ObamaOdrama

During a weekly news conference, the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi faced some “enhanced” questioning by the press. Crumbling under the intense scrutiny, Pelosi instinctively attacked the Central Intelligence Agency and Bush administration in her own defense.

“Yes I am saying the CIA was misleading the Congress and at the same time the (Bush) administration was misleading the Congress on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, to which I said that this intelligence doesn’t support the imminent threat,” Pelosi said at her weekly news conference.

“Every step of the way the administration was misleading the Congress and that is the issue and that’s why we need a truth commission,” she added.

Under a barrage of questioning, Pelosi also again adamantly insisted that she was not aware that waterboarding or other enhanced interrogation techniques were being used on terrorism suspects and

“I am telling you they told me they approved these and said they wanted to use them but said they were not using waterboarding,” she said.

Ironically, Nancy didn’t suspect anything as the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee in 2002 when she was “informed” by the CIA they have the legal right to use these enhanced interrogation techniques but haven’t implemented them yet… or so SHE says.

Why didn’t she request or attend any further briefing on interrogation techniques while a member of the Intelligence Committee? Why didn’t she personally raise objection to the use of waterboarding when it was a fact a couple months later? Why didn’t she try to block funding for the C.I.A. programs associated with enhanced interrogation techniques?

“No letter could change the policy. It was clear we had to change the leadership in Congress and in the White House. That was my job — the Congress part.”

Oh, I see… Nancy was too busy campaigning.

In light of newly released CIA documents showing Nancy Pelosi was one of the first members of Congress briefed on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques back in Sept. 2002, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi quickly released the following press statement:

“Of the forty CIA briefings to Congress reported recently in the press, I was only briefed once, on September 4, 2002, as I have previously stated. As I said in my statement of December 9, 2007: ‘I was briefed on interrogation techniques the Administration was considering using in the future. The Administration advised that legal counsel for both the CIA and the Department of Justice had concluded that the techniques were legal.’ I had no further briefings on the techniques.

“My understanding of the briefing I received is consistent with the description that CIA General Counsel Scott Muller provided to Congresswoman Jane Harman in a letter dated February 28, 2003, which states: ‘As we informed both you and the leadership of the Intelligence Committees last September, a number of Executive Branch lawyers including lawyers from the Department of Justice participated in the determination that, in the appropriate circumstances, the use of these techniques is fully consistent with U.S. law.’ As reported in the press, the accompanying memo from CIA Director Panetta concedes that the descriptions provided by the CIA may not be accurate.”

Pelosi has less regard for the truth than the CIA did for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.