It's obvious that in the wake of 9/11, the Dems were just about as reckless in abandoning our values for the sake of security as the Republicans.  As the fear of another attack subsided (for most people), the Dems talked better, and, with control of Congress, they've been able to act somewhat better.  We ought not to ignore, however, the paramount importance of the President's control over the Executive Branch and the strange and secret independence of the CIA since its founding (and probably before).

Now that Bush is a lame duck, the failures of the war are evident, the ineffectiveness of torture are evident, and we've either been lucky not to have been attacked or successful preventive measures have been kept secret from us, it's easier (and more politically advantageous) to come out more strongly for our values, but it's never too late (or wrong) to do so.  I trust the average voter to understand that the 2002 authorization for war wasn't given thinking that Bush would screw things up so badly.  I also trust the average voter to understand that giving secret, very restrictive briefings to a few minority Members of Congress in 2002 and 2003 about something the CIA claimed wasn't torture, doesn't mean that silence at the time makes the Dems equally guilty, though I think some guilt is inescapable.

It would be a completely different story if the CIA either admitted up front that it was committing torture, or even if the CIA had admitted up front that it was relying on absurd legal opinions that by definition the President cannot break the law.

For what it's worth, I've excerpted some of the end of the Post article which shines a little better light on the Dems.

Pelosi declined to comment directly on her reaction to the classified briefings. 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.

Harman, who replaced Pelosi as the committee's top Democrat in January 2003, disclosed Friday that she filed a classified letter to the CIA in February of that year as an official protest about the interrogation program. Harman said she had been prevented from publicly discussing the letter or the CIA's program because of strict rules of secrecy.

"When you serve on intelligence committee you sign a second oath -- one of secrecy," she said. "I was briefed, but the information was closely held to just the Gang of Four. I was not free to disclose anything."

Roberts declined to comment on his participation in the briefings. Rockefeller also declined to talk about the briefings, but the West Virginia Democrat's public statements show him leading the push in 2005 for expanded congressional oversight and an investigation of CIA interrogation practices. "I proposed without success, both in committee and on the Senate floor, that the committee undertake an investigation of the CIA's detention and interrogation activities," Rockefeller said in a statement Friday.

In a rare public statement last month that broached the subject of his classified objections, Feingold complained about administration claims of congressional support, saying that it was "not the case" that lawmakers briefed on the CIA's program "have approved it or consented to it."

torture?  If not, I'm not sure how there can be a more "positive light" on the Democrats than on the Republicans here.  True, it was right after 9/11, and people were scared, but still, this is very disappointing.

I share your disappointment that there aren't more brave and honorable elected Dems, but this is not news.  Moreover, the average voter, all the way through last season's episodes of 24, probably still isn't convinced that waterboarding is torture, or, sadly, that torture isn't sometimes justified (see Dershowitz and the ticking time bomb scenario).  The message the Dems need to convey going into next year's elections is simple; Bush and the Republicans broke the law and lied about it; we won't.  It's bad enough that the next President and the next Congress are going to have to waste a honeymoon period cleaning up the giant messes Bush and the Republicans left behind.  I don't see anything to be gained by agonizing in hindsight about what might have been, especially in a case like this where all Graham, Pelosi, Rockefeller, and Harman could have done is resign in protest.  If they had, all four probably would have been replaced by Republicans.  I don't think it's reasonable to expect them to violate their oaths of secrecy and risk prosecution.  We don't have to claim the Dem side of the ballot is full of heroes, just clearly better public servants.

See here for more:

Asked whether they think waterboarding is a form of torture, more than two-thirds of respondents, or 69 percent, said yes; 29 percent said no.

Asked whether they think the U.S. government should be allowed to use the procedure to try to get information from suspected terrorists, 58 percent said no; 40 percent said yes.

So that's what the average voter thinks.   The good news is that the majority say waterboarding is not acceptable. The bad news is that 40 percent say it is.  The really bad news is that some of our leaders aren't any better than those 40 percent.  

