'Hairy Legs' Pelosi Approved Waterboarding for Scuzzy Muzzy Terrorists

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,316256,00.html

Report: Top Members of Congress Were OK With Waterboarding in 2002

Sunday, December 09, 2007

WASHINGTON - Four top members of Congress, including now-House Speaker

Nancy Pelosi, got a close look at CIA overseas detention sites and

interrogation techniques in September 2002 and offered no challenge to their

legitimacy, according to a news article out Sunday.

On the contrary, at least two lawmakers involved in the briefing that day

questioned whether the CIA was pushing hard enough, even after hearing the

details of the now widely criticized technique known as waterboarding, two

U.S. officials told The Washington Post.

"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," one

official is quoted saying.

Click here to read The Washington Post article:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/08/AR2007120801664.html?hpid=topnews

A virtual tour of the sites given by the CIA was among 30 private briefings

with key legislative leaders during the 2002-2003 era when waterboarding was

used. At the time, only one objection - filed by then-House Intelligence

Committee Ranking Democrat Jane Harman - was made.

Waterboarding has since become the pariah of interrogation techniques. On

Friday, Attorney General Michael Mukasey agreed to launch an inquiry into

the 2005 destruction of tapes of CIA interrogators performing waterboarding

on high value detainees.

"Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what

the CIA was doing," Porter Goss, a former CIA director and congressman who

chaired the House intelligence panel at the time of the briefings, told The

Post. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but

encouragement."

Congressional officials have argued that the inability of the group to write

notes or consult legal experts because of the secrecy factor hurt lawmakers'

ability to challenge the practices being explained at the time.

An official who discussed the details noted that the briefings took place

while the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks were still fresh in lawmakers'

minds. "People were still in a panic. ... But there was no objecting, no

hand-wringing."

By 2005 when the issue of waterboarding, or simulated drowning, became

public, the CIA had already stopped the practice known to have been

performed on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who helped plan the Sept. 11 terrorist

attacks, and Abu Zubaydah, a senior Al Qaeda member.