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Wednesday, April 22, 2009 | 4:27 p.m.
Harry Reid
WASHINGTON — Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid today declined to call for an independent commission to investigate the Bush administration’s interrogation tactics, preferring instead to let a Senate committee continue its own inquiry.
President Barack Obama opened the door this week to a possible bipartisan panel similar to the one that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks.
The push for such an inquiry has intensified in recent days after Obama’s release of previously classified Justice Department memos that outline harsh interrogation methods, including waterboarding that many consider torture.
Reid, however, would not follow suit.
Instead, Reid said the Senate Intelligence Committee, headed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, should finish its inquiry into the interrogations.
“I believe what we have to do is wait until the Intelligence Committee finishes its work,” Reid told the Las Vegas Sun.
Reid said Feinstein’s committee has subpoena power and can conduct closed hearings that he believes can produce results.
“The next step in my mind is to let her complete her work, because she can get to it a lot easier than anyone else,” Reid said. “That’s what we have to do.”
Several House and Senate committees have been investigating interrogation methods and other national security issues during the Bush administration’s response to the terrorist attacks.
The Senate Armed Services Committee this week also released a long-running inquiry into the military’s interrogation methods.
Feinstein’s committee announced last month it was launching a year-long review of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program.
Voices on the left that have long pushed for an inquiry into the Bush administrations national security policies.
Opponents, however, including Republican Sen. John Ensign, believe such a move would be “dangerous” for national security and set a poor precedent for future administrations. Many Republicans have been extremely critical of Obama’s release of the memos, saying they pose a security risk.
Reid’s position today runs fairly consistent with his previous comments on whether Congress should create a broad investigatory panel.
In December, Reid’s office told the Sun it was considering the best way to proceed on these issue.
But in an interview with Nevada reporters in March, Reid said he preferred to have the committees that oversee such issues continue their work.
Who is going to investigate Feinsein for helping FDIC start a $25 Billion Dollar program three days before the FDIC gave her husband a sweetheart multi million dollar contract to handle FDIC repo property?
This nest of self dealing crooks doesn't even care how it looks. They just march on. Where is the investigation of Chris Dodd's mortgage breaks and AIG donations?
harry Reid you should resign, your a disgrace.
People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.
Reid needs to be replaced.
Ensign needs to be replaced.
The people who decided torture was a good idea and ordered it, need to go to jail.
We, the people, need to elect a better government.
I give Reid some credit.
It has deferred not to drink the nutty kool-aid so far.
Reid said the Senate Intelligence Committee, headed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, should finish its inquiry into the interrogations.
Since Obama re;eased the reports what is there to study?
When Sen. Dianne Feinstein is done Harry Reid will open another inqesition.
It will never end and we know already what the did.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seized on an opportunity on 4-22-2009, to take a sarcastic shot at Dick Cheney in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, telling lawmakers that "It won't surprise you that I don't consider him a particularly reliable source,"
Clinton was calling Cheney a liar about whether there was intelligence obtained.
Obama and Eric Holder took the coward's way out in refusing to use selective prosecutorial discretion to prosecute the alleged torture interrogators.
Instead the President and the Attorney General are holding a Public Trial in the newspapers without a jury.
On 4-20-2009, Obama said "With respect to those who formulate those legal decisions, I would say that that is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws....And I don't want to prejudge that. ... There are a host of very complicated issues involved there."
"Those who formulated" would include Nancy Pelosi whose approval was required.
A public hanging by newspaper trial is more "torture" than interrogation by caterpillar (bug-in-a-box).
We don't really need another 'do nothing', 'pass the buck' committee. What we need are Indictments!
Iraqi "freedom fighters" torture by electric drills,beatings ,burnings and public beheading...Libbies ..thems good folks!
Americans get information fron "freedom fighters" by methods that leave these poor people whole, *unscarred and alive... Libbies .. Oh them poor poor "freedom fighters" .. jail them Americans!
* I know I know mentally scarred .. but .. how do you mentally scar a person who was torturing people with electric drills ,beatings , burning and public beheadings?
Obama needs to be impeached using the insane logic of the left.
He is ordering many times every month the deaths of people, including wives and children, living in an allied nation without giving them due process of law.
