The Tortuous Logic of Nancy Pelosi
And her defenders
by
Justin Raimondo
by Justin Raimondo
 Even
I – quintessentially cynical
when it comes to politics and politicians – was shocked (shocked!)
by the ease with which the Democratic talking heads and their blogger
auxiliary took up the defense of Nancy
Pelosi. Her obvious culpability in the unfolding story of how
torture was legitimized in the eyes of seemingly reasonable people
is such a challenge to supposedly anti-torture Democrats that one’s
response to it represents a veritable litmus test of one’s
honesty, integrity, and ideological consistency. It’s sad,
but true, that not many alleged progressives with a public platform
are earning a passing grade.
As might be
expected, the worst is MSNBC ranter Keith
Olbermann, who used to be a reasonable person – long ago and
far away – but has, since the election, turned into the worst sort
of party-lining hack and all-around hatchet-man, a kind of Bizarro
World version of Sean
Hannity. He led on Friday with the news of Pelosi’s growing
vulnerability on this issue, repeating all of her talking points,
which were no more convincing coming out of his mouth than they
were coming out of hers. Indeed, Pelosi, after accusing
the CIA of "misleading" Congress, i.e., lying to her,
backtracked,
but not Olbermann. He tried to get frequent guest Jonathan
Turley, a noted legal expert, to agree with his pro-Pelosi spin,
but Turley
wasn’t biting: he pointed out that even if what Pelosi
is now
saying is true – that she didn’t know anybody had been
waterboarded, that this was going to be a future scenario – there
is no record that she had any objections. She avers it was her job
just to be notified, but, as Turley says, the point of notification
is to act.
The speaker
of the House is in an increasingly tenuous position. Nothing less
than her credibility is at stake. To have Leon Panetta directly
contradict her, by issuing a statement
declaring that the CIA briefed her "truthfully" and appending
to that a general statement addressed to CIA agents who might have
been demoralized, even angered, by Pelosi’s charges, is a
real slap in the face.
 One
amusing side aspect of all this is gauging the reaction from Democratic
Party loyalists. Speaking of which, we hear not a peep from the
bloggers over at the Huffington Post. Arianna herself is too busy
calling
for the legalization of drugs to bother with such mundane matters
as whether prominent figures in both parties went along with the
Bush administration’s torture agenda, and her Hollywood-celebrity
fellow airheads are similarly preoccupied with such pressing matters
as the evil
of Dick Cheney. Yet no drug ever invented is going to anesthetize
them and their partisan comrades against the pain they’ll
experience if they continue to press on the torture issue, as it
becomes increasingly clear that no one in D.C. is going to emerge
from this with clean hands.
That isn’t
stopping them from pushing back, however. And what a truly pathetic
sight it is! HuffPuffer Sam Stein’s "coverage" of
the Pelosi brouhaha is titled "Bush
Critics Frustrated as Torture Debate Shifts to Pelosi."
Therein, a gaggle of anonymous Democratic strategists the author
met at Hollywood cocktail parties bemoans the fact that the speaker
is receiving any scrutiny at all. This is "changing the subject."
But what is
the subject, anyway? Isn’t it finding out how the freest
country on earth began taking lessons from the
KGB, the North
Koreans, and the
Gestapo on how to extract information from recalcitrant prisoners?
If so, then the complicity of our most powerful politicians – and
the failure of the "oversight process," as they call it
– is an integral part of the story.
Read
the rest of the article
May
20, 2009
Justin
Raimondo [send him mail]
is editorial director of Antiwar.com
and is the author of An
Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard and Reclaiming
the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement.
Copyright
© 2009 Antiwar.com
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