What Is This World Coming To?

Nancy Pelosi claimed in a rambling and confused press conference  that the CIA repeatedly lied to her, “every step of the way” concerning the US use of waterboarding.  If true, somebody at the CIA may soon be headed to jail.  Or Pelosi may be forced to admit the obvious — she’s the one doing the lying.

Democrats on the House intelligence committee said Thursday that CIA officers broke the law in 2002 if they told Nancy Pelosi then that they had not yet engaged in waterboarding.

“If they make a false report, absolutely it’s illegal,” said Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. “If they fail to make a report when they’re obligated to that is also illegal — a violation of the National Security Act.”

Said CIA Spokesman George Little: “It is not the policy of the CIA to mislead the United States Congress.”

The Speaker of the US House of Representatives says otherwise.   Both versions can’t be true.

Waterboarding KSM Saved Los Angeles, CIA Says

Less than a week after declaring that it was time for the nation to move on rather than “laying blame for the past,” Obama described what might be done next to investigate what he called the loss of “our moral bearings.”

Answering a reporter’s question, Obama said that it would be up to his attorney general, Eric H. Holder Jr., to determine whether “those who formulated those legal decisions” behind the interrogation methods should be prosecuted.

The methods, described in Bush-era memos Obama released last Thursday, included such grim and demeaning tactics as slamming detainees against walls and subjecting them to water-boarding, which is simulated drowning. The harsher methods were authorized to gain information after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Obama said CIA operatives who did the interrogating should not be charged with crimes because they thought they were following the law as interpreted by Bush administration. Read the rest of this entry »