Oh. My. God.

I know this has been well-covered. But I've been catching up (sick, again) and I just need to post the video anyway.

This is jaw-dropping: At around 5:00, Nancy Pelosi asserts that her top aide, whom she sent to the Feb. 2003 briefing on her behalf, only told her that a briefing had happened, but did not tell her a single nugget of information from the briefing itself.

That is her claim. Her aide came back and said, "Yes, as expected, there was a briefing." She claims she didn't then ask the follow-up, "Yeah, I know, what did they say?" or for some unfathomable reason he refused to tell her.

PELOSI: Have a nice briefing?

AIDE: Oh yeah, super. Very interesting.

PELOSI: What about?

AIDE: Torturing terrorist suspect Zubaydah.

PELOSI: ...

AIDE: ...

PELOSI: ...

AIDE: ...

PELOSI: I'm going shoe shopping after lunch. Come with?

She also claims that she didn't feel she had the responsibility or the time to write a letter or co-sign Harman's letter, or raise any objection at all, because she was too busy doing the real work of trying to stop torture, i.e., fighting partisan battles to take back Congress and then, much later, the Presidency.

There may be some truth there, though Pelosi didn't intend to reveal it: The reason she didn't object is that EITs were then, as they still are, politically popular, and therefore any party which wanted to capture Congress or the Presidency had better appear "tough on terrorists" and not confirm the public's perception of them as weak and overly fussy about terrorists' comfort levels.

So really, basically, she's claiming what we all know to be true: She didn't object because she realized that would be politically damaging, were it leaked, and all she really cared about was winning elections.

Oh, and Joe Lieberman swats away the Pelosi Defense, asserting the CIA is candid with him.

posted by Ace at 02:19 PM

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