Boehner and GOP Strategists Love Pelosi as Distraction From Substance of Torture Debate

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS
by Christine Bowman

“I’m not going to take anything off the table,” Boehner told Fox News, using the Speaker's own words, with perhaps a touch of irony.

Beltway politics is on the verge of becoming more torturous than enhanced interrogation itself as GOP bullies and strategists, aided by websites like Politico, market-share hungry cable and print media outlets, and misguided pollsters like Mark Penn all pile on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for her statement last week that the CIA failed to clearly lay out the torture policy to her back in 2002. Certainly, mistakes were made -- to use every politician's favorite, responsibility-free phrasing --  but whether those were made by the briefers or the briefee or both is probably impossible to prove. Regardless, for Pelosi the Memorial Day congressional recess that starts Friday can't come soon enough.

Before taking that break, though, a little context is in order to refocus the story on the actual torture story and get it off the hapless messenger, Pelosi. If the truth doesn't get equal time, this bogus attack could become the next successful GOP swiftboating of a flawed but decent, hard-working, high-profile Democrat.

Conveniently, Jonathan Salant writing at Bloomberg News provides some absolutely on-target context in his piece, "Pelosi Offers Republicans ‘Beautiful Target’ in Row With CIA." As he documents:

Earlier this month, Republican pollster Neil Newhouse released a 57-page analysis noting President Barack Obama’s high approval ratings and concluding, “We’re better off posting up against Democrats in Congress.”

In charging that the Central Intelligence Agency misled her about its methods of interrogating terrorism suspects, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave the Republicans an opening to follow that advice.  [In addition ...]

Republican consultant Eddie Mahe said he’d advise party leaders to “sit back and hold your fire” on Obama, whose approval ratings top 60 percent. Instead, he said, “Go after Pelosi, a beautiful target.”

So it is political strategists, not righteous and holy GOP anti-waterboarding purists, who are pushing the gleeful attacks on Pelosi. And, true to form, the bullies have picked on a high-profile woman and made their attacks meanly personal. Media Matters calls out CNN's Alex Castellanos, Townhall.com's Doug Giles, Fox News' Eric Bolling, and talk radio's Neil Boortz and Rush Limbaugh for their innappropriate and snide remarks about the appearance of our nation's first female Speaker of the House. Which begs the question, do these mostly middle-aged and probably paunchy guys mean to hold themselves up as alternative models of American good-looks and spotless integrity?

Instead of just adding to the Beltway cries of "Fight, Fight," some responsible parties have actually sought to bring more facts to light. Former Senator Bob Graham (who keeps exceptionally detailed personal journals), Senator Jay Rockefeller, and Representative David Obey have provided more evidence that the CIA's 2002 briefings, or their records of their briefings, may have been less than clear or accurate. Even the statement of Leon Panetta, the CIA's new director, leaves some wiggle room, since he only commented on general policy ("Let me be clear: It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress.") and then cited but did not provide the CIA's 2002 records by way of support. His proper agenda is to support his staff, not conduct investigations.

At bottom, details don't matter much since this controversy isn't properly about either Pelosi or the CIA. It is a politically motivated, GOP-controlled distraction that has sucked air time and attention away from Dick Cheney's ongoing defense of the Bush administration's embrace of torture as US policy. In turn, Cheney's (and his daughter's) recent media whirlwind is itself a distraction from Cheney's personal culpability for leading America into a disastrous invasion of Iraq on false pretenses.

Oil industry executive and PNAC ideologue Cheney had long wanted to wrest control of Iraq from Saddam Hussein. 9/11 provided the fearful context in which he saw the chance to achieve that end.

In order to justify a second war, Cheney pushed the unsubstantiated story that the evil Saddam had WMDs, and evil al Qaeda was a friend to Saddam. Later, Cheney also pushed to authorize the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" by the CIA and other intelligence units not to defend America against future terrorism, but instead to "elicit" from detainees a link between al Qaeda and Iraq when no reliable intelligence had established that kind of link. It should be recalled, too, that, at one time, Cheney blamed the CIA for "bad intelligence" when it suited him politically. Cheney's convicted aide, Scooter Libby, also helped "out" CIA counterintelligence agent Valerie Plame -- when her husband had publicly refuted Cheney's and Bush's claim that Saddam Hussein was seeking WMD-building material from Niger.

There's the context that political pundits, congresspeople, and voters might ponder over the Memorial Day holiday, while also pondering how to honor the nation's war heroes and fallen fighters. We must keep in mind, too, that more servicemen and women will fall due to Cheney's leadership and continuing propaganda campaignin support of illegal interrogations.

And here's one more detail to consider, if the big picture is just too big to take in. The CIA congressional briefing on "enhanced techniques" that is so contested, their first such briefing on the topic and one that supposedly resulted in the Constitutionally required congressional advice and consent, came on September 4, 2002. Waterboarding of detainees for bad intel (after they had already divulged good intel) had already begun by August, 2002, as the recently declassifed memos indisputably document. What's more, NPR reported Wednesday that interrogators and the CIA sought and received daily approval for their increasingly inhumane interrogation techniques from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

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