OK... Is WaterBoarding Torture? And, Did Pelosi Know About It In 2002?

After the events of September 11, 2001, we all know that our government took the position that we would do 'whatever was necessary' to prevent another attack on American soil from the Radical Islamists.

Like most citizens I wanted our government to find out who was behind this horrific act, bring them to justice, and find out if there were MORE attacks being planned.

I really don't believe that ANY American, in the months following the attack, cared one way or the other how the government got the answers... as long as the answers were obtained.

After the Left began to torment President Bush about Iraq and other nonsensical issues, they began to look at HOW the CIA and others obtained 'the answers', knowing that if torture was used, the Left could make 'political hay' out of the event.

"Never let a crisis go to waste"...

I don't believe for one second that members of Congress, including Speaker Pelosi, were kept out of the loop about what was going on with captured enemy combatants, and how 'the answers' were obtained.

But, now Pelose denies having ever been told about 'waterboarding' and wants to continue to deflect all blame back to the Bush Administration, without getting her hands dirty.
Sorry, Nancy... But you knew EXACTLY what was going on!

Here's an article from Karl Rove:
Congress and Waterboarding
Nancy Pelosi was an accomplice to 'torture.'
Ny Karl Rove
Someone important appears not to be telling the truth about her knowledge of the CIA's use of enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs).

That someone is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

The political persecution of Bush administration officials she has been pushing may now ensnare her.

Here's what we know.
On Sept. 4, 2002, less than a year after 9/11, the CIA briefed Rep. Porter Goss, then House Intelligence Committee chairman, and Mrs. Pelosi, then the committee's ranking Democrat, on EITs including waterboarding. They were the first members of Congress to be informed.

In December 2007, Mrs. Pelosi admitted that she attended the briefing, but she wouldn't comment for the record about precisely what she was told.

At the time the Washington Post spoke with a "congressional source familiar with Pelosi's position on the matter" and summarized that person's comments this way: "The source said Pelosi recalls that techniques described by the CIA were still in the planning stage -- they had been designed and cleared with agency lawyers but not yet put in practice -- and acknowledged that Pelosi did not raise objections at the time."

When questions were raised last month about these statements, Mrs. Pelosi insisted at a news conference that "We were not -- I repeat -- were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used."

Mrs. Pelosi also claimed that the CIA "did not tell us they were using that, flat out. And any, any contention to the contrary is simply not true." She had earlier said on TV, "I can say flat-out, they never told us that these enhanced interrogations were being used."

The Obama administration's CIA director, Leon Panetta, and Mr. Goss have both disputed Mrs. Pelosi's account.

In a report to Congress on May 5, Mr. Panetta described the CIA's 2002 meeting with Mrs. Pelosi as "Briefing on EITs including use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on [legal] authorities, and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed."
Note the past tense -- "had been employed."

Mr. Goss says he and Mrs. Pelosi were told at the 2002 briefing about the use of the EITs and "on a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission."

He is backed by CIA sources who say Mr. Goss and Mrs. Pelosi "questioned whether we were doing enough" to extract information.

We also know that Michael Sheehy, then Mrs. Pelosi's top aide on the Intelligence Committee and later her national security adviser, not only attended the September 2002 meeting but was also briefed by the CIA on EITs on Feb. 5, 2003, and told about a videotape of Zubaydah being waterboarded.

Mr. Sheehy was almost certain to have told Mrs. Pelosi. He has not commented publicly about the 2002 or the 2003 meetings.

So is the speaker of the House lying about what she knew and when? And, if so, what will Democrats do about it?

If Mrs. Pelosi considers the enhanced interrogation techniques to be torture, didn't she have a responsibility to complain at the time, introduce legislation to end the practices, or attempt to deny funding for the CIA's use of them?

If she knew what was going on and did nothing, does that make her an accessory to a crime of torture, as many Democrats are calling enhanced interrogation?

Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy wants an independent investigation of Bush administration officials.

House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers feels the Justice Department should investigate and prosecute anyone who violated laws against committing torture.

Are these and other similarly minded Democrats willing to have Mrs. Pelosi thrown into their stew of torture conspirators as an accomplice?

It is clear that after the 9/11 attacks Mrs. Pelosi was briefed on enhanced interrogation techniques and the valuable information they produced.

She not only agreed with what was being done, she apparently pressed the CIA to do more.

But when political winds shifted, Mrs. Pelosi seems to have decided to use enhanced interrogation as an issue to attack Republicans.

