Pelosi rejected torture claims

Now that it is becoming clear that Nancy Pelosi lied about her knowledge of Waterboarding will the Democrats and left wing organizations call for her to be tried as a criminal.?

If she knew about the Waterboarding and lied, I think she should be stripped of her position as Speaker of the House and brought up on ethics charges and be censured.

CIA rejects Pelosi torture blame

The CIA director has rejected claims by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that the agency misled her about the use of torture during terror interrogations.

Mr Panetta recently took over the CIA after being appointed by Mr Obama

The CIA director has rejected claims by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that the agency misled her about the use of torture during terror interrogations.

"Let me be clear. It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress," CIA director Leon Panetta said. "That is against our laws and our values."

Ms Pelosi said on Thursday that the CIA explicitly informed her in 2002 that harsh techniques were not used.

Mr Panetta said it was now up to Congress to decide where the truth lay.

In a statement to Central Intelligence Agency employees, Mr Panetta cited a "long tradition in Washington of making political hay out of our business."

Specifically referring to Ms Pelosi's remarks, he added: "But the political debates about interrogation reached a new decibel level yesterday when the CIA was accused of misleading Congress."

Full disclosure

At a somewhat chaotic news conference on Thursday, the speaker - who used to be the leading Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee - turned her fire on the US spy agency.

“ Ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened ”
CIA director Leon Panetta

Previously she said she had been briefed in 2002 that waterboarding and other controversial methods had been approved, but not that they had been used.

She then said the agency misled her by explicitly informing her that those methods had not been employed.

But Mr Panetta said records from the period "indicate that CIA officers briefed truthfully on the interrogation of [terrorist suspect] Abu Zubaydah, describing 'the enhanced techniques that had been employed'.

"Ultimately, it is up to Congress to evaluate all the evidence and reach its own conclusions about what happened," wrote Mr Panetta, a former member of Congress who was appointed to lead the CIA by US President Barack Obama.

Questions still remain about why Ms Pelosi did not raise objections to the extreme interrogation methods at the time they were revealed.

She has denounced the measures as torture and called for a formal investigation into who authorised what and when.

The move is opposed by Republicans, who warn that Democratic leaders could also be exposed by an investigation.

Cindy Sheehan: Impeach Pelosi for collaboration with Bush administration on torture

by Abdus-Sattar Ghazali

Peace activist, Cindy Sheehan says that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi collaborated with the Bush administration in condoning torture because Pelosi knew about water boarding torture since 2002. “Even before becoming Speaker of the House of Representative, she said that impeachment of Bush is out of question.” She should be impeached for knowing about torture which dehumanize us all, she added.

Washington Post reported last week that in September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democrat Rep. Jane Harman, 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.

Speaking at the fourth peace convention of the American Muslim Voice in Newark, CA, last Sunday, Sheehan reiterated that she will be running for Congress against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for the congressional seat representing San Francisco.

On August 9, Cindy Sheehan announced that in 2008 she will run as an independent candidate against Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). “I dedicate my candidacy to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan,” Sheehan said. Sheehan later appeared on CNN to explain that she was running because “they’re not making the administration change course in Iraq. They give him more money … to wage the war. They’re not holding him accountable.”

In April 2004, Sheehan’s son was killed in Iraq. Sheehan said that we are occupying Iraq, we were not invited by them. “This occupation of Arab-Muslim land shows how racist we really are,” she said. “If we can justify it by saying it’s OK to kill a million Iraqis, but at least my family is safe. … No, that is not OK!”

Events, coalition building and groups like the American Muslim Voice are very important to Sheehan, she said, because they allow her “to tear down the boundaries whether they are real or fake that prevent us from having true and authentic relationships with each other.”

Other speakers at the convention included Brandon Mayfield, an Oregon lawyer, who received an apology and restitution from the federal government after being held in jail for weeks spoke about racial and religious profiling after Sept. 11.

Brandon Mayfield, spoke about his quest for justice, not only for himself, but for all of us through his lawsuit against the government, demanding that the PATRIOT Act be declared unconstitutional.

The Mayfield case has been an embarrassment for the federal government. Last year, the Justice Department’s internal watchdog faulted the FBI for sloppy work in mistakenly linking Mayfield to the Madrid bombings. That report said federal prosecutors and FBI agents had made inaccurate and ambiguous statements to a federal judge to get arrest and criminal search warrants against Mayfield.

The U.S. government abused at least three powers during its investigation and arrest of Mayfield: (1) the expansion of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in the PATRIOT Act, (2) National Security Letters and (3) the material witness statute.

Mayfield v. United States case has profound implications for civil liberties, executive power, the Patriot Act. Consequently, on Sept. 26, U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken in Portland, Oregon ruled that using the act to authorize secret searches and wiretapping to gather criminal evidence – instead of intelligence gathering – violates the constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. “For over 200 years, this nation has adhered to the rule of law – with unparalleled success. A shift to a nation based on extra-constitutional authority is prohibited, as well as ill-advised,” Aiken wrote.

Welcoming Judge Aikin’s decision, Elden Rosenthal said: “Judge Aiken, in striking down the challenged provisions of the Patriot Act, has upheld both the tradition of judicial independence, and our nation’s most cherished principle of the right to be secure in one’s own home. We are relieved that the Bill of Rights can be honored and preserved even in times of perceived crisis.”

INTERROGATION: Nancy Pelosi knew about waterboarding

May 7, 2009

DEMOCRAT NANCY PELOSI KNEW FROM THE BEGINNING ABOUT WATERBOARDING:
According to a CIA document compiled by the Director of National Intelligence summarizing briefings to Congress on the use of enhanced interrogation techniques on terrorist detainees, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca) knew from the very beginning that those techniques — including waterboarding — were being used on September 4, 2002.

“Briefing on EITs including use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah, background on authorities, and a description of the particular EITs that had been employed.”

This directly contradicts Pelosi’s story, that “we were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used.”

*ABC News: Intelligence Report: Pelosi Briefed on Use of Interrogation Tactics in Sept. ’02:
“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was briefed on the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on terrorist suspect Abu Zubaydah in September 2002″
*2002 DNI report: Shameless liar Pelosi was briefed on Zubaydah’s waterboarding:
“First was this 2007 WaPo report on Pelosi being given a virtual tour of a CIA “black site” at which waterboarding would be used, then came Porter Goss’s op-ed last week reminding her that he got the same briefings she got and he knew exactly what was going on…”
*Pelosi Caught In Bald-Faced Lie– Report Shows She Was Briefed on “Use” of Waterboarding Back in 2002
*What Nan knew

This List Contradicts Pelosi’s Lie: This is the list of member briefings (PDF) an enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs). The very first briefing listed is 9/4/02 with Goss & Pelosi and the description listed is: Pelosi was briefed Pelosi lied