More specifically, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va) were briefed on the extreme interrogation technique. Back then, it was fine. In fact, they wanted to know if there was anything more they could do to break the terrorists to give up information. Today it’s a different story. Today it is torture. Something we need to investigate.
For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.
Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.
“The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough,” said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.
Now, the Obama administration is in a quandary. Their far left base is still calling for the heads of Bush and Cheney. How to investigate the Bush administration over waterboarding at GITMO without including leaders of his own party?
The media didn’t make much of it then either.