Also, he is holding people without giving them due process and any access to the US court system.
Where are the calls for impeachment from the crazed left?
OH...it is really just about politics and they are hypocrites.
What is clear is that the Bush administration lied to the American people time and time again.
They kept telling us, "The United States does not torture." That was a lie.
They kept telling us, "Enhanced interrogation has saved American lives." That was a lie.
"What clinches the falsity of Thiessen's claim, however (and that of the memo he cites, and that of an unnamed Central Intelligence Agency spokesman who today seconded Thessen's argument), is chronology. In a White House press briefing, Bush's counterterrorism chief, Frances Fragos Townsend, told reporters that the cell leader was arrested in February 2002, and "at that point, the other members of the cell" (later arrested) "believed that the West Coast plot has been canceled, was not going forward" [italics mine]. A subsequent fact sheet released by the Bush White House states, "In 2002, we broke up [italics mine] a plot by KSM to hijack an airplane and fly it into the tallest building on the West Coast." These two statements make clear that however far the plot to attack the Library Tower ever got--an unnamed senior FBI official would later tell the Los Angeles Times that Bush's characterization of it as a "disrupted plot" was "ludicrous"--that plot was foiled in 2002. But Sheikh Mohammed wasn't captured until March 2003."
"How could Sheikh Mohammed's water-boarded confession have prevented the Library Tower attack if the Bush administration "broke up" that attack during the previous year? It couldn't, of course."
This was a very bleak moment in U.S. history, and those making excuses for torture should be ashamed. Your justification of torturing our enemies justifies the torture of our own troops by our enemies.
Since 2002, Bush officals have briefing top Congressional leaders, including Democrats like Pelosi and Reid, about water boarding....what it is and when it was used.
Are Democrats and libs calling for their resignation?
Wait - now you are proposing that Congressional leaders expose top secret information? Are you INSANE, jfNance32?
The briefings went something like this: "We're waterboarding people, and you have no power to stop us! Neener neener!"
Tell me, genius, should Congressional leaders release top secret information? You know, the information that Dick Cheney kept telling us would put us in grave danger?
That's essentially what you are saying.
But I guess you have no problem with the Bush administration lying to the American people. What a surprise, jfNance32!
No big surprise here.....libs and Democrats being exposed as hypocrites.....it is politics as usual.
No wonder Reid wants to keep this on the lo-down.
Democrat Lib bizarro hypocrite World:
Libs say water boarding is torture even though many of our troops get water boarded during training.
Libs says that violates US law and the Geneva Convention.
Bush officals all the way back to 2002 often tell Congressional leaders, including many Democratic leaders like Reid and Pelosi, about the water boarding...what it is and how often used and the results.
So in lib bizarro world, the executive branch is telling the legislative branch that it is violating US law and Democratic leaders do nothing.
Libs punt on that one. No calls for resignations. I guess they only do that if you have an R next to your name.
Obama is holding non-US individuals in US custody without giving them any access to US courts for long periods of time. Libs punt on that one. Again, it deals with R vs D label.
Obama is ordering the deaths of supspected terrorists and their family many times a month. They are living in an allied country. They are given death sentences with any due process and any access to the US court system.
Libs punt again. Again it deals with R vs D label.
Libs are hypocrites to the nth degree. At least be consistant in your bizarro world.
I must have gotten my branches of government confused. Now Nance thinks the legislative branch needs to prosecute the executive branch.
Maybe Nance forgot about all those times the Bush administration blocked justice with the "state secrets" defense. Or how, until very, very recently, Dick Cheney kept telling us about how we would be less safe if we knew what was happening.
He's also giving a pass to Republican lawmakers like Senator Kit Bond, who flat-out lied to the American public when he said that we hadn't waterboarded anyone.
Finally, he's engaged in a he said, she said debate over who was told what. In such debate, he has no proof. Who was told about waterboarding and when? Nance can't tell you, can't give you specific dates or quotes. He can give you unnamed sources or since-discredited Bush appointees. I can give you the words of the people he claims were informed. It's foolhardy to believe either side without hard proof, but don't let that stop Nance from believing the convenient story with no actual evidence. In Nance's world, the Democrats are always the bad guys, the Republicans are heroes, right?
