There is more to the matter than Pathetic Pelosi's Prevarication Problem

http://tinyurl.com/r2lfye
Panetta's Pelosi SmackdownA truth too hot to handle.5/16 Getting rid of Pelosi as Speaker is a plus ( one shudders that she is only two removes from the Presidency ) but just a detail. Anyone who lies to the public, falsely accuses the CIA of lying and has a potential successor ( in Steny Hoyer ) who doesn't particularly like her anyway is on a banana peel on an icy surface inclining steeply to the pit. (How bright can she be, anyway, although arrogance has tripped up smarter people than she -- Bill Clinton, for instance ?)
The whole splenetic farrago about "torture" may unravel as closer scrutiny is applied and the damage to national security may be redressed somewhat:
http://tinyurl.com/qg9rqx
Critics Still Haven't Read the 'Torture' Memos
The CIA proposed the methods. The Justice Department gave its advice.By VICTORIA TOENSING May 16, 2009 Sen. Patrick Leahy wants an independent commission to investigate them. Rep. John Conyers wants the Obama Justice Department to prosecute them. Liberal lawyers want to disbar them, and the media maligns them.What did the Justice Department attorneys at George W. Bush's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) -- John Yoo and Jay Bybee -- do to garner such scorn? They analyzed a 1994 criminal statute prohibiting torture when the CIA asked for legal guidance on interrogation techniques for a high-level al Qaeda detainee (Abu Zubaydah)...The OLC lawyers, however, were not asked what treatment was legal to preserve a prosecution...(rather) what treatment was legal for a detainee who they were told had knowledge of future attacks on Americans.***i.e. not to obtain a "confession" but only to get information ( that could be falsified after the fact ).*** The 1994 law was passed pursuant...(to the )U.N.Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment....only relevant one to the CIA inquiry was threatening or inflicting "severe physical pain or suffering." What is "prolonged mental suffering"? The term appears nowhere else in the U.S. Code... ***Intent is important.***Just knowing a person could be injured from the interrogation method is not a violation under Supreme Court rulings interpreting "specific intent" in other criminal statutes....summer of 2002, the CIA outlined 10 interrogation methods that would be used only on Abu Zubaydah,...(a high-value target possessed of critical information)the lawyers were told that Zubaydah -- who was well-versed in American interrogation techniques, ..."displays no signs of willingness" to provide information and "has come to expect that no physical harm will be done to him." ...two options: continue questioning Zubaydah by a process that had not worked or escalate the interrogation techniques in compliance with U.S. law. They chose the latter.
...the legislative history of the 1994 torture statute was "scant."...no record of Rep. Jerrold Nadler -- who now calls for impeachment and a criminal investigation of the lawyers -- trying to make any act (e.g., waterboarding) illegal, or attempting to lessen the specific intent standard...One federal court distinguished between torture and acts that were "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment." So have international courts...The treaty had a specific provision stating that nothing, not even war, justifies torture. Congress removed that provision when drafting the 1994 law against torture, thereby permitting someone accused of violating the statute to invoke the long-established defense of necessity.
...memo to the CIA discussed 10 requested interrogation techniques and how each should be limited so as not to violate the statute....all the techniques, including waterboarding, were used on our military trainees, and that the CIA had conducted an "extensive inquiry" with experts and psychologists....now, safe in ivory towers eight years removed from 9/11, critics demand criminalization of the techniques and the prosecution or disbarment of the lawyers who advised the CIA. Contrary to...uninformed accusation in the New York Times that the lawyers "proposed using" the techniques, they did no such thing. They were asked to provide legal guidance on whether the CIA's proposed methods violated the law...Does he (someone "sure" that waterboarding is torture)know the Senate rejected a bill in 2006 to make waterboarding illegal? That fact alone negates criminalization of the act. ...There should be a rule that all persons proposing investigation, prosecution or disbarment must read the two memos and all underlying documents and then draft a dissenting analysis.
Ms. Toensing was chief counsel for the Senate Intelligence Committee and deputy assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration.