Torture battle escalating, Pelosi vs. Boehner

[NOBama]

President Obama opened a big can of worms by releasing the torture memos last week that the administration today sought to close with little success.

Instead, a full-blown battle has opened between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, and her GOP counterpart, Ohio's John Boehner about how much top Congressional leaders knew about water boarding in 2002. It is being fueled in part by a timeline released by the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by another California Democrat, Dianne Feinstein.

Boehner released news reports from 2007 that seemed to contradict Pelosi, and Pelosi's office fired back with their own. Boehner said Congressional leaders "received an awful lot of information" about interrogations, and that "not a word was raised at the time, not one word. And I think you're going to hear more and more about the bigger picture here, that ... the war on terror after 9/11 was done in a bipartisan basis on lots of fronts."

Pelosi spent much of her press conference today addressing questions about what she knew.

The timeline showed that in the fall of 2002 Pelosi and other key members of the House Intelligence Committee were briefed on waterboarding and other interrogation methods Democrats now describe as torture.
Here is the transcript from Pelosi's press conference today:

SFGate: Politics Blog : Torture battle escalating, Pelosi vs. Boehner

Pelosi may be digging a hole next to Dodd's hole on this.

 

[MaggieMae]

I'm sick of talking about this. We keep going round and round with the same stuff. Nothing will change for the next few days so everybody needs to take a deep breath and enjoy the weekend.

 

[manu1959]

being born and rasied not far from san francisco.....the rest of the country is going to find out just how "stupid" san fran nan really is......

 

[NOBama]

I'm sick of talking about this. We keep going round and round with the same stuff. Nothing will change for the next few days so everybody needs to take a deep breath and enjoy the weekend.

WHAT? Another Dem caught in a lie and you want everybody to overlook it?

Say it ain't so!

 

[Valerie]

Keith Olbermann offers Sean Hannity $1000 for every second he can endure waterboarding. Lawrence O'Donnell weighs in on why someone like Hannity would offer to be waterboarded in the first place.

Olbermann: You'll do it for charity? For the troops families? I'll take you up on that Sean. For every second you last, $1000. Live or on tape provided other networks cameras are there. $1000 a second Sean because this is no game. This is serious stuff. Put your money where your mouth is, and your nose. And I'll double it when you admit you feared for your life. When you admit the horrible truth. Waterboarding, a symbol of the last administration, is torture.

[....]

Keith Olbermann Offers Sean Hannity $1000 For Every Second He Can Endure Waterboarding | Video Cafe

 

[Sinatra]

President Obama opened a big can of worms by releasing the torture memos last week that the administration today sought to close with little success.

Instead, a full-blown battle has opened between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, and her GOP counterpart, Ohio's John Boehner about how much top Congressional leaders knew about water boarding in 2002. It is being fueled in part by a timeline released by the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by another California Democrat, Dianne Feinstein.

Boehner released news reports from 2007 that seemed to contradict Pelosi, and Pelosi's office fired back with their own. Boehner said Congressional leaders "received an awful lot of information" about interrogations, and that "not a word was raised at the time, not one word. And I think you're going to hear more and more about the bigger picture here, that ... the war on terror after 9/11 was done in a bipartisan basis on lots of fronts."

Pelosi spent much of her press conference today addressing questions about what she knew.

The timeline showed that in the fall of 2002 Pelosi and other key members of the House Intelligence Committee were briefed on waterboarding and other interrogation methods Democrats now describe as torture.
Here is the transcript from Pelosi's press conference today:

SFGate: Politics Blog : Torture battle escalating, Pelosi vs. Boehner

Pelosi may be digging a hole next to Dodd's hole on this.

I was thinking the same exact thing yesterday after she gave us her, " I did not have torturing knowledge with Ms Lewinski - not ever..."

Well, basically that is what she was saying...

 

[dilloduck]

Keith Olbermann offers Sean Hannity $1000 for every second he can endure waterboarding. Lawrence O'Donnell weighs in on why someone like Hannity would offer to be waterboarded in the first place.

Olbermann: You'll do it for charity? For the troops families? I'll take you up on that Sean. For every second you last, $1000. Live or on tape provided other networks cameras are there. $1000 a second Sean because this is no game. This is serious stuff. Put your money where your mouth is, and your nose. And I'll double it when you admit you feared for your life. When you admit the horrible truth. Waterboarding, a symbol of the last administration, is torture.

