News Pelosi was particularly harsh in describing the CIA

[WhoWee]

Funny how this is exactly the current Right Wing talking point.

So of course it is about politics.

Is the Right Wing in their ardor to press this point equally as anxious to see those in the last administration that misled the country ... that stood before the Nation and the World ... and initiated a war on fabricated and incomplete and coerced information and ill-analyzed suppositions resulting in the very quagmire they claimed they would avoid with their brilliant "surgical" incursion?

And yet in the end, here we are with a bill from the china shop for Iraq, they broke it, and now it's on our tab. They made it wholly dysfunctional. And now all of Humpty-Dumpty-Haliburton's horses and men still haven't put it back together again. But they sure have skimmed a lovely profit in the process I'd be thinking.

And now Dick Cheney is eager to have History see him as a hero? Yeah. You bet.

This has always been my point of view...if you lie to Congress >>> go to jail...no exceptions.

 

[turbo]

This has always been my point of view...if you lie to Congress >>> go to jail...no exceptions.

So you want Powell and Gonzo behind bars? How about anybody else that led us into the Bush/Cheney war based on lies?

 

[WhoWee]

Now, perhaps you explain how Pelosi could make a legal case against the CIA with no transcripts, no notes, and no corroboration from her staff. Such a case would go nowhere and then be trumpeted by the neo-cons as "proof" that Pelosi was lying. Asking Pelosi to make a case against the CIA with only hearsay is the biggest tar-baby trap that she could possible fall into.

I can't argue with that.

 

[WhoWee]

So you want Powell and Gonzo behind bars? How about anybody else that led us into the Bush/Cheney war based on lies?

Turbo...I don't care who is punished..let the chips fall...just make sure the playing field is fair.

There has to be accountability in Washington...if you don't want to put EVERYONE that lies to Congress in jail...at least take away their perks and pensions...enough is enough.

 

[WhoWee]

Under what circumstance would it ever be acceptable to lie to Congress?

Some standards should not be negotiable or flexible.

Politicians and government employees answer to us...the taxpayers.

Likewise, recipients of our tax dollars should also be held more accountable.

 

[LowlyPion]

Under what circumstance would it ever be acceptable to lie to Congress?

Ask the CIA.

They apparently have some experience in this regard.

 

[WhoWee]

Ask the CIA.

They apparently have some experience in this regard.

And this is Nancy Pelosi's chance to "get them"...all she needs to do is take the stand.

Of course, she still needs to worry about this
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009908
and the recent report from CIA sources of other trips...to use your phrase...the plot thickens...

 

[LowlyPion]

And this is Nancy Pelosi's chance to "get them"...all she needs to do is take the stand.

Of course, she still needs to worry about this
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009908
and the recent report from CIA sources of other trips...to use your phrase...the plot thickens...

Is this the next right wing faux issue to try to attack Pelosi with?

They really have nothing then, if they are going to start slinging stones at Fact Finding trips. I'd say that's really a sad strategy.

 

[Gokul43201]

Of course, she still needs to worry about this
http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110009908
and the recent report from CIA sources of other trips...to use your phrase...the plot thickens...

If they want to charge Pelosi with something for her Syria trip, they should also charge the rest of the delegation that went with her (4 dems, 1 rep). But more importantly, they should first charge the 3 reps that made a trip to Syria, a few days before the Pelosi group.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2003647048_pelosi02.html

JERUSALEM — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will tell Syrian leaders when she visits Damascus this week on a trip criticized by the Bush administration that Israel will engage in peace talks only if Syria stops supporting Palestinian militants, Israel said Sunday.
...
Three Republican congressmen — Frank Wolf, Joe Pitts and Robert Aderholt — were in Syria on Sunday, where they met with Assad. They said they believed there was an opportunity for dialogue with the Syrian leadership.

How far off-topic do you want to drag your own thread?

 

[LowlyPion]

In Mrs. Pelosi’s defense, CIA managers do not give fist-pounding briefings. They mumble, they dissemble, and there’s a lot of “on the one hand . . .” Its enormous numbers of employees have led to briefings being handled by groups, with vague chains of command, so that it may have been difficult to pin down what was said, when it was said, and who was in charge.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NmM4NjlkNDNlMjJlZjliZjI4OWY5MmQxODZjYjI1MmI

From an ex-CIA guy.

— “Ishmael Jones” is a former deep-cover officer with the Central Intelligence Agency. He is author of The Human Factor: Inside the CIA’s Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture, published last year by Encounter Books.

 

[mheslep]

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NmM4NjlkNDNlMjJlZjliZjI4OWY5MmQxODZjYjI1MmI

From an ex-CIA guy.

And for which the previous paragraph was

Mrs. Pelosi and other partisan Democrats have always taken at face value anything the CIA has leaked that has put Republicans on the defensive. The CIA’s leaks on interrogations, the Plame incident, and its faulty intelligence on Iraqi WMDs may have contributed more to Democrats’ electoral victory than any other single interest group — more than ACORN, more than the teachers’ unions. Until now, Pelosi has thrived upon CIA dysfunction, and she has ignored the need for broader systemic change at the CIA, change that is necessary to protect the lives of Americans and our allies.

 

[LowlyPion]

And for which the previous paragraph was

Your point is ... ?

That Pelosi knows the CIA dissembles and uses it when it suits her purposes? So?

As opposed to the Cheney Bush brain trust that used knowingly unverified information from the CIA to drag the country to war?

It certainly fails to invalidate her claim that the CIA dissembles and deceives Congress. It certainly fails to suggest anything but that her account about not being properly informed about the waterboarding is the likely true situation.

 

[LowlyPion]

With regard to Pelosi, I noted this little sidelight.

The Republican National Committee published a 007 knockoff ad tastelessly linking Nancy Pelosi to kitty Galore. Now it seems they are trying to backtrack from their faux pas. They have removed the video from YouTube, and now are exercising their copyright to it in order to suppress it.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0509/RNC_asserts_copyright_to_remove_Pelosi_video_again.html

Someone needs to tell them that exercising copyrights doesn't unring the bell. Maybe if they manned up and admitted their patently clear poor judgment in making and airing the ad in the first place, they could put it in the rear view mirror?

The result now is a new ad to the music O Fortuna evoking atomic weapons and trying to implicate by inference Pelosi.

Is the idea that putting out a string of stupid ads, will somehow diminish the boorishness of the first Pelosi attack ad?

 

[LowlyPion]

Say it ain't so. Maybe Pelosi wasn't harsh enough?:

Democrats Say C.I.A. Deceived Congress
WASHINGTON — The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Leon E. Panetta, has told the House Intelligence Committee in closed-door testimony that the C.I.A. concealed "significant actions" from Congress from 2001 until late last month, seven Democratic committee members said.

... Mr. Reyes wrote that the committee "has been misled, has not been provided full and complete notifications, and (in at least one occasion) was affirmatively lied to."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/09/us/politics/09intel.html

 

[LowlyPion]

Looks like the CIA had some help in withholding information from Congress. Now we find that not only did they intentionally withhold, but were ordered to do so by Dick Cheney.

Senator: Cheney and alleged secret CIA program 'a problem'

... Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, told the "FOX News Sunday" program that Panetta testified that "he was told that the vice president had ordered that the program not be briefed to the Congress."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/11/cheney.surveillance/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

Maybe Cheney's remarks about the Obama Administration making America less safe is really more that America is becoming less safe for him, if he gets called to account for ordering the CIA to break the Law.

 

[WhoWee]

Maybe Pelosi will have a chance to testify afterall?
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0809/26396.html