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Memo Says Pelosi Knew About Use of Harsh Tactics
Intelligence officials released documents yesterday saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was briefed in September 2002 about the use of harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda suspects, seeming to contradict her repeated statements that she was never told the techniques were actually being used.
Intelligence officials released documents yesterday saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was briefed in September 2002 about the use of harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda suspects. (AFP/Getty Images/Chip Somodevilla) In a 10-page memo outlining an almost seven-year history of classified briefings, intelligence officials said that Pelosi and then-Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) were the first two members of Congress briefed on the tactics. Then the ranking member and chairman of the House intelligence committee, respectively, Pelosi and Goss were briefed Sept. 4, 2002, one week before the anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
The memo, issued to Capitol Hill by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency, notes that the Pelosi-Goss briefing covered "EITs including the use of EITs" on Abu Zubaida. EIT is an acronym for enhanced interrogation technique, and Abu Zubaida, whose real name is Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, was one of the earliest valuable al-Qaeda members captured. He also was the first to have the controversial tactic of simulated drowning, or waterboarding, used against him.
The issue of what Pelosi knew and when she knew it has become a tussle on Capitol Hill. Republicans have accused her of knowing for years about the interrogation techniques CIA agents were using and of objecting only when the tactics became public and antiwar activists protested.
In a carefully worded statement, Pelosi's office said yesterday that she had never been briefed about the use of waterboarding, only that it had been approved by Bush administration lawyers as a legal interrogation technique.
"As this document shows, the speaker was briefed only once, in September 2002. The briefers described these techniques, said they were legal, but said that waterboarding had not yet been used," said Brendan Daly, Pelosi's spokesman.
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Show AllPelosi denies the record, Judas denied knowing JC.
Pelosi & Judas are both liars and hypocrites.
Sorry, Judas didn't deny anything, It was John who denied.
Pelosi didn't deny that she was briefed, she said she was told that Waterboarding was legal, but not yet used.
Now where does this memo say different?
It's been a while, but without Googling for confirmation I'm pretty sure it was Simon Peter to whom Jesus said, "Before the cock crows, you will deny me thrice."
· Yr Obd't Servant
LOL..I guess we are in the post-Christian era.....
Finally!!
Thats right!
Peter got the keys to the kingdom for his role and Judas did what he was told also....
Thanks for the correction.
Also without googling the King James version, for literary effect, reads:
"Before the cock crows twice, you will deny me thrice."
I guess you simply made a typo.
The bible also records that Peter went out and wept. No tears from Pelosi I fear.
Simon Peter ... the 'rock' Christ built his church on ... Denial must be another one of those JudeoChristian values.
That is an inaccurate statement.Pelosi did deny knowing anything about the torture,and when confronted with her lie,she ran out of the public spotlight.If you look at just what the Democratic leadership knew,its no wonder they were against impeachment or any type of investigation into the Bush administration.Not to mention the large sums of money that she and her husband made off of the Iraq war.She and the rest of the Democratic leadership are TRAITORS.At least now we know why the Bush White House was not the least bit concerned about the Democrats investigating their crimes.And now we have Obama that is refusing to prosecute or charge The Bush administration with any crime at all.The whole thing has been one big setup.It is quite obvious that talking or even voting different people into Government is a waste of time.The only thing that is going to take our country back from these elitest low-lifes is ACTION.No more talk.While we have been talking,they have been planning, To quote a passage from the Constitution. When a long train of abuses and usurpations pusuing envariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absoloute despotism it is their right,it is their duty to throw off such Government and to provide new guards for their future security!
Common Dreams has also reported* that the CIA "fixed" their "reports" on the supposed briefings, including false claims that people who were demonstrably absent from the briefings were actually there, so who ya gonna believe, an organisation of professional thugs, liars, spies, and thieves, or Nancy Pelosi, who seems to be doing the best she can in a very difficult role, herding cats for a living.
Next, you'll regret not giving Nancy torture powers to make the Blue Dogs and Republicans fall in line. Mind you, they may "deserve it," but it would set a bad precedent.
The business of politics is messy, some might say dirty, but it's what we're stuck with. The two-party system is firmly embedded in everything that counts, which is committee memberships and chairmanships. Just try electing *any* "third party" candidate and see how effective they'll be, which is exactly "not at all," because they won't be in any position to trade anything, not having any committee posts on offer, and no preferential treatments or votes to trade.