[....]

Keith Olbermann Offers Sean Hannity $1000 For Every Second He Can Endure Waterboarding | Video Cafe

Cool--I feel a new teenage fad coming on. How long can YOU stand being waterboarded?

 

[oreo]

Keith Olbermann offers Sean Hannity $1000 for every second he can endure waterboarding. Lawrence O'Donnell weighs in on why someone like Hannity would offer to be waterboarded in the first place.

Olbermann: You'll do it for charity? For the troops families? I'll take you up on that Sean. For every second you last, $1000. Live or on tape provided other networks cameras are there. $1000 a second Sean because this is no game. This is serious stuff. Put your money where your mouth is, and your nose. And I'll double it when you admit you feared for your life. When you admit the horrible truth. Waterboarding, a symbol of the last administration, is torture.

[....]

Keith Olbermann Offers Sean Hannity $1000 For Every Second He Can Endure Waterboarding | Video Cafe

And that's EXACTLY the point. WATERBOARDING WORKS! It only takes a couple of seconds before they're spilling the "beans" on everything they know.

Would Keith Obermann prefer that is takes months & months before we get information out of a terrorist? THE PROBLEM: We may only have hours before we have to react to a terrorist threat.

This nation is so STUPID!--for electing morons that would rather protect the rights of terrorists than protecting the lives of Americans citizens. Who in the hell is sorry about waterboarding the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks? Who on this board actually feels sorry for this monster?
Keith Olbermann & who else?

 

[Valerie]

Keith Olbermann offers Sean Hannity $1000 for every second he can endure waterboarding. Lawrence O'Donnell weighs in on why someone like Hannity would offer to be waterboarded in the first place.

Olbermann: You'll do it for charity? For the troops families? I'll take you up on that Sean. For every second you last, $1000. Live or on tape provided other networks cameras are there. $1000 a second Sean because this is no game. This is serious stuff. Put your money where your mouth is, and your nose. And I'll double it when you admit you feared for your life. When you admit the horrible truth. Waterboarding, a symbol of the last administration, is torture.

[....]

Keith Olbermann Offers Sean Hannity $1000 For Every Second He Can Endure Waterboarding | Video Cafe

Cool--I feel a new teenage fad coming on. How long can YOU stand being waterboarded?

Those darn teenagers will try anything, won't they?



As for me?

 

[Care4all]

President Obama opened a big can of worms by releasing the torture memos last week that the administration today sought to close with little success.

Instead, a full-blown battle has opened between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, and her GOP counterpart, Ohio's John Boehner about how much top Congressional leaders knew about water boarding in 2002. It is being fueled in part by a timeline released by the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by another California Democrat, Dianne Feinstein.

Boehner released news reports from 2007 that seemed to contradict Pelosi, and Pelosi's office fired back with their own. Boehner said Congressional leaders "received an awful lot of information" about interrogations, and that "not a word was raised at the time, not one word. And I think you're going to hear more and more about the bigger picture here, that ... the war on terror after 9/11 was done in a bipartisan basis on lots of fronts."

Pelosi spent much of her press conference today addressing questions about what she knew.

The timeline showed that in the fall of 2002 Pelosi and other key members of the House Intelligence Committee were briefed on waterboarding and other interrogation methods Democrats now describe as torture.
Here is the transcript from Pelosi's press conference today:

SFGate: Politics Blog : Torture battle escalating, Pelosi vs. Boehner

Pelosi may be digging a hole next to Dodd's hole on this.

how so? did you read the full article?

 

[Sarah G]

President Obama opened a big can of worms by releasing the torture memos last week that the administration today sought to close with little success.

Instead, a full-blown battle has opened between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, and her GOP counterpart, Ohio's John Boehner about how much top Congressional leaders knew about water boarding in 2002. It is being fueled in part by a timeline released by the Senate Intelligence Committee, chaired by another California Democrat, Dianne Feinstein.

Boehner released news reports from 2007 that seemed to contradict Pelosi, and Pelosi's office fired back with their own. Boehner said Congressional leaders "received an awful lot of information" about interrogations, and that "not a word was raised at the time, not one word. And I think you're going to hear more and more about the bigger picture here, that ... the war on terror after 9/11 was done in a bipartisan basis on lots of fronts."