When Pelosi and the others were being disappointingly silent in 2002 and 2003, the average voter probably would have been o.k. with waterboarding.  As I said, I think even through last season's episodes of 24, about six months ago, you wouldn't have seen these numbers.  Credit has to go to brave whistleblowers, reporters, elected officials, and citizens for bringing us to this point, where, inarguably, we should have been all along.  I agree 40% is still way too high.  I think it will go down to 30%, or about even with Bush's approval numbers.  I think we'll reach that still sad natural resting point more quickly if we don't waste our time castigating our elected officials for not being braver than the average voter.

It's not about "being a moral leader," it's about upholding the law and the constitution.

Lowell, no one is arguing that torture is illegal.  This post is about the alleged revelation that Pelosi and others were briefed on waterboarding in 2002 and 2003 and didn't object at that time.  I don't even think that Bush and others who authorized waterboarding will ever be prosecuted.  I can't imagine even calls for prosecuting those who allegedly knew that waterboarding might be conducted by others being taken seriously.  I hope our country pledges to not only never torture, but also to launch an independent, perhaps even a U.N.-led, investigation of allegations of torture.  I think we'll more quickly get to that good place with a Democratic Congress and a Democratic President.  Based on what we know now, I think it's too soon to conclude that having Pelosi or any of those other briefed Democrats in the next Congress is a bad thing, let alone that they should be prosecuted.

to the Washington Post comments.  So far, they are overwhelmingly negative towards pretty much everyone...also despairing about our Democracy.

I'll take your word for it on the WaPo comment thread.  WaPo articles are bad enough; the comment threads are worse.  In fact, that's why I was motivated to stick up for Pelosi and the others when I saw your post this morning.  I see this forum as a safe haven for the pro-Dem crowd.  I totally agree with your absolutist position on torture.  I also agree that in this, and in so many other ways, the leading Dems, particularly in the pre-Fallujah period, acquiesced too much in Bush's wrongdoings.  I think they did this more because of electoral cowardice than because they agreed with Bush's views that waterboarding isn't torture, or that even if it is, the President can by decree re-define it as not torture.  The Dems paid a price in the 2002 and 2004 elections, anyway, and I think it taught them to be more confrontational and, coincidentally or not, more moral.  The 2006 election results showed the good that can come of such a posture.  Next year, I think we'll see even bigger Dem gains, including the White House.  Finally, I agree that the spin the WaPo put on the revelations about Pelosi and the others looks bad.  I'll be surprised if it pans out that way.  If it does, I'd be happy to go on the record for the Dems to purge themselves of members who not only hurt the party politically by diluting the case against the GOP but also hurt the party morally.  I sat out in 1984, and I voted for Nader in 2000.  I try to vote (or not) my conscience.

...torture violates every progressive principle and belief I have.  That trumps my loyalty to "team blue."

Let's say Pelosi and the Dems retain control of the House next year and even add some seats, including VA-11, which will be filled by Leslie Byrne.  Before Byrne is asked to cast her vote to re-elect Pelosi as Speaker, Pelosi admits, as the WaPo story alleges, in 2002 or 2003, she was briefed that the CIA planned to use waterboarding, but had not done so yet, and she admits that she did not object at that time.  Should Byrne vote to re-elect Pelosi as speaker?

to ask Leslie and the other candidates for the 11th CD.  (I say "candidates," btw, because I expect Connolly to announce shortly after his swearing in this Wednesday)

...obviously, there are "candidates" (plural) now, with Leslie Byrne and Doug Denneny.  Adding Connolly will make it three, and if Andy Hurst gets in it will be four.  Hey, I can count! :)

Gerald Posner, author of the 2003 book Why America Slept, has a post at Huffington Post that is worth a read.
 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...    

