Tuesday, May 19, 2009

WTF is up with this tortured controversy?

Why are we still talking about Pelosi and torture? Dick Cheney ordered detainees tortured, and now Speaker Pleosi is under attack? This is clearly a case of Republican desperation.
Republicans view the current controversy -- sparked a month ago by Pelosi's calls for a truth commission to investigate the Bush White House's approval of interrogation techniques -- as their first successful effort to dent the speaker's image.
So let's recap this: Pelosi wants to get at the truth behind Cheney's torture agenda -- and now SHE is responsible for the torture?

Hey Republicans, give it up! No one is buying your tortured, trumped up 'controversy'.
For the previous two years Republican attempts to turn Pelosi into a polarizing political figure have largely fallen flat. The GOP ran ad campaigns in Southern states linking Democratic candidates to her, for example, only to see the Democrats still prevail.
About the only thing Repubicans have accomplished is to shore up Speaker Pelosi's support from the Dems in Congress.

And even among the general public Pelosi does better than some former House Speakers:
Pelosi is by no means popular with the general public outside of her San Francisco district, but congressional leaders rarely are. A new CNN poll found that 39 percent of voters approve of her job performance. At a similar stage in his tenure as speaker, Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) was supported by 25 percent of voters in 1997.
And of course Panetta is going to side with his CIA pals ... he doesn't want to wake up and find a horse head in his bed!

So gee, is it possible the CIA might have made a few mistakes?
Former senator Bob Graham (D-Fla.), chairman of the Senate intelligence panel in 2002, also questioned the accuracy of the CIA's records, saying that its memos on other briefings wrongly showed him attending briefings at which he was not present. Graham has repeatedly said that his interrogation briefing did not include any mention of waterboarding -- a dramatically different account than the one offered by Shelby, who, along with Graham, was briefed by CIA officials three weeks after Pelosi's briefing.
Maybe in their rush to protect a Dick, the CIA is trying to help Republican create a controversy. After all, they were the ones who went along with Dick's tortured plan -- so why would they want a "truth commission" now?

3 comments:

Dean Wormer said...

Yet another issue in which the media frustrates the hell out of us by chasing it's tail and misssing the big picture.

Joanna Jenkins said...

I couldn't agree more. You're my new best friend! LOVE your blog!

BAC said...

Dean - so true!

Joanna - thanks!!


BAC