House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has continued her effort to explain past statements on torture and her failure to act to stop a war crime after she was briefed on the torture program. After being contradicted by both documents and one of her aides, Pelosi has now accused CIA officials misleading her in 2002.
While clearly flustered in the press conference, Pelosi continues to maintain that she was briefed on such techniques only once — in September 2002 — and that she was only told that the Administration has established that it could start to use waterboarding, a well-known form of torture. She said that in February 2003 she was only told by her staffer that the Republican chairman and the new Democratic ranking member of the Intelligence Committee had been briefed on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques. That sounds like confirmation of torture to me. She added “I’ve dealt with our intelligence professionals for the last 3½ years on an almost daily basis.” Hmmm, after the weapons of mass destruction, the unlawful surveillance, the subsequent unlawful surveillance (after congressional intervention), and other Bush scandals, Pelosi saw no reason not to accept the legal and factual assertions of the agency that she was supposedly overseeing. This dovetails with Pelosi’s view that she had to accept the Bush Administration’s assurance that torture was lawful.
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She did add: “I unequivocally oppose the use of torture.” However, she also blocked any effort to investigate torture during the Bush Administration or any effort to impeachment on the basis of war crimes because she insisted that she knew of no evidence to support such allegations.
By the way, Pelosi was protected by the Speech and Debate Clause and could not have been prosecuted for going to the House floor and saying that she believed that the Administration was committing a possible war crime. Moreover, it is simply not true that she was barred for taken other forms of action. She did not have to go to Adelphi to the answer on waterboarding. A simple google search would have revealed a couple hundred site discussing its status as torture and a war crime.
Finally, if Pelosi believes that she was intentionally misled, she should call of a special prosecutor. After all, giving knowingly giving false information to Congress is a crime under 18 U.S.C. 1001(c):
(c) With respect to any matter within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch, subsection (a) shall apply only to—
(1) administrative matters, including a claim for payment, a matter related to the procurement of property or services, personnel or employment practices, or support services, or a document required by law, rule, or regulation to be submitted to the Congress or any office or officer within the legislative branch; or
(2) any investigation or review, conducted pursuant to the authority of any committee, subcommittee, commission or office of the Congress, consistent with applicable rules of the House or Senate.
Yet, the most she is willing to do is call for another 9-11 Commission — and not a special prosecutor. The value of the commission is obvious. The 9-11 Commission was filled with reliable democrats and republicans who immediately declared that they would not pursue individuals or assign individual blame. It has been ridiculed for its effort to protect leading figures from blame and leaving massive holes in its investigation.
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Debra
I’m in a kind of picky mood today so forgive me in advance if I offend
The congressman you mentioned is Barney Frank, not Franks. Since you wrote Franks twice I assumed it was not a typo.
Mike
I don’t dislike Nancy Pelosi at all. I think she has been put in an impossible situation with this CIA/torture stuff. If I could vote for her I would. What I don’t get, and have not been able to wrap my head around since the Monica Lewinsky thing is what business it is of anyone who does what at the end of their work day. I get that elected officials work for us, but I don’t want the responsibility of telling them what they should do in their off hours. They are entitled to act foolishly, to say and do as they please, to eat dessert before their entree. Just because Speaker Pelosi got her job as the result of a popular election rather than a few interviews with a hiring manager and HR doesn’t mean that she owes all her time to the public.
Yeah, I know that other Speakers have been forced to resign for criminal behavior so far this is not the case with Speaker Pelosi.
If it turns out that she is guilty of an actual crime, then include me in calling for her resignation.
My sister in law lives in the CA-50th and her former congressman Randy Cunningham is doing time for mail fraud, tax evasion and for receiving bribes. He only got 8+ years and has to pay $1.5 million in restitution. The guy who succeeded him is an empty suit who seems to think he can do nothing at all except stay out of jail and will continue to be re-elected. I’ve pretty much decided to go down there and work for any democrat who will take this guy on in 2010. I have a few friends in CA democratic politics and I’m looking to see if the DCCC is interested in getting this seat. It’s not like they need it…
Jerry,
Few people disagree more with Mike S. than I do, but I’m telling you make your arguments without personal attacks or don’t make them at all. Personal attacks are the sign of a weak argument.
