Nancy Pelosi and Waterboarding

[bonnie]

Could the distress over waterboarding be as phoney and hypocritical as the pretended shock over AIG bonuses.

Now whatever will we do when having congressional hearings on

trying to figure out who can be prosecuted. Could Nancy Pelosi??

http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/12/12/18466626.php

Nancy Pelosi and Waterboarding

Wed Dec 12 2007 Activists Conduct Emergency Protest Because Speaker Pelosi Allowed Torture

Nancy Pelosi & Waterboarding On Sunday December 9th, The Washington Post reported that current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was one of four members of Congress who was secretly briefed in 2002 about interrogation techniques that included the torture known as waterboarding -- and Pelosi had not raised objections to it.

On December 10th about twenty CodePink members and other antiwar activists gathered outside of Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi's local office to conduct an emergency protest.

Activists said at the protest that they are now beginning to understand why Pelosi has kept impeachment of Bush and Cheney "off the table". They said that Pelosi had wanted to hide her disgraceful actions which have been rumored about since 2005. The activists demanded that Pelosi meet with them to explain herself. Pelosi has repeatedly avoided meeting with antiwar activists since before she became the powerful Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. In San Francisco (as in the country), an overwhelming majority of people want American troops home from Iraq; many want Bush and Cheney impeached.

[Woody]

I have a LOT of beefs with Nancy Pelosi.

The list is long. We need to give this person the 'boot'.

[Dr. Shane]

Politics as usual.

[carolaa]

Another article I read today said Pelosi was one of four in Congress who knew about the torture policies since 2002.

[carolaa]

I have a LOT of beefs with Nancy Pelosi.

The list is long. We need to give this person the 'boot'.

Yes, I agree. It was a bad idea for her to keep impeachment off the table.

[phkrause]

I think she thought waterboarding was a sport! sorry I couldn't help myself.

pk

[Woody]

[bonnie]

Originally Posted By: Redwood

I have a LOT of beefs with Nancy Pelosi.

The list is long. We need to give this person the 'boot'.

Yes, I agree. It was a bad idea for her to keep impeachment off the table.

Had she not agreed nothing on this earth would have stopped her from trying impeachment

[phkrause]

She's one of those politicians that I have no liking for. She seems to take advantage of a situation and than runs with it. Very 2 faced. Especially if it means screwing someone from the other party. And even her own if it will benefit her.

pk

[bonnie]

Our operatives go thru exactly what was done to terrorists.

Nancy Pelosi even was given a tour

http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=28213&only

Nancy Pelosi Approved of Waterboarding

Sun, Dec 9, 2007 at 12:09:54 pm PST

In 2002, Nancy Pelosi was a member of a bipartisan group that was made aware of harsh interrogation techniques being used with Islamic terrorists in US custody—and the group not only approved of the tactics (including waterboarding), they asked the CIA to push harder.

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

“The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough,” said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism effort. The CIA last week admitted that videotape of an interrogation of one of the waterboarded detainees was destroyed in 2005 against the advice of Justice Department and White House officials, provoking allegations that its actions were illegal and the destruction was a coverup.

Yet long before “waterboarding” entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).