Speaker Pelosi, did you really think you’d get away with this one? The Washington Post reported yesterday:
The Democrats have made fools of themselves–once again. Bloggers are having a field day, and agree that this is yet more evidence that the Democrats are only concerned about their image with their left-wing base. Bryan Preston expresses his rage at HotAir: “This story exposes the fact that the Democrats have been playing games on waterboarding for years now, publicly decrying it while privately raising no useful objection to it.” Captain Ed adds, “Only well after the practice had been abandoned did Congress raise objections to its use, and then never acknowledging their own acquiescence to it earlier. That lack of honesty allowed them to paint themselves as shocked, shocked! that waterboarding had been used as an interrogation technique.” And from Instapundit: “Lots of people who were talking tough back then subsequently changed their tunes — out of either a sudden flowering of scruples or an unprincipled desire to go after the Bush Administration with any weapon that came to hand.” Democrats are claiming that the world was different immediately after 9/11, so techniques used then may not be necessary now–yet they continue to wonder why. The answer is obvious to the conservative bloggers. More from Preston: “Has the actual threat of large-scale terrorism receded enough so that we can all go back to a 9-10 slumber and wash our collective hands of the tactics that we approved of in the clarifying months to years immediately after 9-11? I don’t think so, though the threat has been blunted by, you guessed it, tough action in Afghanistan and Iraq.” Paul Mirengoff concludes, “We haven’t been attacked in more than six years, quite possibly because of the information we obtained through waterboarding and other aggressive techniques. Thus, the partisan instinct, coupled with the joy of posturing, prevails.” And California Conservative raises a question that must be asked before November 2008: “The first instincts after 9/11 was to do whatever it took to ‘protect the American people.’ It wasn’t until groups like CAIR and the ACLU took exception that Democrats objected. What does that tell you about Democrats’ ability to prevent terrorist attacks?” We have to wonder.