That's why he's trying to make excuses for the Bush administration's use of torture. Blame it on the Democrats.
Libs hypocrites punts...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...
Wow, you can use Google to find the 'he said' part of the argument. Now, the 'she said.'
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/23...
Where's your proof, jfNance32?
'Punting' is not responding. I responded. You, on the other hand, pasted a link that I've already referred to.
"He can give you unnamed sources or since-discredited Bush appointees."
That Bush appointee would be Porter Goss, who was the main thrust behind your argument.
Keep tryin', little guy!
When you have something other than a he said, she said squabble, get back to me.
First, they should release all the briefings and memos since they are playing this political game of just releasing some of the top secret memos.
"Yet long before "waterboarding" entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge. "
See the word multiple...
"With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter."
See the words Democrats and Republicans that were cited as sources.
"But a congressional source familiar with Pelosi's position on the matter said the California lawmaker did recall discussions about enhanced interrogation. 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. "
See the words congressional source.
Of course if it comes out with blaring bright red evidence that top Democrats like Pelosi knew about water boarding and did not nothing......the left will just ingore it because those have a big-o D next to their names.
Hypocrites indeed............
They are hypocrites for not saying anything about Obama detaining people with giving them access to US courts.
They are hypocrites for not complaining about Obama ordering the deaths of suspected terrorists and their wives and children who are living in an allied country and doing so without giving them due process.
Hypocrites....hypocrites....hypocrites
Maybe I wasn't clear enough.
You have no objective proof, Nance.
You have a he said, she said. Even worse? In this case your 'he said' was too much of a coward to give their own name. Your source didn't even go so far as to say that Pelosi had been told about waterboarding, specifically.
And you don't even cite your own source.
I guess this just goes to show that some people are extremely gullible and will believe anything, without a shred of proof.
Just so I'm clear: your defense of the Bush administration employing torture is that Democrats didn't speak out against torture?
You do realize that's not does not justify the Bush administration using torture, right? They could have issued a press release exclaiming "We love to torture! Screw international law!" That would not excuse such barbarism.
Funny how the Republicans justify anything by blaming it on the Democrats.
First, today Republican leader John Boehner admitted the techniques outlined in the memos were "torture techniques."
Republicans continue to repeat lies that "enhanced interrogation" techniques led to the Library Tower plot being foiled in , even though those techniques were not authorized until half a year AFTER it was foiled when the leader of the cell responsible for undertaking the plot had already been apprehended.
They say Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats knew what was happening. That's funny, because that knowledge would be classified. Those who were briefed were done under the understanding that any information was classified, and those involved could not, under penalty of law, discuss that with even their own legal council. Had they done so, they would have been subject to prosecution for treason... and been subject to the death penalty. I always knew the lunatic fringe republicans around here hated Nancy Pelosi, but to call for her execution? That's just absurd.
Congressional members briefed on these techniques did not approve these actions. They weren't given a vote to approve or stop torture. They were, unfortunately, bound to keep the Bush administration's secrets. The briefings were not forums. They weren't allowed to discuss or debate the techniques. They weren't invited to weigh in. They were being told it was being done, and were being told they were not allowed to tell anyone.
That also implies that the Republicans aren't just trying to throw blame around for the disgusting actions of their figureheads and lying. I'm not sold on that.
These people and their lackeys who comment here in support of the Bush administration, lack any moral compass. They champion the false results of heinous, inhuman behavior. Their morality is a convenient morality. They cast away their codes and standards of behavior at the first sign of distress. They are disturbed, and no excuses or amount of throwing blame can justify their breach of morality and human decency.
I don't say he said she said...The Washington Post is saying quoting all kind of sources.
If you have a problem with that then you should contact The Washington Post which is one of those lib newspapers you love. You probably are right. They just make up stuff and stick into their paper. I heard that lib newspapers do that all the time. They have no standards for sourcing. Whatever a Republican says or a Democrat says...they accept as gospel truth without double checking or getting other sources to back it up (LOL).
OMG.....the Washington Post must be a secret Republican organization control by Dick Cheney.
YOU MUST BURN IT TO THE GROUND!!!!
Goose stepping lefists get out your brooms and light them on fire. You got a newspaper to burn to the ground.