The Pelosi predicament

Rich Lowry:

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For Pelosi's account to be accurate, the CIA must have engaged in one of the most baroque and ineffectual conspiracies in the history of Washington. Remember: Pelosi claims that the CIA lied to her in a September 2002 classified briefing and told her that it hadn't waterboarded high-level al-Qaeda detainee Abu Zubaydah. To support her version, Pelosi needs to stack implausibility on top of implausibility in a precarious Jenga tower of self-justification.

The CIA must have convinced Porter Goss, the Republican congressman (and subsequent CIA director) who was present at the 2002 briefing, to lie and pronounce himself "slack-jawed" at Pelosi's account. It must have forged the "contemporaneous records" CIA director Leon Panetta, an Obama nominee, has cited that show Pelosi was told of the waterboarding. It must have either pulled the wool over Panetta's eyes or enlisted his active engagement in a monstrous machinery of deception.

Even Oliver Stone wouldn't touch this screenplay. And why would the CIA have lied to Pelosi in 2002? Even in her telling, the briefers informed her that the enhanced interrogation techniques had been found to be legal. So there was no wrongdoing to cover up. And even by Pelosi's account, the CIA told one of her aides in a February 2003 briefing that it had used waterboarding, and the aide passed it along to her. It's pointless to lie to the principal when a few months later you are going to funnel the information to her through a subordinate. In short, Pelosi has uncorked Washington's least believable and most internally inconsistent denial since Bill Clinton wagged his finger over "that woman."

Pelosi's motivation for putting her reputation - and perhaps her speakership - on the line is more subtle than Clinton's. She is sacrificing her credibility on the altar of moral vanity and rhetorical excess. She is trapped under the terrible freight of the word "torture," the Left's obligatory swearword for the Bush interrogation program. Torture is a war crime, and anyone complicit in it is a war criminal. It admits of no wiggle room. For Pelosi to acknowledge she knew of torture as far back as 2002 and did nothing to stop it is to condemn herself as an unindicted co-conspirator in George W. Bush's crimes. Better to obfuscate and dodge, and remain adamant about a "truth commission," even when she can't tell the truth herself.

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Obama can paper over this logical inconsistency with smooth and well-chosen words. Nancy Pelosi is impaling herself on it.

You would think that someone who has risen to Speaker of the House would be better on her feet that Pelosi has demonstrated. Her logical inconsistencies would have been an embarrassment to a first year law student. She may have wound up making a mockery of her own attempts at a so called "truth commission" which the Democrats hope to use to attack Republicans rather than the enemy. That has been one of the real troubles of the Democrats ever since 9-11. They tend to see the Republicans as the enemy instead of the people trying to kill us.