by Damozel | Back and forth, back and forth. Pelosi is now trying to take back a portion of her criticism of the CIA, according to The Hill, "saying that she really meant only to criticize the Bush administration rather than career officials." You'd think she'd have got the story straight by now, wouldn't you? After all, as Deb and I have both pointed out, she's had a couple of years to prepare for all this to hit the fan. [See Did Congressional Democrats Condone the CIA's Secret Interrogation Program? (12-9-2007)].
It was always going to come up at some point. But the way she's been foundering and/or floundering you'd think it had all come straight out of right field.
Now -- after unequivocally calling the CIA collectively as well as individually a big bunch of liars -- she's trying to say that she didn't mean to call them all a big bunch of liars -- only the political ones!
To hear her most recent demand for a do over, you'd think that somewhere along the line the same aura of sanctity that surrounds the military ("brave men and women who keep our country safe") has spread, God help us all, to the CIA. The agents of the CIA may be filled to the brim with bravery, and they may indeed keep us safe, but if there's one government service whose employees need to be subject to scrutiny and -- yes -- criticism more than any of the others, it's the intelligence services.
No, no. If we've got to have a branch of the government that is sacrosanct, drawing the line between the military and the for God's sake CIA strikes me as the right place to start. But no.
"My criticism of the manner in which the Bush Administration did not appropriately inform Congress is separate from my respect for those in the intelligence community who work to keep our country safe," Pelosi said in a statement. (The Hill)
I am not sure why so many of our current crop of Congressional Dems is so shit-scared of the inevitable GOP charge: "Republicans said she was unfairly criticizing non-political career officials doing the briefing when she claimed "they mislead us all the time." (The Hill) Fair or unfair, that's what she did. So what? One assumes that those career officials were acting in compliance with agency policy, and that those policies during the Bush administration came from the top down....?
At any rate, all this is just more spin intended to distract you from the key point: Pelosi -- representing "Congressional oversight" -- simply didn't do a very good job of it when it came to the Bush administration's methods. I'd have bought the argument that resistance was futile, so long as there was quite a lot more evidence of resistance.
I'd have said that this was a pretty venal failing comparatively when it first came up, but Pelosi's lame attempts to cover her ass by trying to position herself as blameless have completely undermined what little credibility Ms. Keep-Impeachment-Off-the-Table still retained. (And after all, the Republicans didn't mind her shifting rationales for doing that). .
I don't know what she knew or exactly when, but even giving her the benefit of every doubt, it's looked to me since 2007 that she was in a position to "push back" against the Bush administration's enhanced interrogation policies before anyone else, and failed to do so. She dropped the ball.
This doesn't make her culpable to the same degree as the Bush administration, whatever the GOP might want the rest of the country to believe, but it does make her complicit to some degree. The best case scenario would be that she weakly caved in without repeatedly challenging the Bush administration's premises.
Not that she's admitting even that much. Turns out that as far as she was concerned, challenging the Bush administration -- a/k/a "Congressional oversight" -- wasn't part of her job as the Congressional leader charged with oversight....at least not once she had concluded that resistance was pointless.
Asked why she didn't co-sign
a formal objection by Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), who attended the briefing
with Pelosi aide Mike Sheehy, Pelosi said any objection would have done little
good.
"No letter could change the policy," she said on May 14 at a news
conference. "It was clear we had to change the leadership in Congress and
in the White House. That was my job, the Congress part." [The Hill]
At any rate, she missed the moment when she could have said, "I am afraid I was inadequately briefed." And of course this isn't her only recent attempt to parse a denial. (When will our professional political class ever learn that attempts to bluff your way out of a controversy regarding key issues directly within your domain only get you branded you immediately as a liar?)
After all, the public can forgive acknowledged mistakes. What's harder to live down is a demonstration that you'll distort the facts to cover them up.
That bitter laughter you hear in the background....could it be Jane Harman?
RECENT BUCK NAKED POLITICS POSTINGS
43 Kids Stun-Gunned at Prison Systems' "Take Your Kids to Work Day"?
More Law-Enforcement Crimes: Jail Workers Plead Guilty to Detainee Abuse
CIA Says Pelosi Lied, Which May be True -- Then Again, Pots and Kettles
TPMtv's "The Day in 100 Seconds" (May 14, 2009 Video)
The Thickening Plot: Sen. Bob Graham Says the CIA Gave Him False Information
TPMtv's "The Day in 100 Seconds" (May 14, 2009 Video)
TPMtv: Pelosi Accuses the CIA of Lying to Congress About Her Knowledge of Waterboarding
Comments