Jerry,
Thank you so much. Saul Alinsky was a great man and it is an honor for me to be compared to him, even from a fool like you.
Reaganite Republican Resistance,
Your comment was the best that could be expected from a fool who thinks a mediocre actor, backed by the defense industry, who mixed up his movies with reality, served as a no brains front man, was a religious hypocrite, created a huge budget deficit and did the biggest tax increase in history, was someone to be admired.
“I am curious about something… when did her or anyone else’s marital fidelity become a concern with regard to their job performance?”
“And at the and of the day what we have are a bunch of people calling the Speaker a whore, a liar”
GWLSM,
Excellent points and may I underline that the infidelity accusation came from a post talking about a rumor. I’m not a Pelosi fan and you’ve said your aren’t either, but some of the stuff being written here is way over the top.
Matthew N,
I like your intelligence and the clarity with which you express yourself. People who automatically downgrade the depth of intelligence of people from the military are usually revealing their own invalid pre-judgments.
Patty C.,
Great catch, I missed that. Certainly the original statement did not contain those words. Interesting though, how in the heat of debate on this thread some people treat allusions as facts? I did, to the detriment of my point.
CCD,
You are a pretty classy mensch, yourself. You always seem to make your points with logic and without rancor.
Mike Spindell is the new Saul Alinsky! Let’s give this bald headed idiot a hand for his psuedo intellectual Liberal analogy and views on this blog.
JT has a cult? Will Tom Hanks star in the movie? What’s going on in the underground cells beneath his lawschool? Are the Illuminati involved? Are their any aliens? Please let there be aliens?
Mike,
I knew you’d express it better than I could.
For my part, I feel that anyone that thinks you can be heretical to the Cult of JT misses one the points.
Debra,
You and I certainly disagree politically, but I think you have been done a disservice in the point you were making. I was 4F for Viet Nam, so I never served in the military, truth be told though I never would have enlisted. However, my work for 32 years was in an NYC bureaucracy that modeled itself, part of the mission statement, on a military means of organization. In my particular case I started as a “private” and wound up the equivalent of a “Major.” However, being a non-conformist type I was probably on track to be a “Brigadier General,” but was definitely punished for not obeying illegal orders. What separated me from a grunt is that I had certain talents in great demand and a Master’s Degree from an Ivy League School. Otherwise I would have been out on my ass, with a bad mark on my record. By the way I’m now retired with a good pension and great health care due to my years of service. Unlike the crap we do for our military retirees who we pretend to honor.
I wrote the above to contrast my problems in a hierarchy, with those problems faced by ordinary soldiers who try to make the military their career. The consequences of disobeying an illegal order are great and the retribution is
frightening. I hear that loud and clear from you and from Matthew. In my case even if I was discharged I would have done fairly well. For a soldier the consequences of a conditional or dishonorable discharge are a disaster for their future, as you made perfectly clear. I may have had a history of not following illegal orders and while it did cost me, the price was nowhere near what would be paid by an ordinary soldier. People thinking it is an easy choice for a career soldier to make, are picking and choosing where to bestow their compassion and empathy. The deal with any bureaucracy, for all of history, has been when the crap hits the fan, blame it on the people at the bottom. Hence at Abu Gharib, the only ones punished were those low on the totem pole and not those on high who gave the orders.
Now the argument that certain people will have about this would be the Nuremberg Trials, which hung people for following illegal orders. This argument I believe is specious and by the way I’m a very Jewish guy. Yes at Nuremberg they hung some of the big shots, except for one of the worst Albert Speer, but then they concentrated on the lower level people. These were people who wouldn’t have been court martialed for following illegal orders under the Nazi’s, they would have been shot, perhaps along with their families. While it sounds quite brave to assert that “I would never have done such a thing,” when faced with your death, or your families I wonder how many people would have stuck to their convictions? The other reason that Nuremberg quickly focused on the lower level people was that the US was recruiting many high ranking Nazi’s, Werner Von Braun for one, to come to America and work against the Soviets. These recruits including some very high ranking SS Officers.
