House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who was the ranking House Democrat on the Intelligence Committee in 2002-2003, when the enhanced interrogation techniques were used on high-level Al Qaeda detainees, says……she didn't know nuthin' 'bout no waterboardin'.
Bull. Crap.
From the New York Times:
As was common with the most secret programs, the C.I.A. chose not to brief the entire committees about the interrogation methods but only the so-called Gang of Four — the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate and House committees.
Nancy Pelosi was one of the Gang of Four. Here's what another of those Four, ranking Republican Porter Goss (R-FL), who would later become head of the CIA, said of those briefings:
“We were briefed, and we certainly understood what C.I.A. was doing,” Mr. Goss said in an interview. “Not only was there no objection, there was actually concern about whether the agency was doing enough.”
Goss' statement is corroborated. In September 2002, Nancy Pelosi was one of four who was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites, which included a description of the harsh interrogation techniques, including waterboarding. From a Washington Post article called 'Hill Briefed On Waterboarding In 2002':
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.
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).
Perhaps not many in Congress knew about the waterboarding technique being used, but Nancy Pelosi was certainly one who did. Now she is lying about it and insulting the intelligence of the American people.
We've seen this phony passion play before from top Democrats. Remember how so many Dems wailed about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction for years, throughout the 90's and again in 2002 when the Iraq war was being considered. Then later, when no wmd were found and the public opinion polls shifted against the war, the Democrats pretended that everything they said before didn't exist, that it was all due to "Bush's lies" (which were also "Clinton's lies," btw). Nancy Pelosi was one of the big liars about the wmd issue as well. It's deja vu all over again.
