Phony attack on Speaker Pelosi should be confronted

There are times when attacks by the Republican attack machine have their basis in reality, when some Democrat did something (s)he should not have done and the attack dogs sense blood in the water and go after it like ravenous sharks. Well, I guess I can't complain too much when that happens because I've been urging Democrats for years to play hardball politics the same way, and lately we've been a lot better at it. When that happens then you can blame the attack dogs, but you also have to blame the idiot that got caught with his or her pants down (whether figuratively or literally).

But there are also times when the attacks have no basis in reality, and are contrived and patched together as an attempt to invent a scandal and go after someone just so they can paint something on that person no matter how phony the attack is.

And so it is today that I am posting in defense of Speaker Pelosi. I might add that I've known who Nancy Pelosi was and known the Speaker to be a defender of human rights for many years before others even heard of her. Many years ago I signed an online petition on behalf of a Chinese dissident. About a year or two after that I and about fifty or a hundred other people who did not know each other received a series of mysterious emails from someone named, 'runner' tied to the approaching tenth anniversary of Tianenmen Square. Pelosi was one of those, as her congressional email address stuck out like a sore thumb in the list of apparently unrelated emails. Someone finally figured out that what drew us together was that we had all signed the same petition. Needless to say since then I've known who Nancy Pelosi is and I'm proud to stand with her in support of human rights.

The right is jumping all over a story that says that the Speaker (then minority leader) was briefed on waterboarding in 2002 and again in 2003 and did not object to it.

That is false however.

To begin with, at the time of the 2002 briefing on interrogation tactics waterboarding had been used on one Al-Qaeda prisoner and Pelosi and others were told specifically that it HAD NOT AND WOULD NOT be used. That's not just Pelosi's recollection , as she pointed out in remarks made yesterday but also the recollection of former Florida Senator Bob Graham who was also at the meeting. As for the 2003 briefing Pelosi pointed out that she was not present to raise an objection when others were told that it had been used as a tactic. The record bears that out:

Despite Boehner's comments, CIA records show Pelosi attended only one briefing — the one in the fall of 2002 where she says she was told that waterboarding had not been used. A chart released by the CIA detailing its briefings for lawmakers is vague on what transpired at that session. It says Pelosi and the top Intelligence Committee Republican, then-Rep. Porter J. Goss of Florida, were given a "description of the particular (enhanced interrogation techniques) that had been employed," without further details.

Remember that she claims (as does at least one other person who was present at the briefing) that she was told that waterboarding was not used at all in 2002. If the Speaker can be faulted at all it might be for not attending every single briefing but the truth is that Congress is a very busy place (especially for its leaders) so missing a briefing is hardly unusual.

More to the point though is the implication that because the Speaker never raised an objection (even if she had been there to raise one) that means she supported or at least condoned the tactic. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nancy Pelosi has consistently demanded that our intelligence officers comply with universally accepted (and agreed to by treaty) standards on the treatment of prisoners. She has never, repeat never accepted, condoned or failed to speak out against waterboarding or any other form of torture when she was given an opportunity to do so.

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. Bending and twisting the facts or creating new ones are a desperate play by the right and it is important for those of us who want to see Congress get to the bottom of this to stand up now and defend the Speaker against these scurrilous attacks.

As I said at the outset, there are the attacks that seed themselves, by someone leaving a door open for the wolves. And then there are the attacks that are purely manufactured and this is one of those.

"Tea parties" turn ugly

I've been looking on the internet for 'tea party' coverage today, and the organized protest that appears to have been put together by the GOP doesn't seem to have nearly as much pop as, for example, the antiwar protests of a couple of years ago.

It started with FOX News blaring about 'hundreds of people in Boston.'

Yeah. A few hundred in one of the countries' major metropolitan areas. That was with great weather, free finger food and a chance get their face on TV. I think more people than that show up every night and pay to watch a double-A baseball game just about anyplace in the country. Remember that over two million people came to the Obama inauguration, on a very cold day when they had to stand in line for hours and not only was no food provided but there was a shortage of porta-potties.

However this has shown a lot of what the right wing and their following is really about.

On CNN (courtesy of blog for Arizona), reporter Susan Roesgen interviews a couple of people who appear to actually know as much as the typical 'idiot-on-the-street' that Jay Leno likes to interview when he goes walking. One guy keeps saying Obama is a fascist and apparently has no idea what that means. He just keeps repeating that Obama is a fascist.

Ignoring the fact that the crowd shots they've shown (if you could call it a 'crowd') are pretty much all white, two incidents really highlight what this is about.

1. They had one in Lafayette Park, across the street from the White House. Someone threw a box over the fence. Security had to clear Pennsylvania Avenue and call in the bomb squad who sent a robot to examine the box. Luckily it turned out only to be a box of tea but the threat was unequivocable.

2. Joe Wurzelbacher (also known as 'Joe the Plumber') in stretching his fifteen minutes of fame into what is getting to be really annoying hours and days and weeks, was hosting a rally and on Pajamas Media TV a protester asked him if he'd like to waterboard President Obama.

So in other words, it's not about taxes at all (especially since not only are the Bush tax cuts still in force but this year in the stimulus package the Obama administration gave them another tax cut that is already showing up in paychecks.) It's not even about spending and government programs (though that is the ultimate goal of many of the GOP operatives who have been organizing this-- they don't want national health care or any other new programs.) These two incidents make it very clear that the one thing that is tying many of these people together is raw hatred of the President.