Nuremberg was an exercise in hypocrisy, not because bad people got what they deserved, but because it was a show trial put on by the victors. My English teacher in HS was a WWII Marine in the Pacific, who talked of napalming caves where there were Japanese soldiers and shooting those who tried to surrender. I think if I was there along side of him I would have happily done the same. War is hell and those tasked to fight it are generally victims, no matter which side they are on. Only a few wars, WWII, have any real justification and sadly the “love” supposedly shown for our troops, gets quickly forgotten once the war is over.
Not all of us “ultra Leftists,” lack sympathy for the plight of a lower level military person and the hypocrisy of those who would invest time in prosecuting those in the lowest positions, while the real bastards who gave the orders and started the wars are to blame. All that being said I think some of your political views in general are not valid, but I have no doubt that you are a good person and I’m sorry some people were unable to understand your point.
“Mike,
The recent disharmony on the blog had brought that to the tip of my tongue. I’ve been trying to decide who the heretics are.”
Gyges,
There is so much I want to respond to on this thread that I think your comment is the right place to begin. I got that your comment was deliberately amorphous and I think that was the essence of your point. I personally don’t believe in heresy as a way of putting people into category’s. However, one of the evils of political discourse in the last 50 years has been the rise of the “sound byte” as the main means of political/moral/religious/sociological debate. People are classified by whether a particular belief fits into the beholder’s canon. Rather than hearing the full range of a person’s thoughts, this fitting then is used to categorize the communicator and their further remarks are judged by this pre-conception, rather than on their individual merits.
Take myself for instance. On the surface I would be judged to be in disagreement with Jonathan, because I believe it is too early to judge the Administration’s torture game plan.
Because of this supposed “heresy” I feel that every time I make a statement I must differentiate it with the qualifier that JT and the ACLU are fulfilling different roles, than I do as a lone commenter, with no public persona. I do this to preclude being cast as a heretic to this site.
This is the extent of how this all plays out because the anger on all sides is so palpable and all of us have become used to the “Crossfire” technique of argumentation. The reaction to Debra above I think is typical of this and I’ll deal with that in the following post.
Yeah, Patty. Minimally capable would probably be an overstatement when talking about military health care. I contracted a (possibly) life threatening drug resistant illness while attending a training course (a bunch of people got it and it spread like wildfire). I kept noticing weird things happening with my body so I kept going to sick call over and over again. Finally after about 3 months, they told me that they tested me and found out I had this infection and they had known it for three months but no one had bothered to pick up the paperwork. Knowing I was sick, the Navy docs began treating me. Six months later, I was still infected and still having bad symptoms. Finally, when I was home on leave for a few weeks, I got angry and went to an infectious disease specialist and paid for it out of my own pocket. He told me they were doing the dumbest thing he had ever heard and couldn’t believe that the military had such poor health care. He gave me a prescription and a few weeks later I was tested and was no longer infected with this “superbug”. People regularly suffer kidney/liver problems from this bug, and the military probably took a few years off my life expectancy because of the poor care they offered. It is amazing that I have all these bad things to say about the military but I still think about rejoining every day (and I’m sure I would have if I didn’t have bigger plans down the road).
Sorry, forgot to add great post! Can’t wait to see your next post!
Professor Turley; Love your comments on “Constitutional Law”, watch you as a guest on some shows. You are right on with your analogy of this ‘Crime’ which has spread Worldwide. Blogging daily to many countries, I can tell you as a ‘junkie’ of many ‘human rights’ abuses, ‘American history’…..my dad’s side of family, I have many American relative’s, many European relatives and even down under. I wonder if the ordinary American realizes the depth of what this means to their credibility globally.
