I have bemoaned over the last few years that Nancy Pelosi had one trick, and one trick only. “Bush lied”. Insert anything else you want, it just had to be preceded with “Bush lied”. A tsunami occurs, it’s because Bush lied. Pick anything you want. Eventually it morphed into the “Republican Culture of Corruption“. It wasn’t enough that Bush lied, now ALL Republicans lied. Time went by and the Democrats, fueled by “Bush lied”, “Republican culture of corruption”, and “change we can believe in“, swept the three branches of our government. Shortly before the last national elections, I pondered what the Democrats would do once they were in complete control and could no longer blame Republicans. Well, things have been kinda quiet other than Obama blaming Republicans for the financial meltdown. However, this week, Nancy Pelosi has gotten in some deep doo-doo. She decided she wanted to prosecute anyone who had anything to do in the decision making process regarding waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques. Only come to find out, she was part of the decision making process, having been briefed as early as 2002. Now, in 2002, Democrats were being cast as weak on national security. So, I guess she felt it was to her advantage to keep her mouth shut. However, once we started get close to election time 2008, she turned up the heat. It became a platform of Obama’s. He singled out waterboarding as something he would outlaw once he was president, regardless of the fact it already was. So, what does Nancy do when confronted with her obvious deception?

You guessed it.

Pelosi Accuses CIA, Bush Officials of ‘Misleading Congress’ About Waterboarding

Asked if she was “accusing the CIA of lying to you in September of 2002,” Pelosi replied: “Yes, misleading the Congress of the United States, misleading the Congress of the United States. I am.”

Of the Republicans, Pelosi said: “They misrepresent every step of the way. They don’t want the focus on them. They want it on us.

Now, what this all boils down to, according to Nancy, is the CIA said they “could” use harsh techniques, not that they “would”. That folks, is her idea of someone misrepresenting themself.

What boggles me is that right on cue, the liberal masses jump right in line and provide her a smokescreen:

Second, we all do understand that even if Pelosi did know and even if she lied with impunity, that doesn’t actually validate the techniques in question nor does it provide moral, ethical or legal cover for the actions themselves, yes? It may well reveal a cowardly, lazy and duplicitous set of leaders in the Congress who haven’t taken their oversight responsibilities seriously, but in the grand scheme of things that won’t be a shock.

So, while it may well be that the GOP/pro-torture crowd will be able to score political points here, it doesn’t settle the basic debate, not by a longshot. And yet when I hear/read it discusses it seems as if there is a certain triumphalism evident by those criticizing Pelosi. Perhaps this is because at the end of the day, so much of political discourse these days (and perhaps always) seems to be fundamentally focused on the point-scoring aspect rather than the actual policy issues at the heart of a given discussion.

Poliblog’s not the only one, it’s all over the ‘net now. This is simply a GOP thing to distract from the harsh interrogations debate.

So, any attempt to attack Nancy Pelosi for lieing for years on this topic is simply point-scoring. That we can not discuss her, for that would be avoiding the actual policy issues. They are very certain of that.

That’s pretty remarkable to me since there is no interrogation policy issue at stake here. Waterboarding and the other harsh techniques were banned in 2008. They were done away about when Obama became a nominee.  The policy issue at stake here is whether or not a new administration should go after a previous administration over policy issues. Nancy Pelosi is wanting to prosecute anyone who had anything to do with waterboarding all the way up to, and I imagine the ultimate target, Dick Cheney. That’s all that’s going on here folks. The waterboarding issue itself was settled a long time ago by a different administration.

So, now that we’ve got that clear, the issue of whether or not Nancy Pelosi should politically go after a previous administration using congressional powers to do so is what is being discussed here. It becomes cut and dry when the fact Nancy Pelosi was part of the previous administration she is now attacking. She was aware of harsh interrogation techniques and did nothing tangible about it. So, the issue now becomes whether or not she can target specific people she wants, since she’ll have to disqualify the committee she was on, the one that approved them in the first place.

Basically, it looks like her entire effort to exact political retribution against her political nemesis has fallen very visibly on its face.

And, you know what’s even more amazing? A lot of people don’t care. They are STILL arguing this is a debate over whether or not to justify using torture. And, ( follow the comments on Poliblog ) any effort to argue otherwise will be met with the harshest of retributions.

Tags: bush lied, CIA, culture of corruption, harsh interrogation, misleading, nancy pelosi, republican, republicans lie, retribution, smokescreen, waterboarding