WaPo:

Pelosi Accuses CIA of 'Misleading' Her on Interrogations
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi today accused the CIA of "misleading" her on the use of harsh interrogation techniques in the fall of 2002, acknowledging for the first time publicly she knew alleged terrorist detainees were subjected to waterboarding more than six years ago.

Pelosi called for the CIA to release detailed portions of her own September 2002 briefing about interrogation techniques, saying that at that time she was told the CIA was not waterboarding detainees. After weeks of sticking to prior statements that she then was never "briefed" about waterboarding's use, Pelosi today said her top security adviser was part of a briefing in February 2003 in which he learned interrogators were waterboarding terrorists.

Later, government reports showed that a high value al Qaeda detainee had been subjected to waterboarding 83 times in August 2002, weeks before Pelosi's briefing on the matter.

"At every step of the way the administration was misleading the Congress," Pelosi told reporters in a heated news conference, linking the alleged misinformation on waterboarding to now discredited intelligence reports in the fall 2002 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

She said that in February 2003, after her aide relayed the information about the use of waterboarding, Pelosi learned that Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), who had just replaced Pelosi as the top Democrat on the intelligence committee, wrote a letter to the CIA general counsel questioning the techniques and whether President Bush knew of their use.

"That is the proper person to send the letter," Pelosi said, explaining that she was then the House minority leader and was not the "appropriate" person to object to the technique. "My job was to change the majority in Congress."

Well, fair enough.

It's only that waterboarding is torture; has been since the Inquisition, and probably long before. Therefore, under the Geneva Convention which, as a treaty, is the law of the land, the law was being broken. Didn't Pelosi have some responsbility in that regard, other than to say "It's not my job," and take torture off the table?

I find this whole discussion discouraging on a number of levels:

1. "Now we know." Before the Bush administration, we could close our eyes to what was being done in our name. Now, we can't. We are a nation that tortures, and there's a portion of the population -- which includes most of Versailles and many Obama supporters -- that's perfectly OK with that.

2. And then there's the whole "we're the good guys" thing. Yeah, well.

3. But even more discouraging to me -- and, since 2000, I've become more cynical, or, of you prefer, more realistic, than I ever would have thought possible -- is that this is the discussion we are permitted to have. As Somerby points out:

We’ll enjoy a new regular segment on Countdown—a regular “WTF moment.” Presumably, this means that Olbermann’s show will now proceed like this:

Fifth story: The latest in torture, with our own Richard Wolffe.
Fourth story: The latest in torture, with Jonathan Turley.
Third story: Some random sort of bull-sh*t or other.
Second story: What did O’Reilly sort of say?
First story: Some ludicrous “WTF moment.”

On the “issues” front, you’ll hear about torture—and nothing else. From there, you’ll go straight to the bullsh*t.

Given the givens, here -- Olbermann, Maddow, their network -- it's most likely that the focus on torture is misdirection; a way for "progressives" to blow off some steam. Which, when you think about it, means that a totally lawless elite that tortures is, in the great scheme of things, small potatoes to those who own and control our discourse. I don't think that bodes well.