Seams to me, they think it’s a local, internal problem when that is so wrong, and so disengeniouis to all the other countries Amrica has ‘useed’ and have been affected by 9/11 and the wwar on terror, including countries many prisoners sent to have their ‘laws’ govern the punishment and interrogation techniques on many, many prisoners, not 3 or 4. This also is a violation of the Geneva Treaty.
So much hatred in America, while the World has taken an awful hit because of America. The ‘right’ conservatism idealism is awfully misled if they think ‘that the U.S. is a law unto itself’ when they preach to others about war criminals. Such a fraudulant stance, taking God as their personal savior, yet filled with so much hate, killing, destruction, guns, weapons, racism, hate crimes, bigotry and evil.
This is why these trials with the last administration are important, otherwise, the evil fighting evil, the way it was done in past few years will continue and we are all in danger. No one mentions the attacks on Britian and Spain, only America..(as horrid as it was), other countries have suffered because they became allies with Bush/Cheney to fight terrorism, they also, like many countries lost many souls from 9/11 attacks, but nothing mentioned about or from U.K or Spain other than the ‘convictions’ of those misleading the World…………………….eg; America
Last night, I switched over to O’Reilly for a moment to see what lies were being sold on Fox, when I heard Bill O’Reilly saying he had placed a call to CIA earlier in afternoon regarding Pelosi, got a call immediately from an agent stating Pelosi is lying. This is how rotten the system and Obama must clean it up before this happens again. He is a true leader, some things however must be emphasised especially with the CIA, ‘moles’ in CIA and how anyone can say anything. Remember when Hannity let out of the bag from Rove that they get talking points directly from WH each and every day? Stupid Hannity gave himself away on national tv. But here should be laws against this type of hype restricting information or relationships that use a media source to blanket a show like Fox News.
Yeah, Patty. Minimally capable would probably be an overstatement when talking about military health care. I contracted a (possibly) life threatening drug resistant illness while attending a training course (a bunch of people got it and it spread like wildfire). I kept noticing weird things happening with my body so I kept going to sick call over and over again. Finally after about 3 months, they told me that they tested me and found out I had this infection and they had known it for three months but no one had bothered to pick up the paperwork. Knowing I was sick, the Navy docs began treating me. Six months later, I was still infected and still having bad symptoms. Finally, when I was home on leave for a few weeks, I got angry and went to an infectious disease specialist and paid for it out of my own pocket. He told me they were doing the dumbest thing he had ever heard and couldn’t believe that the military had such poor health care. He gave me a prescription and a few weeks later I was tested and was no longer infected with this “superbug”. People regularly suffer kidney/liver problems from this bug, and the military probably took a few years off my life expectancy because of the poor care they offered. It is amazing that I have all these bad things to say about the military but I still think about rejoining every day (and I’m sure I would have if I didn’t have bigger plans down the road).
Patty C,
This was over 17 years ago, they were giving flu shots by needles. The military medical personel for these types of jobs are usually low ranking and less experienced. I remember when they did a mass HIV testing of our company, some young kid came at me with a needle shaking. I quickly asked for someone else to take my blood. Military medical is considerably different than civilian medical. Pregnant women in the military are not favored much, at least not when I was in. It took several years for them to finally diagnose me with a hiatel hernia. After I got out and was in dependant status, I ended up with blood clots in my lungs at the age of 29 because of birth control. I went to the military hospital twice and the last time I left, they gave me 800 mg motrin for chest pain. I had civilian medical insurance as well and went into my civilian doctor the next day, that afternoon, I was admitted to the civilian hospital and treated. BTW, this is what nationalized medical care is going to be like. Nationalized medical care is not something we want. I know from personal experience from dealing with a government run medical environment.
He said that since he was part of the legislative body (lawmakers), they could write whatever law that wanted. Debra
News flash politicians write the laws. They don’t always follow existing law. In which case they should be investigated. Along with all war crime conspirators, employed with DOD, DOJ, CIA, FBI serving in Congress or having served in the Executive branch.
“We need people with more integrity.” Debra
Agreed, and thanks for your service.
