*Pelosi's Memory Is Becoming An Issue: *And the speaker is getting
close to becoming the punch line to a joke
<http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124087384453961191.html>.
Nancy Pelosi is "pushing back" against charges that she was aware of
-- and acquiesced in -- the CIA's harsh interrogations of terrorist
detainees nearly from the moment the practice began, reports the
Politico Web site. Maybe she's suffering from amnesia.
Maybe, for instance, the speaker doesn't remember that in September
2002, as ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, she was
one of four members of Congress who were briefed by the CIA about
the interrogation methods the agency was using on leading detainees.
"For more than an hour," the Washington Post reported in 2007, "the
bipartisan group . . . 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.
Maybe, but hardly anyone would bet that way --- unless Pelosi can prove
that she is a victim of Alzheimer's, which sometimes does strike at her age.
Pelosi's "memory loss" would be a better joke if it weren't for this:
Maybe, finally, the speaker has forgotten the role that previous
grand congressional inquisitions played in gutting U.S. intelligence.
"After the Watergate era," the bipartisan 9/11 Commission reported,
"Congress established oversight committees to ensure that the CIA
did not undertake covert action contrary to basic American law. . .
. During the 1990s, tension sometimes arose, as it did in the effort
against al Qaeda, between policy makers who wanted the CIA to
undertake more aggressive covert action and wary CIA leaders who
counseled prudence and making sure that the legal basis and
presidential authorization for their actions were undeniably clear."
And that "prudence" is one of the reasons that we did not detect the
9/11 plot in time.
- 11:16 AM, 28 April 2009
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