Lioness
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* Breaking News! CIA Manipulating Briefing Process by Marcy Wheeler
Bernie Sanders is a socialist third party senator... And then you have hawkish Lieuberman... Both are effective, and joe managed to keep his committees despite stumping for mccain and ditching his own party after losing the primary to lamont... So I am not sure where you are going with your arguement...
While committees are important, trading votes on bills it what gets us into wars, torture, subsidies, pork projects, corruption, and k street...
We need more third party (or 2nd party for that matter) voting for what's right, not what is expedient or profitable...
Will the corrupt criminals investigate their fellow corrupt criminals?
Not in a million years. Forget million, try billion. Forget billion, try trillion. Forget trillion, try....
obusha ------- infinity as in a year for every dollar bush/obama gives Banksters.
Pelosi was a chief Bush enabler. This is no longer news. Why she is still in office, that's news. The woman is as corrupt as they come.
Pelosi's refusal to impeach or investigate speaks volumes about her complicity. She has traded her health and job security for ours. Obviously we can never expect her to do anything that benefits the American people unless it benefits her first.
Okay, San Franciscans, how did this organism convince you to vote for it instead of Cindy Sheehan?
And don't forget this,
"The past few weeks have been a little strange at Cindy for Congress and, I guess the things that have been happening could just be coincidences, or a run of bad luck, but the climate for the possibility of campaign hanky-panky certainly exists."
http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/1590/t/2705/blog/comments.jsp?key=346&blog_entry_KEY=21129&t
"The storefront of congressional candidate Cindy Sheehan's campaign office in San Francisco was broken early this morning and a laptop was reportedly taken, according to Sheehan's campaign office."
http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/politics&id=6480287
Also, remember when the Democratic establishment brought in the big guns to help Gavin Newsom defeat Matt Gonzales? They tolerate no challengers and defend their turf with the skill of organized crime, because, well, they are organized crime.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2945705
yeah, but they are all wimps when it comes to opposing the repubs. but bring an outsider into the Game, and watch the thuggery begin.
The Dems are not wimps when it comes to opposing Repubs...they are on the same side! They enable the Repubs, then the Repubs enable the Dems...one hand washing the other...both parties are utterly corrupt.
I'd like to see the theft from Sheehan's office tracked...guess where it will lead?
Remember former President William Clinton? He was impeached for lying about sexual relations.
Pelosi and others are lying about crimes against humanity inflicted on hundreds of innocent people (killing dozens of them), and the subversion of our Constitution and Bill of Rights.
It seems that felatio is a worse crime than torture, murder, instigating an internationally illegal war based on lies, and treasonous disregard of our nation's charter.
Aloha, salud, lechiem,
- Tobias
http://www.youtube.com/user/tobiasaurusrex
It is disturbing that Clinton was not impeached for his lies about war and murder but instead for his lies about consensual sex. Most in the US cannot see the forest for the trees and so fail to recognize that their government and their society are completely depraved.
It is disturbing to me that "wag the dog" came out before the lewinsky affair, while in reality, it was a manufactured psyops pseudo-investigation of an affair to distract the people about the resource wars of aggression in the former Yugoslavia and northern Africa under the Clinton Regime....
As if Clinton's handler's did hire a Hollywood exec to script a public narrative...
who beat them to the punch...!
Obviously the problem with Washington is that power corrupts. People like Pelosi and Obama don't change the system, the system changes them. The system has blackened their soul (if they ever had one), demonstrating that anything and everything is for sale to political opportunism. How these people can still look in a mirror is beyond my limited understanding. I guess at some point in life, making rationalizations about their participation in the dark side justifies the ends to the means. What a filthy rotten, corrupt system, we live under and what ought to be done about it? Mimicking a line in a film called Scent of a Women. "We ought to take a flame thrower to this place."
A very smart young person said to me "It's not that power corrupts as much as that corruptible people are attracted to power." I think he's on to something.
We need to weed out the sociopaths from our politics, and disallow people with psychopathic tendencies from getting anywhere near seats of power.
Pelosi knew? We all knew that she knew. It's nice to have proof though.
This lie is a tad worse tha n one about having sex I believe.
