Everyone knows I love pointing out Democratic hypocrisy. I'm wondering what I did so right to make this next story fall into my lap.
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.
Well that makes me feel better. Some lawmakers, the article doesn't say who, wants to squeeze Al-Qaeda has hard as possible to get the information they need.
BUT, this was 5 years ago! Democrats now are complaining that we are being too rough on those poor Al-Qaeda folks. They are allowing themselves to get back to the ways of thinking we had during the 90's when Bill Clinton allowed the Al-Qaeda threat to fester and boil over on 9/11.
"In fairness, the environment was different then because we were closer to Sept. 11 and people were still in a panic," said one U.S. official present during the early briefings. "But there was no objecting, no hand-wringing. The attitude was, 'We don't care what you do to those guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people.' "
I don't care what the "environment" was, if you had a problem with waterboarding now, you should have had a problem with waterboarding then. Otherwise, to do and say nothing about the practice makes you a hyprocite.
Only after information about the practice began to leak in news accounts in 2005 -- by which time the CIA had already abandoned waterboarding -- did doubts about its legality among individual lawmakers evolve into more widespread dissent.
This is EXACTLY what I'm talking about with the spinelessness of Democrats. The CIA has already abandoned the practice, Democrats were already seeing the story leaked into the public, and they waited until the political air was right for them to raise their "objections".
That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. Not taking a stand for what's right and wrong and instead blowing the way the wind blows, changing your opinion to whatever is popular at the moment.
GOP lawmakers and Bush administration officials have previously said members of Congress were well informed and were supportive of the CIA's use of harsh interrogation techniques.
You mean to tell me the Bush administration was right when he claimed they knew? Democrats head's must be exploding right now.
U.S. officials knowledgeable about the CIA's use of the technique say it was used on three individuals -- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; Zayn Abidin Muhammed Hussein Abu Zubaida, a senior al-Qaeda member and Osama bin Laden associate captured in Pakistan in March 2002; and a third detainee who has not been publicly identified.
Abu Zubaida, the first of the "high-value" detainees in CIA custody, was subjected to harsh interrogation methods beginning in spring 2002 after he refused to cooperate with questioners, the officials said. CIA briefers gave the four intelligence committee members limited information about Abu Zubaida's detention in spring 2002, but offered a more detailed account of its interrogation practices in September of that year, said officials with direct knowledge of the briefings.
So, contrary to what Democrats and the bleeding heart types will have you believe, this technique has been used on three people. And it was used on people who are very high up Al-Qaeda members.
Pelosi declined to comment directly on her reaction to the classified briefings. But a congressional source familiar with Pelosi's position on the matter said the California lawmaker did recall discussions about enhanced interrogation. The source said Pelosi recalls that techniques described by the CIA were still in the planning stage -- they had been designed and cleared with agency lawyers but not yet put in practice -- and acknowledged that Pelosi did not raise objections at the time.
So they were at the "planning stage" and "enhanced techniques" were discussed. So why not say "I have an issue with X technique"? Because she didn't have an objection personally until the other Democrats and their constituents started raising a stink.
Save it Democrats, you're just as up to your necks in this as anyone else. To say otherwise is out and out lying.
Travis
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