THE DAILY BLADE: Panetta Calls Pelosi’s Bluff; Boehner Tells Her “Put Up Or Shut Up”
Responding to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) incendiary charge that the CIA lied to her and other members of Congress about the use of enhanced interrogation techniques ("They mislead us all the time"), CIA Director Leon Panetta - who served alongside Pelosi as a Dem congressman from CA - issued a letter to agency employees that signaled he would not take the sucker punch lying down:
There is a long tradition in
Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress. That is against our laws and our values. As the Agency indicated previously in response to Congressional inquiries, our contemporaneous records from September 2002 indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing "the enhanced techniques that had been employed." Ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened.
According to The Washington Times, “Mr. Panetta's rebuke indicated that - despite the speaker's attempt to deflect reporters' questions … by blaming the CIA - there would be prolonged scrutiny of Mrs. Pelosi”:
Republicans have criticized Democratic leaders for giving tacit approval to harsh interrogation tactics used on terror suspects, saying it is hypocritical for them to now seek inquests and prosecution of Bush administration officials who signed off on the practices. …
Mr. Panetta's insistence that Mrs. Pelosi was "briefed truthfully" heightens the confrontation between the spy agency and the speaker. …
Under continued pressure to explain her inconsistent stories, however, Mrs. Pelosi this week shifted blame to the CIA.
Republicans have jumped on Mrs. Pelosi's changing accounts and her unequivocal charge Thursday that the CIA lied to her.
The New York Times weighs the severity of the political fallout for Pelosi:
After many failed efforts, Republicans have finally found a weak spot in Nancy Pelosi’s political armor as a fight over detainee interrogations engulfs Ms. Pelosi, Republicans and intelligence officials. …
The deepening dispute over what Ms. Pelosi was told in September 2002 has challenged her credibility and raised new questions about whether she passed up an early opportunity to expose the Bush administration’s harsh treatment of detainees. …
But few think the sharp focus on the interrogation matter is a serious threat to the authority of Ms. Pelosi, a powerful figure who weathered previous Republican assaults with hardly a scratch. …
In Ms. Pelosi’s home state,
For now, Congressional Dems are sticking up for the embattled Speaker, notes The Washington Post:
I'm sure Karl Rove is proud that the Republicans found a way to criticize Nancy Pelosi for not doing enough to stop the same illegal practices that they supported and continue to defend," said Rep. John Yarmuth (Ky.). "It's clearly a desperate attempt to find any political traction with an American public that has given up on them.
Um, invoking Rove – who is preoccupied with other matters at the moment – is a desperate attempt to deflect the increasingly pointed finger pointing at Pelosi: On NBC’s “Today” show Sen. Christopher Bond (R-MO), who sits on the Intelligence Committee, said that the “the cables they sent out to the field” and other “apparently contemporaneous documents” convinced him that “it’s clear that they did tell her.”
As Repubs continued to pound Pelosi, she “clarified” her previously unequivocal charge by trying to recast her complaint as being against Bush administration officials rather than the CIA:
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. What is important now is to be united in our commitment to ensuring the security of our country; that, and how Congress exercises its oversight responsibilities, will continue to be my focus as we move forward.
But House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) is having none of it. On CNN's "State of the Union" he told John King:
Lying to the Congress of the United States is a crime. And if the speaker is accusing the CIA and other intelligence officials of lying or misleading the Congress, then she should come forward with evidence and turn that over to the Justice Department so they can be prosecuted. And if that's not the case, I think she ought to apologize to our intelligence professionals around the world.
Syndicated columnist Debra Saunders not only takes issue with Pelosi’s shifting version of events, but her slippery semantics as well:
Pelosi's failure to protest what she alternately calls "enhanced interrogation methods" and "torture" - depending on whether the controversy threatens to make her look bad or the Bush administration - goes to the very heart of whether or not the "truth commission" she supports is anything more than an exercise in cynical partisan finger-pointing.
If Pelosi believes that the use of these techniques - including waterboarding - was so patently objectionable, why did she not use her political capital to end the practices as soon as she learned of them? …
[S]he explained, Harman was "the appropriate person to register a protest" - as Harman did in a letter to CIA counsel Scott Muller.
Protest? The letter, which reads like the weakest of weak editorials, … She noted "that what was described raises profound policy questions" and asked if Bush had authorized them. In the letter, Harman seems most concerned not with waterboarding, but with the CIA inspector general's plan to destroy videotape of Zubaydah.
Panetta has offered to allow members of Congress to review the briefing accounts, but both Pelosi and her Repub opponents want the agency’s briefings declassified and made public - precisely “the nightmare scenario” feared when congressional oversight of intelligence began in the late ‘70s, argues The Washington Post’s David Ignatius:
When a scandal erupts, a member of Congress will put his (or her) political interests above those of the intelligence agency whose secrets he (or she) has sworn to protect.
That's what's so troubling about the campaign for self-vindication that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been waging. …
If you read the CIA's careful 10-page summary of the 40 briefings it has given to Congress since 2002 on "enhanced interrogation techniques," it's pretty hard not to conclude that Pelosi is shading the truth to retrospectively cover her backside. …
Congressional Democrats are acting as if there is something sinister in the CIA releasing the records of its briefings (see, for example, Politico's May 12 post "Democrats: CIA is out to get us"). But the deal with congressional oversight is that if members of Congress are briefed on a subject and don't object, they shouldn't trash the agency later in public when there's a flap. That undermines not just CIA morale but the integrity of the oversight process itself.
Pelosi's apparent rewriting of the record would be shocking, if it weren't so typical of congressional behavior on this subject.
