(Cross-posted to
/. and *...I should probably do that more often.)
They've been making plenty of noise lately about the "torture" (really just coerced interrogation) methods that the CIA has used in recent years. They've been whining that use of these methods makes us no better than the Bad Guys, that we're supposed to be better than that, yada yada yada...
Turns out that they were briefed in on it way back in 2002. Said briefing even included the San Francisco Liberal Treat herself, Nancy Pelosi. I suspect that even the 11%ers won't like this:
Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002 (h/t: The Jawa Report)
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.
Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration's counterterrorism effort. The CIA last week admitted that videotape of an interrogation of one of the waterboarded detainees was destroyed in 2005 against the advice of Justice Department and White House officials, provoking allegations that its actions were illegal and the destruction was a coverup.
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.
If these techniques are as heinous as you say they are, why didn't you do something about it five years ago? On the contrary, it appears the opposite happened. Once again, the Democrats have been exposed as the lying, opportunistic shitweasels that they are. They're willing to do anything—even endanger national security—that'll help them get and maintain political power.
They bleat that "dissent is the highest form of patriotism." They need to STFU...they are the last people to tell anyone what is or isn't patriotic or good for the country. I for one am sick and tired of their disingenous sanctimony. That the Republicans lately have been nearly as incompetent as the Democrats have been treacherous is the only reason Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the rest of that misbegotten bunch haven't yet ended up downrange of a firing squad.
