He responded yesterday and he's thrown in his lot with his new job. As head of the CIA, he couldn't allow his agency to be accused of lying to Congress. That's a felony and not much appreciated at Langley. In an open letter to CIA employees and to the press, he wrote,
Panetta, President Obama's pick to run the clandestine agency and President Clinton's former chief of staff, wrote in a memo to CIA employees Friday that "CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, describing 'the enhanced techniques that had been employed,'" according to CIA records.Notice the verb tense "had been employed." The past perfect there answers Pelosi's allegation that they didn't tell her they had used waterboarding, just that they might in the future.
"We are an agency of high integrity, professionalism and dedication," Panetta said in the memo. "Our task is to tell it like it is — even if that’s not what people always want to hear. Keep it up. Our national security depends on it."
Then Panetta advised CIA workers to ignore the hullabaloo and focus on their work. As if! The Speaker of the House accuses CIA operatives of lying to Congress and they're supposed to ignore it? Come on.
Pelosi, realizing that picking a fight with the CIA is a no-winner, especially when they have all the evidence in their hands and can leak to the press to prove that she is the one who is lying, has backed off. Her new statement says,
"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,"Translation: Please, can't we forget all this back and forth and get back to what I really want to be doing: bashing Bushies. Please, please, CIA, don't hurt me."
I don't think that Pelosi is in danger of losing her Speakership over this. She has too tight a control over her party. But she's wounded and, in politics, it's never good for one of your party leaders to be wounded. Just remember how hard it was for the Republicans to overcome their image in the press once Gingrich had been wounded over his book deal and descriptions of him as the "Gingrich who stole Christmas" and then whining about what door he had to leave Air Force One. The media did the injuring in Gingrich's case. Pelosi did this all to herself. No wonder Republicans are smiling beneath their self-righteous denunciations.
8 comments:
Pelosi's "My criticism..." blah, blah, blah... sounds like a reworking of the Left's "We support the troops; we just don't support the mission." Or, "Bush's lying and I'm dying."
Keep digging, Madam Speaker. That'll get you out of the hole you're in as fast as Obama's "stimulus" spending will get us out of this deficit.
Do you think that Pannetta released this letter without White House
approval?
Why would he say to ignore what Pelosi said?
If Pelosi does step down then Steny Hoyer(sopposed to be a good friend of Rahm)could become speaker.
The Obama press actually asked her a few -- sort of -- tough questions. That was a little unusual and she certainly did not expect it.
We know there is a lot of communication between the White House and the MSM.
This is another very interesting delima she has created for herself.
While repubs salivate over an embarassment to dems, Obama continues to run circles around them by plucking their best hope, Jon Huntsman, to be Amb. to China. Instead, the party keeps celebrating lightweights like Palin and Jindal. It would be laughable except for having one-party rule is bad for the country. I wish repubs would get their act together or disband and let another party have a crack at it. I've heard the whig party is making a comeback.
Is that something like the Democratic brain trust of the late 70's salivating over the prospect of Ronald Reagan running for president after all the heavyweights had fallen by the wayside? Plus Gov Huntsman with very little name recognition may have decided to avoid this presidential cycle and run for the Senate instead. And after the treatment he received from the national press, as both being wealthy and a Mormon, he may have simply decided he didn't want the aggravation.
What is really at stake, not just the fun of watching an intramural food fight, is that a split is developing in the Democrats that has caused the unheard of event of an appointed official in the executive branch publicly, albeit indirectly, to criticize an elected official of the same party. And it only took 100 days for that to happen.
This focus on Pelosi is a diversionary red herring.
http://anglachelg.blogspot.com/
"The crime lies first and foremost with the people responsible for authorizing the use of torture. Once they have been made to answer for their original crimes against humanity and the nation, then we can get around to the pissant Congress critters who may or may not have been informed fully and unequivocally about the use of torture."
Ain't it a shame that one member of a party calling out another member of the party (regardless of branch) is considered an "unheard of event". If some repub had had the guts to try to put the brakes on Bush/Cheney, the republican party might not be in such dire straits.
Pelosi's "crime" is this: Her not reacting negatively to the EIT briefings she received starting in 2002 reveals that no one serious about national defense considered those techniques torture - not even Pelosi. It also reveals that all this hue and cry by the Dems since 2007 - that the IET's are self-evidently torture - is all theater to score political points.
In other words, the Dems' politicizing of national security for partisan gain has been exposed.
The people are starting to see through the Dems. Only the true believers are missing this
This IS ALL aboaut the DEMOCRAT Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi being caught is several lies and then(as Democrats do)blaimimg someone/anyone else.
She needs to figure out which lie is the "truth".
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