Posner makes clear that Zubaydeh had told a story that implicated 3 Saudi princes and the head of the Pakistani Air Force -- they were protecting Al Qaeda, and at least some of them knew that something big was going to happen on 9/11.  And they all wound up dead.  The Saudi Princes all died within a week -- the first of a blood clot during liposuction, the second in a one-car accident on his way to the funeral of the first, and the third "of thirst."  Huh?  And the Pakistani Air Force head was flying in a plane that mysteriously blew up a little while later.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Just what is our Congress, especially the Democrat's, doing to our valves and constitution? Yes, there are other reports that Democrats attended these briefings, but I thought it was Harman and Rockefellor

Just what kind of secret oath do these people take that sells their soul and our constitution down the drain. What kind of low life people do we elect to Congress that give secret oaths and then keep their mouths shut no matter that someone dies or is tortured.

It has always been said that History repeats itself. And the repeat we are seeing happened in our early years of Govenment. Going into the 21st century most of us believed our Government was approaching a new height of morality. BUT instead they have back tracted to the 18th and 19th century.

PERSONNALLY I GIVE NO ONE A BYE BECAUSE OF AN OATH OF SECRECY.  

proves what I didn't want to know. They'e all in this together. The war, trashing our civil libeerties and our constitution, putting wingnuts on the Supreme Court without a peep or a filibuster. Trashing our federal agencies like the FDA, the corruption of the dept. of Homeland Security.

But the most scarey is the impeachment off the table. Kind of a "let's make a deal" scenerio.

That is purely speculation; at least, I've not seen anything to verify that.  But on top of that, it sounds implausible.  Bush doesn't need to make a deal to prevent his impeachment.  In this case, Pelosi is just being a realist.  She could bring articles of impeachment to the floor and they would probably pass.  But the Senate does not have enough votes to remove him from office.  And the votes would fall along party lines and it would appear to be a partisan attack.  It would be pointless.  It would feed into the narrative Republicans have about Democrats being a do-nothing majority.

Still mulling this, but John Aravosis makes an interesting point:

It's also clear that had Pelosi raised any private objections during the meeting - remember, it took place in the first year after September 11 - Bush and the Republicans would have leaked that fact to the public (like they just did) and destroyed her career and marked her publicly as a traitor. No member of Congress, no American, could have spoken up about anything in the months after September 11 and survived. It's patently unfair to suggest that somehow because Pelosi didn't object then that she doesn't have the right to object now.

http://www.americablog.com/200...

However, I do agree with the commenter above about not trusting politicians.  The ones I trust I can count on one hand.

Maybe just maybe - she would be seen as a Patriot and as a leader unstead of a silent enabler.

Don't ya think - that maybe some people in leadership roles have got to be able to give up power to do the right thing?  Especially if it is the leaders that we are working for?

If this is true that Pelosi knew and was silent - then guess what - I will do everything in my power to have her unseated not only as "speaker" but also from congress.

Remember, the only named source for this article is Porter Goss, who is definitely not unbiased in his opinions.

also, I agree with Aravoisis: if Pelosi had raised any private objections during the meeting, a meeting that took place in the first year after September 11, Bush and the Republicans would have leaked that fact to the public and destroyed her career and marked her publicly as a traitor. No member of Congress, and in fact no American, could have spoken up about anything in the months after September 11 and not been subject to harrassment and charges, however silly in fact, of treason.

I mean seriously, Edwards was pro-war back then.  Remember?

We need always to suspend our credulity when reading stories by WaPo "access" journalists such as Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen. They, just like former NYT correspondent Judith Miller and current NYT correspondent Michael R. Gordon, have proved to be reliable "transmission belts" for the Bush White House.

Whenever reading their pieces in "Pravda on the Potomac," formerly known as "The Washington Post," one needs to ask: "So what is the key point that BushCo is trying to make here?" The thrust of today's story by Warrick and Eggen is to make the Democratic leadership appear to be feckless, weak, unprincipled, and thereby complicit in condoning the Bush Administration's approval of torture techniques on detainees.

Perhaps there is some reflection of reality even in such White House spoonfeeding, but we should probably reserve judgment until we find out more from those in a position to know, including key members of Congress.