Hey WP, this is not news. Repeat. This is not news. Pelosi was briefed on this as a member of the House Intelligence Committee, and this has been reported before. She gave her tacit approval and was thus complicit. Though she was supposedly sworn to secrecy and couldn't talk. She's as guilty as the rest.
-Though she was supposedly sworn to secrecy and couldn't talk
Funny how Obama has sworn to enforce the law and he can break that oath, yet Pelosi feels bound by her oath not to blow the whistle on war crimes.
Does anybody know why Nixon didn't simply brief the Democrats of his era on his crimes, and in so doing, swear them to secrecy?
The only thing of value here is that Pelosi has been caught in yet another lie (yawn. She claimed that she had been briefed on the (torture) techniques but was under the impression that they had not yet been implemented. The memo contradicts that assertion. But so what? The laws are meant to send low-income Americans to the Gulag, not to bring about accountability and justice among our elites. So you are right, this is not news.
But she is on the Blue team so the fans of the Blue team must support her.
Hey, everybody, chill out a bit.
Before picking up your pitchforks and torches to march in lynch mob fashion towards Nancy Pelosi's office, take the time to actually read the CIA-generated document that forms the basis for all the hysteria and spin. It's available on line, courtesy of Andrew Sullivan, in PDF format.
Read first. Then, and only then, decide if you want to join the right wingers' parade. In my opinion, if you do take part in this circular firing squad, you are being duped.
The declassified CIA document lists 40 separate "oversight" briefing sessions, over a seven year period, in which various anonymous CIA functionaries discussed enhanced interrogation techniques with a wide, bipartisan array of named elected public officials. Nancy Pelosi's name appears once. Once. In September, 2002, when she was briefed with Porter Goss (R., Florida, later head of the Central Intelligence Agency).
Whether you look at the Google web page headlines on this breaking news story, or the headlines of the NY Times, WaPo, LA Times, or Faux News, the uniform propaganda spin is that this document is a smoking gun, proving Nancy Pelosi lied about being briefed about waterboarding and other types of torture. To the extent it proves anything at all, the CIA's summary proves the exact opposite: Pelosi was briefed once and only once, very early on.
Chill. Read the damn facts first. Why do you suppose the spin of the day is to savage Nancy Pelosi and ignore the 39 other briefings? You are being conned. Don't shoot from the hip
Bill from Saginaw
Yes, what I'm hearing is cheers of joy that there is a democrat to blame and distract from all of those rethuglicans who are guilty and/or lied. Watch the hand with the pretty scarf, folks!
If people are quick to pounce, perhaps it is because of:
"impeachment is off the table"
"single payer is off the table"
perhaps even - "everything you hoped and dreamed for is off the table" etc.
Exactly.
Exactly. Defending Nancy is off my table.
Zing!
Best Zing of the year so far.
Add one more; before this week's war funding legislation passed,
Queen Nancy declared, "a timetable for Afghanistan is OFF THE TABLE."
Any way you cut it, she's a pathological lying warmonger.
Thank you, Bill. As always yours is a voice of reason and considered judgement. I wish we were neighbors in more than the cyber sense.
Oh come on, of course she knew. Whatever else she is, she isn't mindless. And if she didn't know, she should have done, along with the rest of them. That's what they are there for, to take an active, intelligent interest in what is going on around them, not to stick their fingers in their ears and shout, "Blah, blah, blah." No excuses.
B I L L,
You are correct in awaiting the truth, and seeking more context of what actually occurred, and perhaps even taking her neck " off the table ".
BUT, given Pelosi's adamant stand against even the possibility of impeachment of profoundly disturbing criminal acts, centered in the Executive Branch -- she gets absolutely no slack from me.
Besides, do you really believe that the "CIA's summary" is definitive or truthful, and not more likely a product of PSYOPS propaganda ?
Considering our leaders long history of plausible deniability, do you really believe that Pelosi could only get that information in that single officially disclosed briefing ?
Namaste
Of course, of course. There is a very great likelihood that today's released, declassified CIA summary is psy-ops. That's the whole point of my warning.
Jump on the bandwagon and beat the drums!
Villify Pelosi, Reid, Obama, and the horses that they rode into town on!
Meanwhile, who benefits from this diversion of public outrage? Who has the most to gain by depicting torture as a bipartisan crime, with the cops who were asleep at the switch or co-opted by the crooks now deemed equally culpable as the criminals who actually did the evil deeds?