The medical team could not verify rather the flu shot came from a live or dead virus, so I refused to get the flu shot for the health of my baby. However, I was told that if I got the flu, I would get and article 15. That is the equivalent of a misdermedar charge in the civilian sector.
—–
Unbelievable.
Flu shots contain inactivated ie non-live viruses and are safely recommended for pregnant women.
LAIV nasal spray flu vaccines contain weakened live virus, do not cause flu but would still not be recommended for pregnant women.
Any minimally capable provider knows this.
Mike Spindell 1, May 14, 2009 at 1:46 pm
“She added “I’ve dealt with our intelligence professionals for the last 3½ years on an almost daily basis. And it’s hard for me to imagine that anyone in our intelligence area would ever mislead a member of Congress.”
—
Unless I missed it in tandem, I believe JT inadvertently attributed this quote to Pelosi when it was made by Boener in response to her allegation that she was misled by the CIA.
rcampbell, you seem to hate both military folks and christians.
“BTW, where does your highly developed moral relativity come down on requiring soldiers to illegally distribute Bibles—especially in an Islamic country?”
If we are going to talk about the legalities of other countries, I suppose you support the legalization of rape. I believe it was either saudi, egypt or pakastan that passed that law. How about the woman who was gang raped in saudi and was sentanced to 6 months of jail and whipped for it. How about when a person converts to Christianity, they are killed by their own family as an honor killing.
In the military, soldiers are not required to pass out bibles.
Since you are so high and mighty and self-rightous, I am pretty sure that at some point in your life, while driving, you have broken the speed-limit or run a stop light, that is unless you have never had a license. Now, people get hurt, physically disfigured or killed every day because someone does one or both of these things. BTW, either one of those is breaking the law too. I don’t hear anyone raging over that either.
Or how about the man who beats his wife night after night, (isn’t that torture) and people know and don’t report or try to stop it.
Or how about the women who are raped every day.
Or how about the child that is abused every day.
bottomline, get off your high horse unless you want to deal with all the evil in the world. BTW, I am sure you are not the innocent person you may think you are.
I know that I am not miss perfect. I have been forgiven much. This world isn’t perfect. No amount of rage or anger is going to fix it. Sound minded people with a strong since of right and wrong is what we need in charge of this country, not loose cannons or liars.
Thank you GWLawSchoolMom… I knew that it’s a court martial. However, I was communicating with people who had never served the military and didn’t seem to know much about the military, so I was talking on a level that I had hoped they would understand. However, it seems that some folks are so full of rage and anger right now that they can’t see the forest from the trees. No amount of anger or rage is going to change what has already been done. What needs to happen is a modification of how things work in this country. For example… in listening to CSpan one night during the auto dealer hearing, when Barney Franks was talking to the Financial committee or advisors, Barney Franks made a comment that made the hair stand up on end. He said that since he was part of the legislative body (lawmakers), they could write whatever law that wanted. (that is paraphased) These are the type of people we have in charge. We need people with more integrity. Matthew is right as far as his take on the military. I remember disobeying a legal order when I was pregnant with my daughter and close to term. My chain of command wanted me to get a flu shot while I was in the third trimester of my pregnancy. The medical team could not verify rather the flu shot came from a live or dead virus, so I refused to get the flu shot for the health of my baby. However, I was told that if I got the flu, I would get and article 15. That is the equivalent of a misdermedar charge in the civilian sector. I was also sent out to the firing range when I was nearly 5 months pregnant to fire and M203 grenade launcher for qualification. I had to follow those orders. So you definately pick your battles. I could not torture anyone. However, if they were shooting at me, I would definately shoot back. All soldiers are trained to shoot a weapon. All of them. They are trained to kill. Then you have everyone from the commnader and cheif of the military, congressmen/women, and your chain of command behind orders to waterboard, to refuse would have landed that person in jail at leavenworth, bad conduct discharge and all benefits and rights taken away, period. When the higher-ups to include the lawmakers are behind an order, a lowly soldier, even an E7 (career soldier) has very little hope of not ending up in jail. Then it would take years to overturn the court martial and by then you have serve many years in jail already and the damage is done.
