Re: Pelosi's Probably Right

So the GOP is in favor of holding investigations to find out if Nancy Pelosi lied about being told the CIA was torturing people but aren't willing to hold investigations to find out if the CIA was torturing people. They do understand that by investigating one it could easily lead into an investigation of the other?

And the president was probably right when he accused the press of a childish attitude when dealing with this discussion evidenced by the use of school yard antics to frame this serious debate.

How about deleting the "probably" and admitting that you, and the rest of the media, followed the GOP lead like a well-trained flock of sheep?

"This is a serious battle and it's not being treated seriously—it's being treated politically by the minority party. I would hope that they would focus on the substance and not on who said what when."
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Instead of crying like a little baby about how unserious the minority party is being Mr. Hoyer, how about getting your cat heard together and you all take some classes on how to handle yourselves a little better. Leave the serious unserious stuff to the press and try to stop having your a** handed to you all the friggin time. Its becoming embarassing to put it mildly.

He said she said part 500.

The Borgen Project has good info on the estimated cost of ending global poverty:

$30 billion: Annual shortfall to end world hunger.
$550 billion: U.S. Defense budget.

OK, great. Now can we get back to the actually important part of this story? You know, the torture part?
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Or else explain to us stupid folks how the legality of torture is affected by what Nancy Pelosi knew and when she knew it.
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To hear the GOP talk, you would think that Pelosi personally drafted the Geneva Conventions.

Richard Shelby also said in February that he doesn't know if Obama is an American Citizen because he hasn't seen his birth certificate yet. Here is the problem, you people take these statements from crackpot conspiracy theorists like Richard Shelby or known liars like Pete Hoekstra and you just lay them out there without any sort of check on the credibility of the messenger.
Pete Hoekstra lied to Joe Klein of Time Magazine for God's sakes. Yet like a bunch of neutered little lapdogs you go and nuzzle up to him time and time again.
Frankly this terrible and lazy sort of journalism is why you are all going broke.

What Pelosi knew and when she knew it is irrelevant. It's nothing more than a distraction kept alive by the MSM at the behest of the RWers. I keep thinking the whole goal of the right is to drag this non-story type nonsense alive for years and delay holding the Bush administration people accountable until there is another attack on us so that the whole issue becomes moot. Then they can cry that "We tried to protect you look at the thanks we got!". The victimizers as victims.

I move that we schedule a massive document dump of declassified documents for 3PM Friday May 22nd and ruin Josh Marshall's Memorial Day weekend.
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He's after all one of the few journo's with the energy and wherewithall to actually read (and post) source documents instead of trotting out endless conflicting press releases.
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Frankly this terrible and lazy sort of journalism is why you are all going broke.
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Quoted for truth.
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Here's Marcy Wheeler's take on this, which is geared by a desire to get the facts right. Obviously, she'd never make it in journalism...

Pelosi (D) said that the CIA lied about whether torture was being used. Rep Peter Hoekstra (R) said the CIA lied about killing a private citizen. Rep Peter King (R) threatened to investigate CIA orgies at the Watergate Hotel. Sen Arlen Specter (D) says the CIA des not always tell the truth. Shouldn't the CIA get to clear it's name through an investigation of these charges?

Jay Newton-Small:
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I'm really trying desperately to understand what is important about this story.
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What about it is important?
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Why should your readers care about this episode?

"So the GOP is in favor of holding investigations to find out if Nancy Pelosi lied about being told the CIA was torturing people but aren't willing to hold investigations to find out if the CIA was torturing people.
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As Dick Chenney said today, "bring it on boys and girls" in a nutshell.
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Why are the Democrats so hesitant to bring out the truth? Why do Democrats want to hide things from the American people?
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Because the people in power, who also knew what was going on at the time gave their respective consent. They APPROVED the EITs which were used. The nuball left cannot seem to grasp this, and got called with a bluff hand in their cards.
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THREE can we say THREE terrorist out of over 700 HUNDRED terrorist or suspected terrorist were water-boarded. Three terrorist who admit whole-heartedly that they did and would today kill Americans if given the chance. That simply means the Democrats of this country support the murder of our citizens, plain and simple. It is not about any so-called torture. It is all one big fu@kfest by the political left, the left that is ruining this great country.
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Blow your torture meme out from where the sun doesn't shine FOOLS!

Well, I mean, if Richard Freakin' Shelby taxes his selective and… er, creative… memory and comes up with his own version, who are we to say otherwise? He'd never try to gain partisan advantage or anything, would he?
… and this is still a distraction from the actual torture. Also.
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Oh, and to paraphrase Monty Python, intercourse the Borgen Project.

SZ: Here's the short version: A minor news item takes resources away from investigating a real crime with international implications to focus on right wing diversionary tactics. Right wing talking points overshadows real news. A dying party feebly applauds another major victory. Everyone else wonders WTF.

