Honestly, I would rather be getting a root canal without any anesthesia, than to have to blog about this. But everyone else is, so, here goes!
ABC NEWS Blog “The Note” reports the following:
ABC News’ Rick Klein reports: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was briefed on the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on terrorist suspect Abu Zubaydah in September 2002, according to a report prepared by the Director of National Intelligence’s office and obtained by ABC News.
The report, submitted to the Senate Intelligence Committee and other Capitol Hill officials Wednesday, appears to contradict Pelosi’s statement last month that she was never told about the use of waterboarding or other special interrogation tactics. Instead, she has said, she was told only that the Bush administration had legal opinions that would have supported the use of such techniques.
The report details a Sept. 4, 2002 meeting between intelligence officials and Pelosi, then-House intelligence committee chairman Porter Goss, and two aides. At the time, Pelosi was the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee.
The meeting is described as a “Briefing on EITs including use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of particular EITs that had been employed.”
EITs stand for “enhanced interrogation techniques,” a classification of special interrogation tactics that includes waterboarding.
Of course, everyone on the right is jumping up and down and saying, “See we told you so!” Don’t count me in with that crowd, please. When it comes to this entire issue; I am a fence sitter. On one hand, I hate to know that a fellow human being is being tortured. But on the other hand, I also know what happened on September 11, 2001, and please; do not come in here and spout that stupid Alex Jones bullcrap about 9/11 being an inside job, okay? I am just not that simple-minded to believe that idiotic nonsense. The truth is that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by Muslim extremists who hate our Country and for what we stand for; they also happened because of our interventionist foreign policy and because of our occupation of parts of Arab peninsula. Further, the attacks were a revenge attack on United States because of the actions of the United States in the 1980’s. Osama Bin Ladin said that in one of his many tapes. This is NOT to say that the United States had it coming or anything of that sort. It is simply the bare, and sometimes ugly; truth.
Now back to the story at hand, there are some, mostly liberals who have problems with this story. Emptywheel, for example seems to believe that the CIA is lying about the briefings. I won’t quote here, what’s being said there. Because there is just so much to read. I’d advise everyone to just go over and read what is being said there.
The truth is folks, I do not believe we will ever know the truth about what happened, and who knew what when. I am sorry if that busts any balloons or anything of that sort. Our Government has a very good track record of covering up secrets and quite frankly covering it’s backside to the point of burying the truth. So for those who were hoping that Bush and Co. would be prosecuted. I hate to be the one to say this, but you are in for a big letdown. I knew this was coming; I blogged about a great deal of times. Obama will not go after the former President and his staff and cabinet. Obama just will not burn the political capital. President Obama would rather risk being a one-term President, than try and go after a former President and his staff. It just never has been done. Nor will it ever.
If the Obama Administration told holder to open an investigation as to “Who knew what, when…” when it came to the 9/11 attacks, The Iraq War, and the torture stuff. Both Parties; Democratic and Republican would be utterly destroyed and stripped void of any credibility that they still have now. That is something that the Obama Administration is simply not going to allow to happen. Because both of these political parties want to maintain their grip on a two party system in this Country. One Party may talk about wanted to see the other destroyed. But they know how long their leash is, and when it reaches it max length, the parties that be know when to get back into line.
So, I feel that this all just a big witch hunt, to distract us from the real issues. Like the state of our economy and so forth.
Hello, anyone home? ‘Official documents released pertaining to Pelosi being briefed in 2002.’ She knew. She lied. End of story.
As to Osama and company mystically bending the laws of physics, seems to have little to do with the story unless you want to torture them to find out the secrets of flying a 767 above the ground or reducing three high rises into dust and molten metal through kerosene and paper fires. Perhaps it involves a goat sacrifice to Allah.
Hey Fascist Nation, you hang around here too? This is going to become a regular hipster scene.
So the libs are saying the CIA is lying? The CIA is certainly known to do so. It’s a nice one-shot-kill for the libs. They simply say “your source has no credibility” and there’s not much we can do to invalidate that. Score one for the libs.
In fact, double score for the libs. Here are the torturers themselves “leaking” information. Does it seem strange to anyone that the CIA would publicly become involved in partisan bickering? Doesn’t it seem odd for them to say “she knew we were torturing people because we told her so”? It’s not the kind of attention they normally like to draw to themselves.
PAT: it’s interesting how you pull the whole thing back into “but Osama is rotten”. This might imply the old neocon standby of justifying torture. I’m not here to give you any Alex Jones bullshit but to ask that in return for a small group of terrorists killing about 3.5k of us, are the million-odd Iraqi deaths, the million-odd Afghani deaths and the multiple millions displaced enough pay-back for you? And how many children got killed on 9/11? Not a single one I know of unless someone in the towers was pregnant at the time. Some estimate that up to 35% of those we killed (so far) in the mideast are children. Does that sate your taste for blood?
Iraq under Saddam was no picnic. The bastard tortured and mudered people at will. Now we have a few hundred thousand Saddams in Iraq murdering and torturing people at will. Forget child prostitution, you can BUY A CHILD OUTRIGHT in Iraq now. Or you can simply pick one of the many street orphans up for free.
Yes, people are free in Iraq now. You don’t have to pay a penny for them.
Um….If you had actually read this blog, you’d know that I never supported the war in Iraq. Especially when it came out that there were no WMD’s. Even Bill O’Reilly now says that Iraq was a mistake. I did, however, cut Bush some slack with the “Surge”. It does seemed to have worked. There’s the occasional car bomb. But things are nowhere nearly as bad as they once were there. In fact, we will be out of there like, I think, next year and shifting to Afghanistan.
So, thanks for the comment, but I’m afraid your accusations are quite wrong.
Guilty as charged, I only found out this blog existed a couple weeks ago so I have no idea what your position was then.
That Bildo now says it was a mistake is bitterly ironic given what an insane cheerleader for war he was, how he advocated squashing all public dissent on the subject and more than once said dissenters would “get a visit from FoxNews security”, how he screamed and railed and told people to SHUT UP and insulted the family of at least one 9/11 victim on live TV. And it’s nice to know he’s reconsidered his position now that him and Limbaugh and their ilk have poisoned the political dialog in this nation unlike any human being before them. But hey, he got paid to say what he said then and he’s getting paid to say what he says now.
What I want to know from Bildo now is when is he going to start apologizing to the people he’s hurt and how many centuries he thinks it will take him.
What a shock Pelosi caught lying. She’s a politician.