I continue to scratch my head over an uncharacteristically rational editorial in the WaPo yesterday: "The Torture Tapes."

I wonder who wrote yesterday's editorial, for it does not resemble Fred Hiatt's reliably neoconderthal agitprop. Has Fred Hiatt suddenly grown a conscience and a little intellectual integrity?

Stay tuned. I fully expect the WaPo editorial staff to bow to White House guidance within a few days in order to muddy the waters on torture. The orchestrated effort will seek to cast equal blame on congressional Democrats for illegal acts--clear violations of the U.S. War Crimes Act and the U.S. Anti-torture Statute--that were conceived, approved, and executed by the Bush Administration.

Note also that the rising furor over the torture issue tends to deflect attention from the NIE on Iran's nuclear intentions, while planting seeds of doubt regarding the credibility of the intelligence community. But at this stage the White House may be losing its ability to control the message even in the normally compliant corporatist media. The NIE on Iran may have served as a catalyst for outrage and further leaks.

I'm talking to my wife about canceling the ol' Post subscription.  Save some trees while we're at it, too.

but like you and your wife, my wife and I have been talking for months about dropping our WaPo subscription because of the paper's increasingly neoconderthal editorial page and shameless BushCo transmission belt news stories. (We've already decided to drop Time Magazine after Joe Klein's recent Goebbelsian handling of the Democrats' attitudes toward amending the "Protect America
Act"--as brilliantly documented by Glenn Greenwald. That was the last straw.)

Yet there are just enough redeeming gems, such as Dana Priest's investigative series on Walter Reed, including her recent piece on the Army's treatment of Lt. Elizabeth Whiteside, to keep on on the WaPo's subscription list.

In general, it is useful to know what the Party wishes you to believe. It is a useful starting point, for it tells you one thing that is almost certainly not true. So we continue to read the WaPo's news coverage and try to peer, like Kremlinologists, between and behind the lines.

but sometimes it's nice to have a hard copy for the Metro or whatever.  Still, that paper is really pushing it/losing it these days.

essential pieces on Hillary Clinton's pantsuits -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/... -- and her showing of cleavage -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/...  ?

Oh, I know, no one.

Snark.  

I agree with FM that there's likely a lot of spoonfeeding to the Post.  But here's an additional thought that is not meant to detract from the torture/interrogation issue.  Yes, waterboarding is morally wrong, a sin there is no moral excuse because it is entirely a controlled, premeditated form of violence. But remember that this unnecessary, evil war has resulted in lots of deaths and uncounted serious injuries, not only among our troops but also among Iraqis.  At least we're trying to treat our soldiers' injuries.  Think about how many Iraqis will be walking around on wooden stumps for the rest of their lives, or with permanent brain damage, because of the war Bush and Cheney started.  At least Pelosi has been trying very hard to get us out of the overall morass.  

but after an encouraging start last winter and spring, she has fumbled, bumbled, and caved time after time. Having Steny Hoyer and a few dozen Bush Dogs to try to herd is no easy task. Neither is it any help to have the timid Harry Reid undermining her flank in the other chamber. But, basically, Pelosi has failed to change our national direction on much of anything.

But there are serious Democrats in both chambers, for example, Feingold, Whitehouse, and Webb (though I haven't forgotten his incomprehensible vote for the "Protect America Act") in the Senate. The House has remarkable talents like Jim Moran and Rush Holt (Ph.D. physicist from Princeton).

If this torture scandal ends up taking down Nancy Pelosi and the inept Jay Rockefeller, I can't help but think that the Democratic Party would actually be strengthened as a result--especially if someone could elbow aside Steny Hoyer, who has been a consistent proponent of the invasion and continuing occupation of Iraq.

I would just like to get additional clarification on your agreement with Mr. Aravosis.  It seems to me that what he is proposing is moral relativism.  The thrust of the argument being that since it was unpopular at the time to stay true to your moral convictions, abandoning them was okay or forgivable.  Does that accurately represent the argument you agree with?