The CIA benefits. The Bush/Cheney legacy wing of the GOP benefits. That's who.
Hell yes, its psy-ops.
Bill from Saginaw
Thank you, I do appreciate your clarity, thoroughness and honesty.
The nose ring of American political trajectory is never slackened, and often goes off in many directions at once - ouch !
¿ Is your local river getting its promised toxic clean up ?
Namaste
As for the river, there's very little clean up that I can see. But the invisible hand of the marketplace may yet work its wonders. If GM closes cutting off the PCB's, and Dow scales back due to the global economic meltdown, the Saginaw basin may yet cleanse itself naturally, with the passage of time.
Just like shit rolls downhill, toxic industrial waste flows downstream. Cut back or cut off the source, and Mother Nature will find a way.
Thanks for the expression of interest.
Bill from Saginaw
Bill your correct about Pelosi. And even if she knew everything she is still someplace between number 20 to say number 50 of those who ought to be indictated.
Bill your somewhat incorrect about the flow stuff, toxins often are trapped in sediments,I am sure to a lesser extent in a river.
Yes, G L E N _ F O R D
Especially mercury ( Hg ) in rivers.
There are millions of tons of it mixed with sediments throughout industrial America, especially because of its fine uses for milling ( extraction ) of 'oh so valuable' Gold and Silver.
Our hidden and unpaid costs of hundreds of years of abusing nature can be solved with technology, but not within the current economic system of greed, debt, and desirous ill health for profit.
If you've ever experienced that sinking feeling, thinking about the toxic impacts of mercury is quite similar.
Namaste
So true.
Mirrors in front of mirrors...endless reflections. I appreciate your reasonable approach but I disagree. Your response to this article seems to be based on continuing the binary paradigm in politics. Either Pelosi is good or she's bad. I don't see it that way.
Pelosi is a war criminal in my opinion...one of many still in power in the US government. Sure, focusing on her may serve to distract from the Bush/Cheney legacy and the need to remediate that, but I am actually capable of holding more than one focus at a time. I don't think it's either/or.
Pelosi, for taking impeachment off the table, for taking single payer health care off the table, for having the gall to think she gets to decide what is and is not on the table with no regard to the needs and cries of the people; these are reasons enough for Pelosi to be removed. Her complicity with war crimes is just another thing to add to the indictment.
Maybe telling people that it is psy-ops to focus on her is the psy-ops tactic.
Frankly, I believe every member of Congress knew we were torturing people for a very long time. They made trips over there, talk to people, toured locations. Besides, any half wit in America who reads international and alternate news sources read reports of abuses for years. Whether everyone in Congress had the specific details is irrelevant. Torture is torture and they cheered it on. Pelosi has her marching orders from her paymasters and that's all she cares about.
What's really driving me crazy is how the focus on waterboarding totally ignores all the prisoner homicides. It never gets mentioned. Considering "resulting death" constitutes torture according to the Yoo/Bybee/Haynes/Bush/Cheney legal minds
then maybe all the sadists will shut up about America doesn't torture.
So, the problem is even if she was ONLY briefed that they MIGHT use such techniques as waterboarding... THAT was against the law too. I don't care WHAT Bush's corrupt lawyers wrote up trying to imply that what they wanted to do was legal. The fact that they could present this to her as even a "future" occurrence should have sent alarm bells ringing. The fact that it didn't proves that she is complicit. These are war crimes.
When she took impeachment off the table, the Democrats lost me forever as a loyal voter. I will never give their party a dime again. I will seek out other candidates to vote for when they are available (not republicans, of course, cause they are just useless entirely). But I will be seeking out third parties as often as they are running and are reasonable candidates.
I'm completely fed up with the status quo. They are ALL under an oath to protect the constitution. They are failing to uphold their oath. Why is there no special prosecutor appointed yet to look into this? We no longer have any checks and balances. We MUST vote these two parties out of office. There are a few exceptions who can stay like Dennis Kucinich and even Ron Paul and a couple of others. Most of the rest are useless. We need more Bernie Sanders and less Arlen Spectors and Joe Liebermans. Opportunistic at best and harmful to our democracy at worst.
We need to stop apologizing for the status quo of EITHER the republicans or the democrats. They need to be voted out of power.
I'm just sick to death of this political crap. These politicians are worse than worthless.