The Puzzling Pelosi Affair

You may be wondering what I might be referring to. After all, Nancy Pelosi appeared clearly to have been lying that she was not briefed by the CIA in 2003 that they were using the enhanced interrogation method of waterboarding. This is a method many call torture and the Bush administration banned its use after a period of use in 2002 and 2003 for being too odious. It might be possible that she would not remember when she was briefed, but it is very hard to believe that she would not remember that she was so briefed. Now she has admitted that she was. Nothing is puzzling about this, except her behavior. This is not the puzzle I wish to address today. She is a very foolish woman, so I am not going to waste my time worrying about why she does the puzzling things she does. Mark Steyn has written a history-commentary on this Polosi affair. Here is a 9 December 2007 account of what Congress knew in the Washington Post.

There were quite a few accounts in the fall of 2007 that waterboarding had been used. If Nancy Pelosi actually did believe that the CIA had only described waterboarding as a possible tool they might later use, rather than one they had used, why did she not speak out against it then given that she now considers it torture and the news reports had removed it from an hypothetical method? Or, if she still believed the CIA had not used it, and that it was only for possible future use, why did she not perform her leadership responsibility and use her great influence with the mainstream media to correct the record? Or if she believed the new reports then, why did she not call for an investigation of the way the CIA had misled Congress then? Was it just that by this time, the claim that the Bush administration was engaged in torture was just too juicy a presidential campaign issue so it had to be saved for the latter part of that campaign? Was it better for the Democrats to feign ignorance for the time period prior to the fall of 2007 news reports? Why didn't the current controversy of Pelosi and what and when did she know it not come up in the fall of 2007? If she were a responsible leader, it would have.

This is my beef on the issue. Whether she was lying or the CIA and other Congressmen were lying is an interesting issue, but it is not nearly as critical as the clear and great abrogation of responsibility Nancy Pelosi has shown one way or another on this matter. If the news reports were wrong or she had believed the CIA briefings as she says she remembered them, she had a responsibility to set the record straight, one way or another, with the American people. She failed us. Her judgment definitely failed, whether her memory failed her or not.

Anyone who has paid attention to this woman over time cannot help but understand that she plays the people for dupes and that her near constant grin is because she thinks she is putting one over on us.