Pelosi Palaver (Cohen / CBS)

[struggle4progress]

May 14, 2009 2:05
Posted by Andrew Cohen

Let’s assume the worst about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her rough re-entry into the national debate over Bush Administration torture tactics. Even though she vigorously disputes this, let’s assume that she knew back in 2002 that the Central Intelligence Agency was performing water-boarding and other “enhanced” interrogation tactics upon terror suspects. Let’s assume Rep. Pelosi said nothing for years even as those policies crumbled under the weight of their own illegalities and immoralities.

This makes her a hypocrite, a coward and probably a liar (not exactly a new or rare trifecta in Washington) ... But what Pelosi’s complicit silence does not do is exonerate the men who drafted the torture memos and the men and women who authorized them to do so ...

She didn’t allow the men who wrote or authorized those memos to remain in their positions-- or even to gain promotion—in the Bush Administration. She didn’t publicly label the soldier-guards at Abu Ghraib as rogues and renegades even as she knew they were just following orders. She should have done more, she could have done more, but many others did far, far worse and have yet to be held to account. She’s the tail, not the dog.

Yet whom did Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) threaten to call before the Senate Judiciary Committee to answer questions about torture? Not Yoo, Bradbury, Bybee or Gonzales. Not Dick Cheney or David Addington. Not any of the other architects of torture-- but Pelosi, as if she were the ringleader of the whole mess. For a man whose own hands are stained by poor choices in the terror law field—he’s part of the reason why the government has been unable to successfully prosecute a single Guantanamo Bay detainee—it was a startlingly cynical thing to do, even by the sad standards of our time ... http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/05/14/courtwatch/entry5013891.shtml

[Xipe Totec]

1. As an official "not a fan" of Ms Pelosi,

I deeply resent the lame attempts by the GOP to shift attention away from the crimes of the Bush Administration.

And I am dismayed by the help they receive from the 5th column at DU.

[underpants]

3. I completely agree with that post

:hi:

[bemildred]

2. Correct. Pelosi is at worst an enabler. She is small fry.

We want the big fish, the instigators and planners and executors of these crimes.