...it was at least more understandable.  And even then, that's assuming the unnamed source that gave Pelosi's name is a reliable one.  After Scooter Libby and Judith Miller, I tend to be very skeptical of unnamed sources, since reporters seem to veryfy their actual identities very seldom, if at all.  Libby, you may remember, impersonated an unnamed congressional aide many times in newspaper stories.

I wasn't getting into the debate over whether or not this story is true.  And I agree with your skepticism about sources.

So, just another clarification: what is the implication of understandable?  Does that mean we should let those Democrats off the hook if the story is true?

But we should actually get more information before we just assume the worst.  In addition to my above-noted skepticism at unnamed sources, as someone pointed out a Political Animal, the article only says that the CIA told Congress about "enhanced interrogation," and my bet is they sanitized their descriptions of the techniques and definitely didn't highlight the fact that Amnesty International calls them torture.

And this is also a classic Bush technique.  Brief a small number of the opposition in a classified environment, barely describe what is actually going to be done, then use the meeting as an excuse to say "the Democrats knew and were cool with it," even though the democrats in the meeting are not allowed to tell anyone else, and the briefings all avoided descriptions of anything questionable.  Then, if alter on any Democrats start objecting when the meeting's actual purpose becomes clear, pull some shit like this and try to divide the Democrats.

Seriously, after the Obama hit piece, I'm amazed so many people are just assuming the worst and uncritically believeing the WaPo only days after blasting it warmly.

I appreciate the clarity, and I agree with your position of waiting until all relevant information is available for us to assess what indeed happened.  

Just to offer some thoughts as why some may have moved immediately to scold Pelosi, I thought of the Ladder of Inference.  The way it works, if you are unfamiliar, is you may have an experience with someone where they send you a short email response to a question you had.  Then you interpret that to be curt.  And then you might take that further up the Ladder of Inference to think that said person is a jerk.  And I think in some sense that Ladder of Inference could be at work here.  Some people might be recalling let downs that the Democratic Congress has visited on them.  They could just be taking that line of thinking further up the ladder, and filtering information to fit an inference is all a part of that model.  

The WaPo merely serves as BushCo's willing poodle.

And poodles don't get fed and rewarded if they pee on their corporatist masters' laps.

Dan Eggen did some pretty good reporting in reference to the U.S. Attorney's firings, so I suspect he has some good sources (note he was still outclassed by Marissa Talev at McClatchy and the team over at TPM Muckraker).  

Having said that, context here is important.  This week we've heard some incredibly damning news about the CIA and the Bush administration.  

I have no idea whether Pelosi was on a tour of one of the Eastern European black sites, or if she was, what she was actually shown and how the tour was presented to her.  I suspect, if there was a trip that it very well may have been of the "dog and pony" variety which we find in reference to the type of tours that politicians get in war zones.  e.g. the politician is shown a sanitized version of the reality -- which may quite likely have very little relation to what the reality is actually like.  Pelosi still needs to answer this article, but I am a little bit skeptical about the way that this story is being presented -- not to mention the choice of venue for the leak.  This could also be a little bit of internal bickering between Pelosi and Harman.  I just don't know.

I am more than a little curious why this story was leaked to Eggen and Warrick -- especially given all of the research that the Post's own Dana Priest has done in reference to CIA black site (she broke the original story in 2005).  Priest didn't even get a contributing writing credit -- even though it would have made more than a little sense to bring her on the story given her background.  More details needed.

It was Harman, not Pelosi.
Pelosi is just a good target now a days, so why not blame her..

I can imagine the consternation of Democratic Congresspeople in 2002, their knowledge that they had to either eat the crap of Bush and Co, or probably (undoubtedly) get thrown out of their jobs after being branded as traitors, soft on defense, , pinko, the whole magillah.  After the success of Gulf War 1, anyone who voted against it looked foolish, not because of the morality of their stance but because we won so easily--THAT made their stance wrong.

