Another day, another version of the “truth” about the briefings on the enhanced interrogation methods from Nancy Pelosi. First, she never knew anything. Then, she was told that they weren’t waterboarding anyone but obtained a legal opinion stating they could. (I know, it makes no sense but it gets better. . . er. . .  worse.) The latest installment in the Nancy Chronicles from Politico:

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 person familiar with the situation said Monday.

What?? She couldn’t write a letter like Jane Harman? Or pick up the phone to call the CIA chief or president? Or move to cut off funding? Apparently she so respected the legislative process that she was utterly paralyzed to do anything.

There are some morsels from nervous Democrats, who must suspect that all of this sounds incredibly lame. This from Dick Gephardt’s former chief of staff:

“You have to remember, in the 2002 period, the whole atmospherics, it was all about scaring people every day. . . People were legitimately concerned that we were going to be attacked again, and there was a constant drumbeat coming from the Bush administration of, ‘Bad things could happen, bad things could happen.’ Nobody wants it to happen on their watch.”

So that atmosphere excuses only Nancy Pelosi and her Democratic colleagues, but none of the Bush officials who were concerned about a new attack on America? Or perhaps he is saying the Democrats were easily cowed and too meek to question the basis for the administration’s claims of imminent danger.

How did this go south so badly for Pelosi ? It seems it never crossed the minds of the Speaker and her team that the public would care about her hypocrisy:

Democratic insiders acknowledge that Pelosi has not handled the media furor surrounding the interrogation briefings — and what she was told and when — in a timely or aggressive manner.

“I don’t know whether the story is overplayed or they’re misjudging it,” said a Democratic leadership aide. “I don’t know, maybe they haven’t been aggressive enough.”

This aide added: “I think they’re good at walking and chewing gum — that’s not the problem. I don’t think they recognized that this issue has the legs that it does.”

Yeah, who would have thought that lying about your involvement in a policy decision for which you are trying to prosecute others would be such a big deal? Not since Dennis Hastert have we seen a Speaker so overwhelmed by events and looking quite so hapless. And remember what happened to him.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 at 10:40 AM and is filed under Contentions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.