A quick refresher course in who knew what when regarding Torture policies of Bushco

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/08/AR2007120801664_pf.html

Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002
In Meetings, Spy Panels' Chiefs Did Not Protest, Officials Say

By Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, December 9, 2007; A01

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.

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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).


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U.S. law requires the CIA to inform Congress of covert activities and allows the briefings to be limited in certain highly sensitive cases to a "Gang of Eight," including the four top congressional leaders of both parties as well as the four senior intelligence committee members. In this case, most briefings about detainee programs were limited to the "Gang of Four," the top Republican and Democrat on the two committees. A few staff members were permitted to attend some of the briefings.

Please read the whole article to reacquaint yourself with the issue of who knew what when. It is clear that Bush and Cheney are coming out lately with admissions of their involvement and that the crux of their defense is - So? the Congress knew too.

And it is true. SOME members of Congress knew too, Dems as well as Repubs.

Personally, I think that is why there was no real impetus for impeachment within the Congress, because Dems know that some of their guys will swirl down the drain too.

Nancy Pelosi blandly affirms she knows of no crime being committed that would rise to the level of impeachment. But EVERYONE else does. It's a matter of record. As in this Post article. It must be horrible for her that so many will just NOT stop picking at the scab of war crimes, torture, Geneva conventions, Guantanamo, and the like. Move forward people, press on, forget about all that bad stuff. Not only are these issues not on the table, they are buried under the floor the table sits on.

We either reject torture for the abhorrent, uncivilized, primitive, sadistic, stupid practice that it is or we drop the pretense forever of being a beacon of progress for the world. If we do not renounce it clearly and forever, we will be responsible for a world that is trending backwards to it's brutalest, cruelest, and crudest roots.

[Solly Mack]

1. K&R

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

2. And here is Glenn Greenwald on Cheney, wiretapping and torture and Congress

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/12/22/cheney/index.html

Monday Dec. 22, 2008 06:50 EST
Cheney says top congressional Democrats complicit in spying


Unsurprisingly, Pelosi, Harman and Rockefeller all voted last July to legalize warrantless eavesdropping and to immunize telecoms from liability, thereby ensuring an end to the ongoing investigations into these programs. And though he ultimately cast a meaningless vote against final passage, it was Reid's decisions as Majority Leader which played an instrumental role in ensuring passage of that bill.

One would think that these Democratic leaders would, on their own, want to respond to Cheney's claims about them and deny the truth of those claims. After all, Cheney's statement is nothing less than an accusation that they not only enthusiastically approved, but actively insisted upon the continuation and ongoing secrecy, of a blatantly illegal domestic spying program (one that several of them would, once it was made public, pretend to protest). As Armando says, "The Democratic members who participated in this meeting have two choices in my mind - refute Cheney's statements or admit their complicity in the illegal activity perpetrated by the Bush Administration."

I'm going to spend the day calling these members and trying to get some response to Cheney's claim. If I'm unable to obtain any responses, I'll post their numbers and encourage everyone to make similar calls. As I wrote on Saturday -- and documented before: "As a practical reality, the largest barrier to any route to prosecution -- including this one -- is that the Congressional Democratic leadership was complicit, to varying degrees, in the illegal programs." That's true not only of the NSA program, but also the Bush/Cheney torture program.

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. Exactly.

So, now that we know Congress is a criminal hotbed of co-conspirators......