To go against Bush in 2002 was to invite job suicide.  The counry was solidly behind him, especially later, after the Powell speech.  We were going to war against an Iraq which hadn't advanced their war technology for 10 years and had abandoned  obtaining serious weaponry, as Ricks pointed out in "Fiasco," since Clinton lobbed missiles into their stores.  There is no doubt in my mind that all of Congress knew that an Iraq war would be easy pickings, enhancing the prestige of Bush.

When you see the fear of people to whistleblow in ordinary or somewhat better jobs, preferring to keep their mouths shut rather than face retribution, how can a congressperson work up the nerve to give up his Kingdom?  Especially in the face of having to be ridiculed (because the war would be a pushover) and, on top of that, losing the cache of having everyone you meet (with exceptions, of course) kiss your nether region.  You'd lose invitations to nightly parties, going on important overseas factfinding expeditions (Hermes, Dior, Prada), and lose the potential of great retirement pay with millions of bucks to come in if you stay and lobby when you step down.  If you don't think that's incentive enough to keep one's mouth shut, I don't know what is.  And don't forget the atmosphere of 2002.

But of course it's not right.  If Pelosi really saw what the Post said, of course it was wrong not to do SOMETHING.  But I wouldn't expect it.  No matter how much money a Congressperson has in the bank to keep from becoming homeless, they don't want to climb down from Mt. Olympus.  And despite the bull we hear about why they want "to devote my life to public service," I always take that with a grain of salt, while holding on to my wallet and pinching my nostrils.  I'm not Gomer Pyle.

As for the Post, I love it--well, 98% of it.  Not the editorials.  But Dana Priest, Dana Milbank, Kamen, and especially Walter Pincus, who writes with such lucidity, and others, the columns by Right and Left.  It's all worth reading daily, and for only 35 cents.  The same with the Times (N.Y.)   There's more than Judith Martin to that paper, and we should allow some leeway, even if we abhor a small portion of print in both papers, and no matter how important that small portion is.  At least we know what B.S. is and can skip it.

And finally, as for Democratic leadership and Pelosi and Reid, sure I'd like to see at least Reid replaced by someone who doesn't appear almost as gone as Byrd.  And Pelosi, I wish she had settled her differences with Harmon in a better manner.  But no matter how disgusted we do get, we have to remember that they are better than the Bushie Right.  They may not open their mouths to condemn what they supposedly heard about waterboarding/torture, but, BUT, if a Democrat had been President, not Bush, we would NOT even have had waterboarding as an issue, most probably.  And that's the DIFFERENCE between the Right and us!

Congress may be composed of an unruly band of pretty amoral characters, but in the end the public gets SOMETHING from Democrats; from the Right we get the end of the stick we don't want to touch.          

The sad thing is that it would be the American republic, among all the liberal western democracies, that would degenerate into such a moral morass.

I don't want to hear any excuses -- between Pelosi, Reid, Rockefeller, Harman, and who the hell knows however many more Democratic "leaders," people in authority in both parties knew what was going on. They couldn't "do" anything because they were sworn to secrecy? Bullshit. That's the biggest "missing the forest for the trees" argument I've ever heard. Show me the clause in the Constitution that says that the speech and debate of our representatives in Congress assembled can be censored or prohibited by the decrees of the Executive or by the rules or consent of the majority. In fact, the Constitution mandates the exact opposite -- see Article I, Section 6 of that quaint document.

No, they refused to act because they are cowards. They would have had to fight, they would have had to have given up their cushy committee assignments (or would have been booted from those spots by the tyrants led by DeLay and Hastert). No one ever said that doing the right thing is the same thing as doing the easy thing.

Reid, Rockefeller, Pelosi, Hoyer -- these people need to go. The establishment in this country has virtually abrograted our constitutional moors. This will not happen easily or quickly, but it is vital that every single person that didn't act when they should have be reprimanded for helping to bring this republic to its knees. The single biggest feature of this era politically has been the absolute and total lack of accountability for those that have done our country wrong. Until we decide that these people need to be held accountable, we will never recover what we have lost.