The nonpartisan online fact-checker PolitiFact.com has categorized Pelosi’s claims of ignorance as being false: [W]e normally would be reluctant to make a Truth-O-Meter ruling in a he-said, she-said situation, but in this case, … [w]e are persuaded by the CIA timeline, which the agency says is based on “an extensive review of (the CIA's) electronic and hardcopy files.”
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is also persuaded that Peloisi is the Pinocchio in this unfolding (and unraveling) story. McConnell told Chris Wallace on “FOX News Sunday” that, “My own view is what is the point in going back and trying to figure out who knew what when. I think we know a good deal about this already.” But McConnell conceded that his own feelings about the brouhaha notwithstanding, the dispute may have to be resolved:
[W]e know what the CIA believes. And the speaker apparently disagrees with them. And I think the best way to resolve the dispute, if it’s to be resolved, is through the intelligence committees.
Pelosi may yet come to find that hers is a lie with a long nose, rather than one with short legs.
Poll: In “Significant Shift,” More Americans Pro-Life Than Pro-Choice
A new Gallup poll of 1,015 adults finds that a razor-thin majority (51 percent) of Americans are now "pro-life" vs. “pro-choice" (42 percent), reports The Washington Times:
"This is the first time a majority of U.S. adults have identified themselves as pro-life since Gallup began asking this question in 1995," said Gallup analyst Lydia Saad.
The findings represent "a significant shift from a year ago," when 50 percent of the respondents were pro-choice and 44 percent pro-life. The numbers of Republicans, Protestants, Catholics, conservatives, men and women who identify themselves as pro-life are all rising.
These survey results support a Pew Research Center poll of 1,521 adults conducted March 31 to April 21, which found that 46 percent approve of legalized abortion, down 8 percentage points from last year.
Gallup analysts posit that having a pro-choice president in the White House has had the effect of causing people to re-examine their beliefs:
"With the first pro-choice president in eight years already making changes to the nation's policies on funding abortion overseas, expressing his support for the Freedom of Choice Act, and moving toward rescinding federal job protections for medical workers who refuse to participate in abortion procedures, Americans and, in particular, Republicans seem to be taking a step back from the pro-choice position," Ms.] Saad said. …
"It is possible that, through his abortion policies, President Obama has pushed the public's understanding of what it means to be 'pro-choice' slightly to the left, politically," Ms. Saad said. "While Democrats may support that, as they generally support everything Obama is doing as president, it may be driving others in the opposite direction." …
While the number of pro-choice Dems did not waver between this year and last year (61 percent vs. 33 percent who are pro-life), Repubs have become even more pro-life during this period (now 70 percent, up from 60 percent), with those who are pro-choice sliding from 36 percent to 26 percent.
Like Repubs, women are also moving into the pro-life camp: 49 percent in 2009 vs. 43 percent last year; 50 percent were pro-choice in 2008, but just 44 percent say they are now. Men are trending in the pro-life direction even more strongly: 54 percent now identify themselves as being against abortion.
"Americans are now seeing through the PR-generated label, 'pro-choice.' Sonograms and real-life experience have deemed this label hollow," Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List, tells The Washington Times.
Perhaps no convert to the pro-life view is more high profile than Norma McCorvey – AKA “Jane Roe” in the landmark 1973 Roe vs. Wade Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion. Having become a Catholic in 1998, she was at Notre Dame University Sunday protesting the school’s decision to invite President Barack Obama to give the commencement address.
In his speech, Obama said that one impediment to finding common ground amongst “all people from all places” is that we are imperfect beings prone to “all the cruelties large and small that those of us in the Christian tradition understand to be rooted in original sin.”
Sadly, Obama does not consider killing an unborn child to be a “cruelty,” and admonished pro-lifers to be “fair-minded” - by which he means not to expect anything more than glad-handing, because there is no hope of change in his pro-abortion position. He related a particularly telling anecdote:
A few days after I won the Democratic nomination, I received an E-mail from a doctor who told me that while he voted for me in the primary, he had a serious concern that might prevent him from voting for me in the general election. …
What bothered the doctor was an entry that my campaign staff had posted on my Web site - an entry that said I would fight "right-wing ideologues who want to take away a woman's right to choose." The doctor said that he had assumed I was a reasonable person, but that if I truly believed that every pro-life individual was simply an ideologue who wanted to inflict suffering on women, then I was not very reasonable. …
I wrote back to him and thanked him. I didn't change my position, but I did tell my staff to change the words on my Web site. [Emphasis, The Stiletto.]
The Stiletto is not Catholic, but she agrees with the church’s teaching that abortion is “an intrinsic evil” – that is, “always and everywhere wrong” - unlike war and the death penalty, which are “open to discussion.” At the same time she is a free speech advocate, and does not believe that a school should have a litmus test when extending invitations to illustrious persons – and let's face it, you can’t get more top-drawer than a president – to address the student body.
That said, it’s a whole ‘nother thing to confer an honorary degree on Obama as Notre Dame did and Arizona State University famously declined to do.
ASU spokeswoman Sharon Keeler told The Associated Press the school awards honorary degrees “to recognize an individual for his body of work” and that Obama’s “is yet to come.” Notre Dame did not have that problem - Obama has an extensive body of work thwarting restrictions on abortion – yet was not deterred in bestowing the honor.
There are definitely litmus tests for choosing speakers at many liberal college campuses. Usually it is conservative speakers who are dis-invited, because they disagree with gay marriage, women's choice, gays in the military, or something similar. I generally disagree with such limits on free speech.
The case of Obama speaking at Notre Dame is different, because Notre Dame is a Catholic university subsidized by Catholic parishioners. Collections in parishes are explained as support to ensure students can receive a Catholic college education. In a very real sense, allowing Obama to speak is a slap in the face to parishioners who have donated to the Catholic universities.
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