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Flap thought Speaker Nancy Pelosi denied she was EVER informed that waterboarding and other CIA enhanced techniques were used?

Judging by Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress who were informed at the time, the answer seems to be yes. In December 2007, after a report in The Post that she had knowledge of these procedures and did not object, she admitted that she’d been “briefed on interrogation techniques the administration was considering using in the future.”

Today Pelosi protests “we were not — I repeat — were not told that waterboarding or any other of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used.” She imagines that this distinction between past and present, Clintonian in its parsing, is exonerating.

On the contrary. It is self-indicting. If you are told about torture that has already occurred, you might justify silence on the grounds that what’s done is done and you are simply being used in a post-facto exercise to cover the CIA’s rear end. The time to protest torture, if you really are as outraged as you now pretend to be, is when the CIA tells you what it is planning to do “in the future.”

But Pelosi did nothing. No protest. No move to cut off funding. No letter to the president or the CIA chief or anyone else saying “Don’t do it.”

Now, Speaker Pelosi’s story is changing again or should Flap say the story is being parsed.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi learned in early 2003 that the Bush administration was waterboarding terror detainees but didn’t protest directly out of respect for “appropriate” legislative channels, a confidant of the San Francisco Democrat said Monday.

The Pelosi camp’s version of events is intended to answer two key questions posed by her critics: When, precisely, did she first learn about waterboarding? And why didn’t she do more to stop it?

Pelosi has disputed a CIA document, released last week, that shows she was briefed in September 2002 on the “particular” interrogation techniques the United States had used on Al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah. Pelosi has said she was told then only that the Bush administration was considering using certain techniques in the future — and that it had the legal authority to do so.

But there’s no dispute that on Feb. 4, 2003 — five months after Pelosi’s September meeting — CIA officials briefed Pelosi aide Michael Sheehy and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), then the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, on the specific techniques that had been used on Zubaydah — including waterboarding.

Harman was so alarmed by what she had heard, she drafted a short letter to the CIA’s general counsel to express “profound” concerns with the tactic — going so far as to ask if waterboarding had been personally “approved by the president.”

According to the Pelosi confidant, Sheehy told Pelosi about the briefing — and later informed Pelosi, the newly elected minority leader, that Harman was drafting a protest letter. Pelosi told Sheehy to tell Harman that she agreed with the letter, the Pelosi insider said. But she did not ask to be listed as a signatory on the letter, the source said, and there is no reference to her in it.

The fact is Nancy Pelosi did NOTHING about waterboarding. She did NOT sign Congresswoman’s Jane Harman’s letter. Hell, she didn’t even LEAK it to the Washington Post. So, now why is the Speaker so outraged at enhanced interrogation techniques used by the CIA when she was in fact at least partially complicit by her inaction?

As Republican Congressman Peter Hoekstra (the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee) said:

“If Nancy was so concerned about the waterboarding, why did she let someone else write the letter?” asked Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the ranking Republican on the intelligence committee. “If she was so upset, why did she let someone else raise objections?”

As I have said before, lets have the Obama Administration and CIA release all of the documents and have open, public, televised Congressional Hearings. The American people deserve the truth, not Obama Administration spin and stonewalling.

Put Speaker Pelosi under oath, the lights, on television and ask her the questions about what she knew and when she knew about the CIA enhanced interrogation techniques. Ask her why she is so outraged today after the fact while she wouldn’t even sign Harman’s letter?

Enough of the BAD lies and deception. Congressional hearings – let’s go.

Previous:

Former Senator Bob Graham: I Don’t Have Recollection of Being Briefed on Waterboarding

What Did Speaker Nancy Pelosi Know and When Did She Know it? Re: CIA Enhanced Interrogation Techniques and Waterboarding

Nancy Pelosi on CIA Torture? – NO. Except…

Waterboarding: What Did House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Know and When Did She Know It?

A tussle with White House Correspondent Association Dinner’s security was just the start.

Political blogger Meghan McCain isn’t exactly the toast of D.C. right now.

Sen. John McCain’s daughter — who writes online for The Daily Beast and will soon release a book about life as a Republican — lost it after getting stopped by security when she arrived at the White House Correspondents dinner Saturday. The problem? She had only two tickets, but brought two friends.

“The security guard sent her to talk to someone to sort out the situation, but Meghan got bratty and nastily told him, ‘We’ll just stand here then,’ like an insolent child,” our source said, adding that after dealing with the guard, “She muttered to her friends, ‘Does he even know who the f— I am?’ ”

An insider told us, “Those tickets were harder to get than gold dust and Meghan blatantly only had two and thought she didn’t have to follow the same rules as everyone else.”

Then, she moaned about Wanda Sykes’ joke about her mom and dad, you know, Senator John McCain. There was NO WORD if Meghan thought the jokes about Rush Limbaugh and Dick Cheney were inappropriate.

Why, Meghan McCain was invited in the first place is anyone’s guess.

Why, of course and why many said the Economic Stimulus or PORKULUS Bill was JUST government spending and really not an economic stimulus.

Counties suffering the most from job losses stand to receive the least help from President Barack Obama’s plan to spend billions of stimulus dollars on roads and bridges, an Associated Press analysis has found.

Although the intent of the money is to put people back to work, AP’s review of more than 5,500 planned transportation projects nationwide reveals that states are planning to spend the stimulus in communities where jobless rates are already lower.

One result among many: Elk County, Pa., isn’t receiving any road money despite its 13.8 percent unemployment rate. Yet the military and college community of Riley County, Kan., with its 3.4 percent unemployment, will benefit from about $56 million to build a highway, improve an intersection and restore a historic farmhouse.

Altogether, the government is set to spend 50 percent more per person in areas with the lowest unemployment than it will in communities with the highest.

The AP reviewed $18.9 billion in projects, the most complete picture available of where states plan to spend the first wave of highway money. The projects account for about half of the $38 billion set aside for states and local governments to spend on roads, bridges and infrastructure in the stimulus plan.

The very promise that Obama made, to spend money quickly and create jobs, is locking out many struggling communities needing those jobs.

Flap is certainly NOT seeing any benefit of the PORKULUS Bill here in California. Taxes have gone up, as the unemployment rate soars.

Mr. President, where is the hope that is on the way?