Pelosi spent much of her press conference today addressing questions about what she knew.

The timeline showed that in the fall of 2002 Pelosi and other key members of the House Intelligence Committee were briefed on waterboarding and other interrogation methods Democrats now describe as torture.
Here is the transcript from Pelosi's press conference today:

SFGate: Politics Blog : Torture battle escalating, Pelosi vs. Boehner

Pelosi may be digging a hole next to Dodd's hole on this.

Boehner is so ignorant, Pelosi will kick his behind.

 

[WillowTree]

I'm sick of talking about this. We keep going round and round with the same stuff. Nothing will change for the next few days so everybody needs to take a deep breath and enjoy the weekend.

oh sure,, now that the precious democwats are gonna be as guilty as the republicans you suddenly don't want to discuss it.. how convenient.

 

[WillowTree]

Keith Olbermann offers Sean Hannity $1000 for every second he can endure waterboarding. Lawrence O'Donnell weighs in on why someone like Hannity would offer to be waterboarded in the first place.

Olbermann: You'll do it for charity? For the troops families? I'll take you up on that Sean. For every second you last, $1000. Live or on tape provided other networks cameras are there. $1000 a second Sean because this is no game. This is serious stuff. Put your money where your mouth is, and your nose. And I'll double it when you admit you feared for your life. When you admit the horrible truth. Waterboarding, a symbol of the last administration, is torture.

[....]

Keith Olbermann Offers Sean Hannity $1000 For Every Second He Can Endure Waterboarding | Video Cafe

Cool--I feel a new teenage fad coming on. How long can YOU stand being waterboarded?

teens do it now only they use beer!

 

[Valerie]

Keith Olbermann offers Sean Hannity $1000 for every second he can endure waterboarding. Lawrence O'Donnell weighs in on why someone like Hannity would offer to be waterboarded in the first place.

Olbermann: You'll do it for charity? For the troops families? I'll take you up on that Sean. For every second you last, $1000. Live or on tape provided other networks cameras are there. $1000 a second Sean because this is no game. This is serious stuff. Put your money where your mouth is, and your nose. And I'll double it when you admit you feared for your life. When you admit the horrible truth. Waterboarding, a symbol of the last administration, is torture.

[....]

Keith Olbermann Offers Sean Hannity $1000 For Every Second He Can Endure Waterboarding | Video Cafe

And that's EXACTLY the point. WATERBOARDING WORKS! It only takes a couple of seconds before they're spilling the "beans" on everything they know.

Would Keith Obermann prefer that is takes months & months before we get information out of a terrorist? THE PROBLEM: We may only have hours before we have to react to a terrorist threat.

This nation is so STUPID!--for electing morons that would rather protect the rights of terrorists than protecting the lives of Americans citizens. Who in the hell is sorry about waterboarding the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks? Who on this board actually feels sorry for this monster?
Keith Olbermann & who else?

I don't think it's that simple, oreo. The American people aren't as stupid as you think. After 9/11 everyone recognized the very real threat. People wanted to be protected and were willing to accept that the CIA needed to use coercive tactics in order to protect us from being attacked again. We have rules and legal guidelines for good reason.

What happened is they kept getting orders to continue waterboarding a few of the top terrorists, despite the FACT that it wasn't working. It was no longer coercive at that point. There was no actionable intelligence being obtained.

I posted an article yesterday, I forget which thread, but I'll find it and post it here. Rumsfeld and Cheney were pushing and pushing and pushing at that point, at the critical time in question, in order to justify taking over the oil fields in Iraq and toppling Saddam, despite all of the Intel that failed to find a connection between Saddam and 9/11.

The American people are rightfully troubled by this information.

 

[Lycurgus]

As the left and Obama plays politics and revenge for Gores failures years ago, they are weakening our world position and placing American's at risk. He might want to pay a little more attention to Pakistan, it could be his war of shame!

 

[NOBama]

As the left and Obama plays politics and revenge for Gores failures years ago, they are weakening our world position and placing American's at risk. He might want to pay a little more attention to Pakistan, it could be his war of shame!

I just heard on the news that this mess is about to get a lot worse because the military is going to release a bunch of pictures showing detainees being mistreated.

 

[Valerie]

As the left and Obama plays politics and revenge for Gores failures years ago, they are weakening our world position and placing American's at risk. He might want to pay a little more attention to Pakistan, it could be his war of shame!

