Posted on 05/13/2009 10:17:02 AM PDT by jazusamo
Sen. Lindsey Graham (S.C.), an influential Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has threatened to call House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) before the Senate investigation of abusive interrogation techniques used during the Bush administration.
“I don’t want to retry Nancy Pelosi, that’s not my goal but if you’re going to accuse these people in the Bush administration of being evil and committing a crime, then if she was told about [interrogation tactics] I want to know what she was told,” Graham said during a break in a hearing on Bush-era interrogation practices.
Graham spoke to reporters during a Judiciary subcommittee hearing entitled “What Went Wrong: Torture and the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush Administration.” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), the chairman of the Judiciary subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts, convened the hearing.
Liberals have pressed for Democrats to move forward on an inquiry on whether Bush officials violated domestic and international law by torturing terrorist suspects.
Democratic leaders have resisted the rush to investigate, however, amidst questions of whether Democratic leaders such as Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) were briefed and acquiesced to such techniques.
Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), another leading Republican on the issue of torture, has said that Pelosi should have objected to interrogation practices when briefed on them when she served as member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence.
Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a former member of the Intelligence Committee who sits on Judiciary, appeared briefly to remind colleagues that lawmakers have few options to discuss or oppose policies they learn of during classified intelligence briefings.
Durbin said that Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), the former chairman and vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, believed he had little recourse to oppose the Bush administration practice of conducting warrantless surveillance. Rockefeller authored a hand-written memo stating his opposition to the practice, but the note did not become public until much later.
Pelosi received a briefing on interrogation by CIA officials when she served as ranking Democrat on the Intelligence panel in 2002 but she has asserted that she was never told that waterboarding and other harsh practices were used, only that intelligence officials thought them legal.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, however, has since released information calling Pelosi’s assertion into question. A DNI chart released earlier this month asserting that Pelosi received a briefing in September of 2002 where she was given a description of interrogation methods used on a suspected terrorist prisoner.
Pelosi has claimed a different recollection of the briefing.
“Trying to understand what she was told is almost impossible, her story changes almost every day,” said Graham.
Whitehouse said Wednesday’s session was the first of what he hoped would be several Judiciary hearings on torture. Those other sessions have yet to be scheduled.
Because ... even tho he was re-elected in South Carolina in this last election ... he is “persona non grata” here. He comes to Sun City to make a speech and about two dozen people show up. He’s electorially “safe” but he is not liked. But the stupid sheeple here in S.C. had a conservative choice in the Primary and went for Graham anyway.
Graham as a member of the minority party may not be able to start an investigation.
What did she know, and when did she know it?
Hey, you can’t play nice w/ dems. Get to it and drag her hind end to thye party she started.
We Want Winners! You can’t win if you aren’t even in hte fight!
Wouldn’t Colin Powell also have known about it?
“I would rather keep Nancy right where she is...”
I’ve had essentially the same thoughts; but there has to be blood somewhere, and she’d be superlatively high profile. Gibbs, he’s the gift that keeps on giving....but press secy’s get axed all the time. Biden’s another one, but he’s not vulnerable. 0bama’s in office ‘til 2012 come hell or high water. (Funny, that aphorism never seemed so appropos, LOL) So on balance, I’d be enormously pleased if under the solar/bio-diesel powered bus, some aditional room could be found.
“Because ... even tho he was re-elected in South Carolina in this last election ... he is “persona non grata” here. He comes to Sun City to make a speech and about two dozen people show up. He’s electorially “safe” but he is not liked. But the stupid sheeple here in S.C. had a conservative choice in the Primary and went for Graham anyway.”
Thank you.
Oh goody..... a cat fight!! Hair will be pulled, nails will be broken!!
Maybe from one of them tea baggers?
Only way Lindsey had some balls was them bouncing off his chin.
probably not his own. possibly borrowed from Michele Bachman.
Go for it!....Subpoena the damn skank!....
That’s a great point I haven’t seen come up. With Powell’s record on letting the Bush administration hang in the wind for a couple years on the Plame/Libby thing he’d probably back the Dems. I don’t trust that guy at all, he’s a lib.
Wow. Think Pandsey’s just pitching a fit because Granny Nancy looks better in pumps than he does?
}:-)4
He wouldn’t dare do that to his “good friend on the other side of the aisle.”
LOL! That’s a strong possibility.
They do to themselves worse than any US soldier has ever done to them.
THE cartoons and photographs below are divided into four categories.
First, there is the murder of a moderate Muslim by Islamic Jihad in the West Bank city of Jenin. Such murders, which are commonplace, are rarely reported on in the Western media; indeed some prominent Western newspapers even go so far as to include the victims in statistical tallies of “Palestinians killed by Israel”.
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More at the link
That Powell has turned into such a disloyal snake is a real heartbreak. I would have bet my dogs he’d be the last person on Earth to stab his team in the back.
Like a lot of ass kissers ... he got a ‘manager’ pin for his uniform
Yeah. A while back, I had a “Conservatives with cojones” ping list.
It was a very low volume ping list.
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