THE CIA'S TORTURE UNTRUTHS-Case Against Pelosi/Dems "Keeps Falling Apart-" (emptywheel/The Guardian)

[kpete]

"...they may have been creating false documentation to be able to argue they had met their legally required briefings under the National Security Act, when in reality, no one denies CIA only informed Congress for the first time after they had started their torture program."
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/05/26/dick-cheneys-torture-kabuki/

The CIA's torture untruths

The CIA wants to suggest Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi were complicit in using torture – but its case keeps falling apart

............

The controversy, as usually presented, is not just factually wrong. The entire controversy serves to obscure a seemingly systematic attempt to claim that Democrats in congress signed off on the Bush administration's torture programme as long ago as 2002.

First, let's look at the factual problems. Speaker Pelosi has consistently said the same thing for three months: when the CIA briefed her and her Republican counterpart Porter Goss, on 4 September 2002, they did not tell Pelosi or Goss that the CIA had already been torturing Abu Zubaydah for over a month. Pelosi said: "We were never told (torture techniques) were being used," on 25 February. She said: "We were not — told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used," on 23 April. And she said: "The only mention of waterboarding at that briefing was that it was not being employed," on 14 May.

And surprisingly, given the faux controversy, Porter Goss's version completely accords with Pelosi's statements. When he says, "I am slack-jawed to read that members claim to have not understood that the techniques on which they were briefed were to actually be employed," he is admitting both that he doesn't remember the CIA telling him and Pelosi that the techniques had already been employed, and that they only spoke of waterboarding in the prospective sense. If Nancy Pelosi should have known – according to Goss – that the torture techniques "were to be used," he is ceding the argument that they weren't already told those techniques had been used.

So in spite of the month-long hyperventilating over a conflict between Pelosi and Goss, there is no conflict on Pelosi's main point: the CIA misled at least two members of congress by not admitting they had been torturing for over a month.


more at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/may/25/cia-torture-congress-pelosi

[Karenina]

1. . .

[L. Coyote]

5. Will Porter Goss be prosecuted for lying to Congress?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5671623

Give an incompetent liar enough rope ....

Goss in attempting to put that noose on Rep. Nancy Pelosi, seems to have forgotten his own contradictory testimony to Congress. If Goss and Pelosi were briefed about waterboarding, Goss lied to Congress, a crime. Goss' own statements are now evidence implicating himself.

Even competent liars eventually get caught in the web of their own irreconcilable constructions.

...........

Porter Goss blatantly lied to a Congressional Comm.

So, if the Rs want to discuss lying to Congress, and point fingers at Pelosi, let's bring this Catch 22 into the discussion.

[pleah]

2. K&R

[HOLOS]

3. k&R

[Wednesdays]

4. K&R

:kick: