Pelosi Accuses CIA of 'Misleading' Congress on Waterboarding

DontTreadOnMe wrote:

i vote for the man or woman, not for a party. [/color]

I've heard people say this all my life. I used to say it. ...
So I have to tell you that when you vote for the person, not the party, you are fooling yourself bigtime, and it is really a pretty naive belief. You are voting for policies, DTOM.

...
I think its kind of funny, kind of pathetic, for Specter, but actually he deserves it. You would think that as long as he has been in Washington, he would know this would happen, but its amazing how naive some of these guys can be. I think they get caught up in their own importance.

i was disappointed with his move, actually. despite what you may or may not think of me, i'm one of the people that thinks it's good to have two parties. and with his move away from the republican party, there's one less voice of relative moderation.

if nothing else, at 79, i don't know what he was thinking. nobody lasts forever. it's better to go with dignity.

i don't agree with the rest of your post, but since we're on the edge of actually being civil to each other the last day or so, i'll just keep walking.

DontTreadOnMe wrote:

i don't agree with the rest of your post, but since we're on the edge of actually being civil to each other the last day or so, i'll just keep walking.

We've had reasonable discussions. I detect you are not an idealogue, as some here are. In person, I am not a confrontational guy, but on a forum like this, I admit to being blunt and outspoken, perhaps sarcastic, but I hope civil and above the belt. ...

Thanks for being a fairly courteous poster, and willing for some middle ground, and you acknowledge agreement when there is some.

Do you get as much amusement out of the stark raving wild eyed liberals as I get from the stark raving wild eyed conseratives that post on this foram.

rabel22 wrote:

Do you get as much amusement out of the stark raving wild eyed liberals as I get from the stark raving wild eyed conseratives that post on this foram.

i get what you are saying too. but, this contentious **** has totally gotten out of hand. the powers that be have both sides treating each other like enemies. over half of us wanted obama to win because we wanted change. and that's what we got.

part of the change idea that i got from obama was it's time to stop barking at each other all the time and move on with our country's progress. that is the change i voted for.

we don't have to love each other. we don't even have to like each other. all we really have to do is work together to keep our country together and cut each other a little slack once in a while.

besides, now that we're all broke... misery loves company.

get the beer and sit down.

...So if you think we are going to be quiet and take all of Obama's change crap ....

DontTreadOnMe wrote:

rabel22 wrote:

Do you get as much amusement out of the stark raving wild eyed liberals as I get from the stark raving wild eyed conseratives that post on this foram.

i get what you are saying too. but, this contentious **** has totally gotten out of hand. the powers that be have both sides treating each other like enemies. over half of us wanted obama to win because we wanted change. and that's what we got.

part of the change idea that i got from obama was it's time to stop barking at each other all the time and move on with our country's progress. that is the change i voted for.

we don't have to love each other. we don't even have to like each other. all we really have to do is work together to keep our country together and cut each other a little slack once in a while.

besides, now that we're all broke... misery loves company.

get the beer and sit down.

Thats all well and good, but here is an observation, a partisan one I admit, but what did we hear from the Democrats for 8 years? It was dump on Bush daily...

yep. and before that, it was dump on clinton. it's a cycle. we can stop it if we want to.

So if you think we are going to be quiet and take all of Obama's change crap - sitting down - and being quiet about it, when it clearly does not work, I don't plan on doing that, DTOM.

do you believe you could give it a little more time before deciding whether or not it does, or has worked. the guy's been in office less than 4 months. does that seem reasonable?


The whole "change" bit, but change to what?

i hear ya. to me, sometimes it's not what you do, but how you do it that makes a difference.

I think alot of the polarization, or barking you refer to, came about because of the constant dumping on Bush for 8 years. Those that were tired of Bush more or less bought into it, and seemed to enjoy the daily dump on Bush and Cheney, while the rest of us considered Bush a decent man only doing his level best to make good decisions, and thus resented all of this for the 8 years.

i agree in part with you about how the polarization came to be. but, like i said earlier, before bush clinton was the target. as to the why... politics more than anything. it's a dirty business, and gotten really dirty in the last 20 years.

that's what i'm trying to get away from. most of the time i feel like michael corleone; "i try to get out, but they keep dragging me back in."...

So, I still consider Bush a decent guy, a good man, whereas I consider Obama a political opportunist and a pretty inexperienced one, and probably a socialist Marxist at heart. I resent the fact that this guy was pushed off on us by the liberal establishment and media and the voters have been sold a bill of goods. Alot of us also resented the idea that opposing Obama might be because we are racist, you probably did not, but that was the insinuation in the press. After all, electing Obama was historic, on and on, he is a cult like figure. Well, I could care less about his color, or how historic it was, I care more about the country and the policies that matter.

i've heard that outside of the political arena, bush is supposed to be a very friendly guy, a good hang. even though i didn't go for his positions in 2000, i put my dislikes aside after 9/11. i gave it a shot.

to be honest, my biggest gripes about his presidency are a little different than some. i just feel like the iraq war could have been handled a lot better. that's not to say that i believe it was needed, because i still believe it was a big mistake. but, just the direction and efficiency and planning; all of that could have been better.

shock here. i don't blame it all on dubya. i place most of the blame on cabinet people who's ideology trumped common sense in several areas. even worse, a few of them skated off and left bush holding the bag. wolfowitz, pearle, etc. but as the president, ultimately, he has to take responsibilty for what happened, or didn't happen.

it's entirely possible that obama will hit the wall on stuff too. if so, i'll be looking for answers from him too. i'm afraid my li'l book of "free passes" ran out a long time ago with politicians.

still have plenty of those left for my dogs and neices and nephews. and they all know it too.

Conclusion, you are a decent guy, a good American, but I do not consider the Jeremiah Wrights, the Moveon.org, George Soros types, no, I do not consider them the same. They are to be opposed and defeated at every turn if we care about preserving the country at all.

thanx. i expect we'd get along fine in person. a lot of my close friends have different political views than i do, and from each other as well. usually if politics comes up, we throw it around for a while, generate some outrage and then have some laffs over beers. it's a time honored tradition.

re rev wright. i'm not really sure what his trip is. he seems to have anger issues. and even though i was a member of moveon, even before iraq, the far left pretty much took over the agenda much the way some elements came to dominate other organizations.

protest, i like. hysterics and silly, not so much.

anyway, i wanted to get back to you on this. let's keep trying to find places where we can agree on stuff.

btw, did you see the thing about obama picking a republican for ambassador to china?

Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. (R) will be introduced Saturday as President Obama's choice as ambassador to China, a source familiar with the decision said tonight.

Huntsman, 48, had been mentioned this spring as a potential Republican contender for the White House in 2012, and Obama's former campaign manager recently suggested that he was a rising force in the GOP.

He served in the George W. Bush administration as deputy U.S. trade representative from 2001 to 2004 and, for President George H.W. Bush, was ambassador to Singapore from 1992 to 1994. He is an expert on China, and he speaks Mandarin Chinese fluently.

Huntsman has been getting political advice this year from national political consultants, helping to stoke rumors that Huntsman might be positioning himself for a run at Obama in 2012.

Quote:

btw, did you see the thing about obama picking a republican for ambassador to china?

Its an interesting move, but did you see WHY he did it?...

What better way to remove a potential opponent when you run for re-election then to send him to the other side of the world.

So, while I am not saying that was the reason, it sure looks that way.

That's the big protest -- that the use of these methods "raises profound policy questions." Talk about feckless. As for Pelosi, her stilted explanations on the subject are even more unimpressive. Clearly, she painted herself into a corner -- and then made matters worse when she was forced to admit that she knew about waterboarding in 2003.

If the CIA's interrogation methods were so outrageous that they now warrant a "truth commission" -- a process likely to destroy the careers of Bush administration and CIA officials who supported the policies -- why is it that they did not even rate a milquetoast memo when the San Francisco Democrat learned of them?

I have to assume that Pelosi did not see these acts as criminal -- that waterboarding did not become "torture" until it was politically expedient for the Democratic leadership to label it so. As Pelosi made clear, she was busy trying to win the House back for Democrats. Her priorities were clear. It was "my job," Pelosi said, to win elections.

anyway, i wanted to get back to you on this. let's keep trying to find places where we can agree on stuff. [/color]

The former intel professional, no partisan defender of Democrats, faulted Nancy Pelosi for not pressing harder in the briefing to determine exactly which techniques had and hadn't been used. "The extent to which members ask questions should drive what's going on," said the former intel pro. "It's your job to ask."

Still, the impression created by the CIA, and by Republicans looking to use the document to damage Pelosi, is that as early as 2002 there was a universally agreed upon definition of enhanced interrogation techniques (the document, remember, doesn't say that waterboarding was mentioned during the Pelosi briefing). In reality, it appears, the term, and the techniques it encompassed, occupied a far murkier realm.

*Correction: A Nexis search which we should have done earlier shows that the term "enhanced interrogation techniques" was used by CIA from June 2004 onwards. That month, the Associated Press reported:


The CIA has suspended use of some White House-approved aggressive interrogation tactics employed to extract information from reluctant al-Qaida prisoners, The Washington Post said.

Citing unnamed intelligence officials, the newspaper reported in Sunday's editions that what the CIA calls "enhanced interrogation techniques" were put on hold pending a review by Justice Department and other lawyers.


So the use of the term does indeed appear to have coincided with the emergence of widespread concern about the use of such techniques, and it doesn't seem to have been in use when Pelosi was briefed in September 2002. But clearly the term was in use two years earlier than we originally said.