........THREE can we say THREE terrorist out of over 700 HUNDRED terrorist or suspected terrorist were water-boarded. Three terrorist who admit whole-heartedly that they did and would today kill Americans if given the chance.
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Were the three tortured as revenge, or tortured to gain information? Women accused of being witches "confessed" to their crimes when tortured. From a purely clinical point of view one has to wonder if torture brings the results it's supporters suggest.
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If torture is for gaining information, it may be a method with a great number of false positive responses, and of little overall value.

There should be a rule that only regular posters can hijack the threads. I still suggest a pre-emptive strike on the Borgen project. They'll never know what hit them. Clue...it won't be 30 billion dollars.

"If torture is for gaining information, it may be a method with a great number of false positive responses, and of little overall value".
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Let Obama produce all of the memos, and let the American people decide, rmrd. Or, are the democrats simply afraid that the people will decide 1. It was not torture, and simply as stated "enhanced interrogation techniques". 2. That very valuable information was gained, and 100's if not 1000's of lives were spared.
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Today we see in New York City, a group of home-grown terrorists who were stopped from killing a whole group of Jews at synagogue. That was just today. If my accounting is correct, that makes 4 known plots to date from 9/11 to present which were stopped. How many more were also kept from going all the way to where Americans were killed?
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The Democrat meme that this was torture, when it was not is simply political. A political game which has now backfired. Your hand has been called Obama, its time to produce exactly what is in your hand. You will be judged with Pelosi. She is the one who is a terrorist of this country and needs to be tried for treasonous acts against this country. She has attempted to twart the CIA from doing it sworn oath to protect the citizens of the United States of America. She needs to be removed immediately.

I'm all for a review of the interrogation methods used. As the hour grows closer to the full details being released, it will be the Republicans who don't want the public reminded of the actions of Cheney and Bush, not the Democratic Party members.
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Do you have information that indicates that waterboarding was used to gain the data leading to the arrest of the four (4) accused men in New York?

'THREE can we say THREE terrorist out of over 700 HUNDRED terrorist or suspected terrorist were water-boarded. Three terrorist who admit whole-heartedly that they did and would today kill Americans if given the chance.'
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It really doesn't matter whether it's a little bit effective or very effective. It's illegal. It doesn't matter if the people it was done on were evil or not. It's still illegal. If (God help us) we decide we want to torture people then we have to change the law.
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Cannibalism is also illegal. It doesn't matter whether or not Jeffrey Dahmer had effective weight gains while he was eating people. Cannibalism is still against the law.

"Why should your readers care about this episode?"
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I would care if I believed there were any hope that the truth of what happened would really be established, and if that knowledge helped us draw any conclusions about the chain of events that actually led to the CIA using torture, and whether anyone could have stepped in anywhere along the line and stopped it, and why they didn't. But I don't have any hope.

The only cannibals are Pelosi and her gang. They are consuming TRILLIONS of American tax payer dollars at an un-precendented rate never seen before in the past 230 years. But, that is a totally different story all together.
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But, it is people like you bobcn who are in favor of freeing the terrorists onto our streets, allowing them all of the rights and priviledges of every other American citizen.
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Again, I shall propose. Show me specifically in the US Constitution where it says "Waterboarding is torture, and it is also against the laws, treaties or anything else in the United States". Just saying it is torture does not MAKE it torture.
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Bring out the papers and documents. Bring out the Congressional oversight hearing notes that show who was present, who knew what, when and how. Bring out the CIA documents that show the outcomes gained or not gained by using these forms of enhanced interrogation methods. Then, the people may decide if going forward this is a tactic we want to use in the future. We can then say "Water-boarding of terrorists IS or IS NOT torture".
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In your twisted, confused and far left liberal world you have already decided, and all this is about for you is a political witch hunt. You do not care about who was or wasn't water-boarded. You do not care how many lives were saved in the process. And, you certainly do not care about the future of this country. You are just like your political hero, Pelosi. You say "Yes" after 9/11, and now that it is in question and the possibility of losing power and control is at hand, you want to say "No".
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People like you and Pelosi, disgust me. Why do you hate America so much bobcn?

Here's what congress is now telling us:
When it comes to torture, we should just avert our eyes and take a step forward into the future. But when someone accuses the CIA of a misstatement, it's time for intense micro-scrutiny!

I'm sure this is because Americans cannot, by definition, commit war crimes and because Democrats, by definition, are traitors.

The courts in the United states have played a role in defining whether waterboarding is illegal. Japanese soldiers were convicted for torturing US sodiers during World War II
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In 1983, a sheriff in Texas was convicted because he useed the "water cure" to coerce confessions. bobcn is on solid ground in questioning the legality of waterboarding, even in a military setting.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/02/AR2007110201170_2.html