alot has been said…i heard that in the briefings the CIA had some things, DOD has other things, and the briefings were done with different committees…
so, they said half at one committee and the other half at the other committee and then said everyone agreed on what the other said and most was short of details
the logic was that if “they” picked up some one with knowledge of an imminent attack “they” should have other intelligence
the idea that they really needed to do anything was a subject everyone was to think about for the future of the country
it seems that what we have seen so far such as Abu Ghraib it was really the old fashined humiliate your enemy into submission…
also a military objective when invading a country is to to kill or put into submission all males 15 to 60 years of age…
in light that the Geneva Convention issues were discussed in that using the action of humiliating the population of Iraq would not achieve the miltary objective since they were already exposed to that under Saddam and the idea was not to be Saddam
this “cheney order” to waterboard over finding connections between al queda and iraq was not needed…there is connections it is just that saddam was smart enough to get it very seperate because saddam wanted sanctions (he made a ton of money on the oil for money program) so saddam’s need for al queda would only be after the invasion
the problem was that even some had alot to learn about the Al queda/taliban/islamic connections that for 40 years has thought of as seperate problems….
the torture was almost used to destroy stabilizing Iraq because Cheney knew he wouldn’t always be at war so he would need to have sanctions in order to make money…even though by the Geneva Conventions “sanctions” is an act of war
this issue has become that since cheney took certian conceptions…then uses torture the whole subject becomes “cheney” and all of it must be wrong
these people who throw out everything because of what cheney did are playing right into his hands
some in the intel field wanted to move forward after 40 years of bugus info…and no one complained when the WMD’s evidence used Saddam by Bush in the 2003 speech had been used to have sanctions against Iraq since 1998…
have a good night, mr. turely
and the idea that people just started stealing things from the Intelligence office and other buildings we didn’t have enough troops to cover and it would have only lead to the total destruction of those buildings is a naive thought…saddam’s intelligence apparratus forced people to loot everything…
I think Debra means well, but I’ll just phrase it a different way from my military experience. Most Marines don’t question the legality of the order. Most guys (I was never in a situation like this so this is just speculation) seemed like they would be okay with carrying out orders you and I would consider questionable or downright illegal. Racism, blind obedience, all of this is ingrained within the culture. Yes, you are taught that you are obligated to refuse any illegal order, but the reality of the situation is that the culture teaches you the exact opposite. With that being said, I was never in any kind of combat situation and I never had to make decisions like these. I will say, however, that a lot of the people in the military don’t think like you or I or most people who spend their time discussing law/foreign policy on the Internet. Even though I was in the service, I always felt like an outsider because I couldn’t really relate to my peers on an intellectual level. So while I can say we should prosecute these 20 year old kids, it has to be recognized that there are bigger problems within the military than illegal orders being given.
Back to the topic at hand, if Ms. Pelosi really did know about all this, prosecute her as well. If she really did know all of this, it really shines a light on why the Democratic leadership is so reluctant to open the can of worms. I am not so naive as to believe that illegal and immoral acts are carried out in our name probably every day (or at least very often), but I do find it incredibly disturbing that something like this could have been approved (or known and nothing was done about it) at the highest levels of both parties.
I can’t even watch TV or listen to NPR these days. All they want to talk about is Dick Cheney this and Dick Cheney that. Does torture work or doesn’t it? Well, if it works… blah blah blah. Whether or not torture works is completely irrelevant. Torture is illegal and immoral. I don’t want to get into too much hyperbole, but I don’t care how many lives it saved or how many lives it didn’t save or how much information we gained or didn’t gain. Torture is illegal, immoral, and it is contradictory to everything we value as freedom-loving Americans. By even showing the slightest bit of curiousity about whether torture “worked” or not, the entire country is becoming part of the problem. The pro-torture voices have already won. It is clear that principle and the rule of law carry no weight anymore.