Let's agree that Speaker Pelosi is in a state of denial regarding whether and how she was briefed on enhanced interrogation techniques, including a tempered version of waterboarding applied to 3 prominent terrorist detainees. In the aftermath of 9/11, Pelosi joined the rest of Congressional Democrats in a rare bipartisan bulwark against radical Islamic terrorism. Perhaps it was all a political show, but I believe that Pelosi would have lost her post in the minority leadership (and would not be Speaker today) if she had been perceived at the time as soft on Al Qaeda and similar organizations. I think any patriot in our country would have told our CIA personnel, do whatever it takes to get usable information to stop attacks against the American homeland.
With memories of 9/11 fading, Speaker Pelosi is now more concerned about her street cred with the Angry Left. So she is desperately trying to find some nuanced explanation worthy of the polemical nitpicking and legalistic gymnastics John Kerry used to justify his vote against the $87B for Iraq-related expenses he claimed to have supported.
I guess you can't blame Madam Speaker for trying to explain why she didn't speak up publicly at the time about her reservations over possible mistreatment of 3 terrorists, whom offer no similar qualms or regrets for the premeditated murder of thousands of innocent people. Didn't Hillary Clinton offer an analogous credible excuse to explain her pro-Iraq liberation vote? After all, she didn't think that President Bush would actually use the authority for which she voted; that devious Bush Administration had duped her! (Never mind the fact that her own husband, the prior President, on October 31, 1998 signed into law the Iraq Liberation Act, which committed in principle to support removal of Saddam Hussein from power.)
Let me make myself very clear, Madam Speaker. There are marvelous things being done with virtual reality these days. I wish for every day for the remainder of their life on earth, before they meet up with Satan in the afterlife, these war criminals would experience first-hand the horror and tragedy they inflicted on our citizens: to face the choice between jumping off the roof to one's certain death or being burned alive; to smell burned or decomposing human flesh; to be buried alive; to see the faces or to hear the screams of their parents, their brothers and sisters or their own children among the victims; to hear the lonely cries of widows and widowers, children whom never knew that fateful morning they would never see or hear from their parent again, to never have their parents cheer on their graduation, to be able to say in person on this Mother's Day how much they love her, or for their daddies to walk them down the aisle on their wedding day. As Neil Diamond might sing, a life "done too soon." I have not forgotten, and we must never forget.
