Pelosi approved of waterboarding five years ago

So, while Congress acts as if it didn’t know about the destruction of certain torture tapes by the CIA, the CIA and Justice Department are starting their own “investigation” into the incident (Washington Examiner, Pamela Hess);

The Justice Department and the CIA’s internal watchdog announced Saturday a joint inquiry into the spy agency’s destruction of videotaped interrogations of two suspected terrorists as the latest scandal to rock U.S. intelligence gathered steam.

The review will determine whether a full investigation is warranted.

“I welcome this inquiry and the CIA will cooperate fully,” CIA Director Mike Hayden said in a statement. “I welcome it as an opportunity to address questions that have arisen over the destruction back in 2005 of videotapes.”

The House Intelligence Committee is launching its own inquiry next week. It will investigate not only why the tapes were destroyed and Congress was not notified, but also the interrogation methods that “if released, had the potential to do such grave damage to the United States of America,” said Chairman Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, on Saturday.

“This administration cannot be trusted to police itself,” Reyes said.

What they’re investigating, I don’t have a clue – it’s well-known by now that the Democrats were told about the impending destruction years before it happened. SO what’s to investigate?

Well, maybe they can start by investigating the Democrats who gave their tacit approval of waterboarding and other information extraction techniques back in 2002 (Washington Post, Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen);

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 (D-Calif.), 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.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said in an interview two months ago that he had informed congressional overseers of “all aspects of the detention and interrogation program.” (By Charles Dharapak — Associated Press)

“The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough,” said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

Funny how there’s so much dirt to dig up relating to Democrat hypocrisy while this administration is said to be untrustworthy.

Other bloggers;

Ed Morrissey: If Congress couldn’t find it objectionable when waterboarding was employed, they have little to complain about years afterward.

Mad as Hell: Can we just jack up the Capitol dome and drive a new Congress underneath? 

Category: Foreign Policy, Legal, Politics