Honestly, I share your concerns about revealing too much information and possibly compromising our national security. McCain said it will become a recruiting tool for the terrorists. I find it hard to believe they're having any trouble recruiting already though, and I think it's important that we don't politicize our national security. McCain himself acknowledged those men were tortured and who among us knows better than he does?

The USA will ultimately once again prove itself to be most honorable because we have the courage to face the truth for the precise reason of maintaining the strength of our world position as the beacon of righteous freedom.

 

[Annie]

washingtonpost.com

Obama Rejects Truth Panel
Commission Would Have Investigated Abuses in Terrorism Fight
By Shailagh Murray and Paul Kane
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 24, 2009

President Obama rebuffed calls for a commission to investigate alleged abuses under the Bush administration in fighting terrorism, telling congressional leaders at a White House meeting yesterday that he wants to look forward instead of litigating the past.

In a lengthy exchange with House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), Obama appeared to back away from a statement earlier this week that suggested he could support an independent commission to examine possible abuses, according to several attendees who spoke on the condition of anonymity so they could discuss the private meeting freely. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, also seeking to clarify the president's position, told reporters that "the president determined the concept didn't seem altogether workable in this case" because of the intense partisan atmosphere built around the issue.

"The last few days might be evidence of why something like this might just become a political back and forth," Gibbs said....

 

[ItsFairmont]

Wait until the pictures come out next week.

The CIA is releasing photos next week (probably late Friday or early Saturday to keep it as quiet as possible).

I'm not making it up. The CIA announced it would release photos next week. Waterboarding photos are going to make the evening news in about eight days. It'll be everywhere. Newspapers, TV, magazines, internet.

It'll make Abu Graib look like Disney Land.


We are going to see some seriousl photos and video of guys screaming and begging for their lives while having water poured over their faces all day for hours at a time, along with being tied up, nude, in a small box, standing, while screaming and begging for their lives.


Good entertainment. Much better than the circus.


I think they should not only arrest those who gave approval to this crap, but they should also arrest (and place in a Taliban prison) those who engaged in this kind of behavior.

Those who torture deserve justice.

 

[NOBama]

how so? did you read the full article?

I read it.

The transcript in and of itself isn't the whole story though, Pelosi is vacillating about what she knew and when she knew it (or didn’t know as she's claiming).

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she was never told during a congressional briefing in 2002 that waterboarding or other "enhanced" interrogation techniques were being used on terrorism suspects.

But in a story published in the Washington Post in December 2007, two officials were quoted saying that the California Democrat and three other lawmakers had received an hour-long secret briefing on the interrogation tactics, including waterboarding, and that they raised no objections at the time.

The clash of accounts has stirred Republican claims that Democrats have selective and politically motivated amnesia when it comes to who knew what, and when, about the Bush-era interrogation programs.

"I saw a partial list of the number of members of the House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans, who were briefed on these interrogation methods, and not a word was raised at the time, not one word," House Minority Leader John Boehner said Thursday.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., is seeking a detailed list of all lawmakers who were briefed on the tactics. Republicans are drawing attention to the briefings to challenge Democrats who now say they are open to investigating, and possibly prosecuting, officials and lawyers involved in the drafting of the harsh interrogation techniques.

Pelosi is among those lawmakers who want an independent commission established to probe the evolution of the policies -- but it's still unclear what she knew early on in the Bush administration.

Asked about the briefings on Thursday, Pelosi said: "We were not -- I repeat -- were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used."

But she also did not explicitly say that waterboarding was not part of the conversation. She indicated instead that any discussion they may have had was hypothetical.

"What they did tell us is that they had some legislative counsel ... opinions, that they could be used, but not that they would," she said.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/first100days/2009/04/24/pelosi-stirs-questions-denial-waterboarding-briefing/

Dec 2007 Washington Post article: Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002 - washingtonpost.com

Pelosi and 3 other members of Congress were given this tour, which was a virtual tour from what I understand, and briefed by the lawyers who wrote the opinion that the advanced interrogation techniques were legal.

Is she implying that she thought CIA field operators were not going to implement the techniques that were approved by the “legislative counsel” that wrote the opinion? That seems to be the position she’s taking, and it’s BS. Also, she’s talking in past tenths about events that hadn’t occurred yet isn’t she?