A Disgrace To Her Office

It is probably safe to say that the CIA would be unlikely to brief members of the Select Committee On Intelligence about things they did not intend to do. So, Nancy Pelosi needs to spend the next few days trying to remember what she was told and when it was told to her. The official CIA memos with their accompanying time lines will doubtless prove useful to her as well as the rest of us. When they were briefed both John McCain and Jane Harman expressed their objections to enhanced interrogation techniques. Nancy Pelosi, however, seems to have used her time on the Intelligence Committee as an opportunity to catch up on some sleep. In the meantime, her four different versions of what she was told about enhanced interrogations stretches our credulity tighter than the skin on her face and anyone who has seen her on television recently will realise just how tightly that skin is really stretched. Perhaps if she was subjected to some enhanced interrogation herself it might jog her recollection of events. Her memory was not so poor, however, as to be able to accuse the CIA of misleading the Congress of the United States. This was vicious, extremely unwise, and also dangerous. Surprisingly, the uninspiring and woebegone Leon Panetta sprang to the defense of the now demoralised agency he leads from behind and released memos contradicting Mrs. Pelosi's hysterical and unfounded accusations.

The issue is much more grave than how Nancy Pelosi's, selective memory, botox injections, and extensive plastic surgery, permit her to lie to us with a straight face. Her shrill posturing comes on the heels of an administration that has shown a disturbing and capricious willingness to release classified information except, of course, the information that would show how enhanced interrogations actually provided actionable intelligence. This, combined with Mrs. Pelosi's statements, reveals an attempt by the administration to discredit President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, and former high government officials who swiftly acted to protect our national security interests immediately after 9/11. It is part of a continuous program to make the Obama presidency look successful by trying to make the Bush presidency look like an unmitigated failure. This program, which now seems to be the only one ever likely to make the Obama presidency look successful, has assumed a greater urgency since former Vice-President Cheney started to speak out about how Obama's policies on national security have made us much less secure and therefore more vulnerable to attack.

If the Democrats have any integrity at all they will put a stop, at once, to the Obama administration playing partisan politics with the safety of the nation and they will pole-ax Nancy Pelosi before she costs not only the lives of some of our intelligence agents but also the last, few, meagre, strands of credibility the Democrats have left when it comes to protecting our national security.