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Nancy Pelosi v CIA: Water-boarding

by Nauman Umair Khan | May 16, 2009 at 07:42 am

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Water-boarding, a torture technique, authorized by Bush administration for use over POWs is on the crossfire nowadays. Also, Speaker of the house, Nancy Pelosi, is the center of attention regarding this issue.

Nancy Pelosi seems to have a new story every day when it comes to the debate over torture. In fact, more focus is now on Pelosi than on the Bush administration, which authorized the use of waterboarding in the first place.

Statements from both the sides i.e. Nancy Pelosi and the CIA seem to contradict each other, the former accusing that she'd been misled by the latter whereas the latter is of the view that it's not in it's policies to misguide the United States Congress.

The Speaker of the House is now claiming that the CIA misled her during a September 2002 briefing by telling her waterboarding hadn’t been used yet on detainees. She says the CIA briefers gave her inaccurate and incomplete information when asked if they lied to her — Pelosi nodded her head ‘yes’.

That’s a pretty serious accusation. The CIA says: “It is not the policy of this agency to mislead the United States Congress.” A former senior intelligence official says it’s inconceivable that the CIA would not have talked about interrogation methods already being used.

Republicans, on the other hand, presume Pelosi's statements as merely intricating the issue and are of the view that Democrats knew all about water-boarding but didn't intervene.

Republicans insist that Pelosi and other Democrats knew waterboarding was being used all along, but said nothing. House Minority Leader John Boehner says Pelosi’s comments “continue to raise more questions than provide answers.”

Meanwhile Pelosi finally admitted she learned waterboarding was being used in 2003, but says she wasn’t personally briefed on it at the time.