from them for decades, with no complaints:

See also here, here, & here.

Ed Morrissey heard laughter in the above: I’m not as sure, but if it is there it’s both understandable and justified. Joe Lieberman’s taken a lot of garbage from Pelosi’s ideological cohorts over the years, and even though he’s easily given better than he’s gotten the thought of a little more payback is clearly not an unwelcome one. In fact, I think that Lieberman’s enjoying this more than the neocons are, and we’re wondering whether Hoyer’s going to try to get Pelosi removed, or just neutralized.

Personally, I’m for a nice grudge war where I can root for injuries.

Moe Lane

Watching the video (H/T: AoSHQ) of the press conference was fascinating, particularly the parts where the Speaker of the House kept harping on weapons of mass destruction as if the subject was relevant. She looked for all the world like a pigeon who had been trained to peck at a button in exchange for birdseed; only, she kept pecking the button, and no birdseed was coming out

Crossposted to RedState.

Strictly business, Madam Speaker.

A pair of stories (HT: Hot Air Headlines, here and here) illustrate the sudden appearance of troubles for the Speaker of the House rather neatly. First, the general:

Democrats: CIA is out to get us

Democrats charged Tuesday that the CIA has released documents about congressional briefings on harsh interrogation techniques in order to deflect attention and blame away from itself.

and now, the specific:

Source: Aide told Pelosi waterboarding had been used

WASHINGTON (CNN) — A source close to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi now confirms that Pelosi was told in February 2003 by her intelligence aide, Michael Sheehy, that waterboarding was actually used on CIA detainee Abu Zubaydah.

This appears to contradict Pelosi’s account that she was never told waterboarding actually happened, only that the administration was considering using it.

Which is a nice way of putting it*. Continue reading Strictly business, Madam Speaker.

Speaker Pelosi has a new excuse for not opposing waterboarding.

It sort of stops working after the third try, you know.

The Speaker of the House has come up with yet another reason for why she didn’t say anything about waterboarding at the time:

Pelosi defense: couldn’t object in ’03

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?

Because, apparently, “All along” and “because it didn’t poll well at the time” won’t satisfy anybody at this point. Both Cold Fury and AoSHQ have a good deal of righteous scorn on this one; I’m just going to touch fairly briefly on what this means, going forward. Continue reading Speaker Pelosi has a new excuse for not opposing waterboarding.

Pelosi. Knew. [Bumped.]

Hi, Activist Left.

[Further UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers. Umm. I dunno. Zombie MMORPG, maybe?

[UPDATE] You’d think that they thought that none of this would ever come out.

—–

Pelosi knew about the waterboarding.

She knew all along.

According to the memo the very first briefing listed is 9/4/02 with then Rep. Porter Goss & Pelosi.  The summary of the briefing says:

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

This directly contradicts Pelosi’s story, that “we were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used.

And here’s the important thing: we knew this already, and so did you.  You’ve been lying to the American people about this for six or so years solely because that way you could maybe stop the screaming that was going on in your own head.  It didn’t work, but then, it never was going to: you really shouldn’t have tried it in the first place. Continue reading Pelosi. Knew. [Bumped.]

Of *course* ‘Leaders balk at setting up truth panel.’

‘Truth’ is precisely what the Democrats don’t want right now.

Senate Democratic leaders oppose the immediate establishment of a “Truth Commission” to probe harsh interrogation tactics as they face pressure to reveal what they knew of practices the Obama administration has since labeled “torture.”

While nearly all Democrats this week backed the creation of a special commission to probe the causes of the financial crisis, and while the party previously supported the independent 9/11 Commission, its leaders on Thursday balked at the idea of taking a similar approach to unearthing answers about the controversial interrogation methods approved by the Bush administration.

There’s actually a fairly significant difference between investigating ‘the causes of the financial crisis’ and investigating ‘controversial interrogation methods’: no, not the fact that Democrats were only up to their eyeballs in one or the other. They were, of course, heavily involved in both. No, the difference is that in the case of the financial crisis there is actually a national consensus that the end result was bad. The same consensus does not agree on the interrogation methods*. Continue reading Of *course* ‘Leaders balk at setting up truth panel.’