It’s all part of a vast, nonpartisan conspiracy:
Poor Nancy Pelosi. For more than two years, our beloved House Speaker has been fighting for the public interest, toiling to restore “integrity and civility” to the Capitol’s lower chamber, and striving to shape the most ethical Congress in world history. And what is her reward for this selfless service? The cruel wrath of a vicious, widespread, nonpartisan conspiracy—designed to convince the American public that she is lying and playing politics with national security. This cabal is especially insidious because it involves so many disparate, and seemingly unrelated, players. Further still, its nefarious and remarkably prescient architects had the foresight to begin crafting the phony case against Pelosi years ago, fabricating evidence and coordinating lies as far back as 2002. These people must be exposed and thwarted to preserve Mme. Pelosi’s honor.
That’s just the beginning.
Rand, what do you think of the theory I have seen that this is a conspiracy from the White House people to take the Speaker down a peg?
Yes, the Speaker is unable to rub two brain cells together when accusing a spy agency of not telling the truth on the chance that they would not be keeping their own records. The whole reason for being of the CIA is to know what different people have said at different times and to bet one’s reputation on the CIA not being able to come up with their own records on this is mind boggling.
But maybe the WH knows this about the Speaker and used the levers of provocation to provoke the prevarication.
Before our local defenders of Truth to Justice and Protest is the American Way get going, let’s leave aside about whether this is pro or anti torture, pro or anti war on terrorists, pro or anti George Bush. I am talking simply pro or anti being totally stupid.
I mean look. The CIA had been through the Frank Church thing, and institutional memories are long enough that if they were going on a “torture binge”, they would tell key members of Congress about this, not to get “advice and consent” for you silly people, but to implicate Congress in the conspiracy as it were. You know, to compromise people, one of the oldest tools of spycraft.
Look, you liberals can split hairs about whether hearing from the CIA about the waterboard is the same thing as pouring the can of water over the wet towel. But to suggest that the CIA didn’t get Members of Congress to become morally involved in what they were doing by telling them what was happening in excruciating detail is living in some fairy tale parallel universe.
My main problem is that for the Speaker to think that she has something on the CIA at this point, or that having been briefed by the CIA on this she can turn around and yell bloody murder, to me means that the Speaker is a fundamentally unserious person.
Many liberals think that President George W Bush is a fundamentally unserious person, but look, his poppa was once CIA director and the thought that President Bush would attempt to “take on” the CIA in this fashion is the thought of someone who doesn’t think much. President Bush famously took his hits from the CIA and didn’t hit back, and there were reasons not to hit back, and that President Bush could fathom those reasons proves that his IQ is about 70 points above that of the Speaker.
Maybe that the Speaker is functioning at this level of intellectual impairment is of no consequence to the Republic as the Speaker is just a cheerleader of a majority legislative caucus and apart from that does not command anything.
I was going to make some comparison to developmentally disabled persons, but every such person in my acquaintence is honest, guile-less, and knows enough not to get into a no-win fight with the CIA.
Paul, that does sound like something that takes into account Obama’s one strength, which is political Machiavellianism.
I would say the purpose of this attack on the Speaker is to try and create, after the fact, some kind of defense for the indefensible. Now that it is time to really find out who authorized what and who told who what and when, the guilty parties are trying to smear their guilt around and all over those who have always been outspoken against what they are doing.