It is disgraceful that Democrats who discovered their outrage years after the fact are now braying for disbarment of the government lawyers who justified EITs and the prosecution of Bush administration officials who authorized them. Mrs. Pelosi is hip-deep in dangerous waters, and they are rapidly rising.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

So, obviously Nancy knew all about it.
But is waterboarding torture?

A CNN poll from 11/6/07 said it was.
A majority of Americans consider waterboarding a form of torture, but some of those say it's OK for the U.S. government to use the technique, according to a poll released Tuesday.

Asked whether they think waterboarding is a form of torture, more than two-thirds of respondents, or 69 percent, said yes; 29 percent said no.

Asked whether they think the U.S. government should be allowed to use the procedure to try to get information from suspected terrorists, 58 percent said no; 40 percent said yes.

Sources with knowledge of the CIA-run interrogation program have said waterboarding is not currently being used in its interrogations. But those sources have said waterboarding was used in the interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, now facing trial before a military tribunal for planning al Qaeda's 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

Waterboarding was used during the Spanish Inquisition and by Cambodia's brutal Khmer Rouge regime and the World War II Japanese military, according to advocacy group Human Rights Watch.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. telephone poll of 1,024 American adults was carried out over the weekend and had a sampling error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

So in 2007, nearly 60% of those polled by telephone, said our government SHOULD NOT use waterboarding to obtain 'the answers'. Interesting...

Also back in November of 2007, during the conformation hearings for US Attorney-General Michael Mukasey, this was reported...

Even though Congress banned waterboarding in the US military in 2005, it did not do so for the CIA.

As a result, Mr Mukasey told senators, it was uncertain whether this technique or other harsh methods constituted "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment. His answers did not satisfy the Democrats, however, and his approval now hinges on whether he is willing to say the torture method is against US law.

In a further embarrassment for Mr Bush yesterday, Malcolm Nance, an advisor on terrorism to the US departments of Homeland Security, Special Operations and Intelligence, publicly denounced the practice.

He revealed that waterboarding is used in training at the US Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School in San Diego, and claimed to have witnessed and supervised "hundreds" of waterboarding exercises.

Although these last only a few minutes and take place under medical supervision, he concluded that "waterboarding is a torture technique – period".

The practice involves strapping the person being interrogated on to a board as pints of water are forced into his lungs through a cloth covering his face while the victim's mouth is forced open. Its effect, according to Mr Nance, is a process of slow-motion suffocation.

Typically, a victim goes into hysterics on the board as water fills his lungs. "How much the victim is to drown," Mr Nance wrote in an article for the Small Wars Journal, "depends on the desired result and the obstinacy of the subject."

A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience to horrific, suffocating punishment, to the final death spiral. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch."

OK, it's very scary and 'horrifying' to watch.
You mean like watching the World Trade Center buildings collapse and terrified victims jump to their death from a hundred stories up?
That kind of 'horrifying'?

Then we have the current AG, Eric Holder say this back in January of 2009...

Waterboarding Is Torture, Holder Tells Senators
Justice Dept. Nominee Rejects Policies Of Bush Era but Stresses Bipartisanship
Attorney General-designate Eric H. Holder Jr. brushed aside Republican concerns about his record yesterday as he charted a new, less divisive course for the Justice Department on issues of national security, civil rights and financial crime.

In his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Holder declared that the interrogation practice known as waterboarding amounts to torture, departing from the interpretation of his Bush administration predecessors.

He promised to perform a "damage assessment" to evaluate how politically motivated hiring during the Bush era continues to affect the department.

And he pledged to work closely with Congress and serve as "the people's lawyer," rather than devote his loyalty solely to the incoming president, Barack Obama.

So now, we're going to act all high and mighty about how 'the answers' were obtained?

Ok, waterboarding is torture.
But frankly I don't care what technique the CIA or anybody else uses to keep America safe!

These radical muslim extremists mean to kill us all!

If they could get at Holder, they'd slit his throat! If they could get at Pelosi, they'd saw off her head!

For Democrats to politicize this affair and to ridicule the Bush Administration for their efforts to keep America safe is dispicable!

Their 'holier than thou', 'nose stuck up in the air', arrogant attitude will do nothing but embolden the enemy and cause America more harm.

Democrats continue to live in a September 10, 2001 world. They continue to fail to realize that, America IS AT WAR!

There is a world wide war going on between American interests, our way of life, Western Civilsation and the 10th Century world of Radical Islam!

I'm convinced that liberalism, difinitely IS a mental disorder!
Wake Up AMERICA!

MUSLIMS MEAN TO KILL US ALL!