Okay, Now I Get It

Like so many others, I have been bothered, bewitched and bewildered by the behavior of the Democratic ‘leadership’ over the past few years.  At first the excuse that they were being steamrolled by the majority Republicans provided them some cover, but it gradually became evident that something more sinister was at play.  

I speculated that Bushco had turned the NSA on the Dems and was using the info obtained to blackmail our guys.  I still think it’s likely that they have done a little or a lot of that sort of thing, but it may turn out that they didn’t need to bother.  It may be that the Dems jumped gleefully into a trap by endorsing the Bushco policy of torture – possibly because they didn’t want to appear to be not supporting the troops (or something equally idiotic).

“So grotesque and preposterous are the principle characters in this galaxy of clowns and crooks that none but a thrice double ass could have taken them for rulers.”

Officer in the Allied Control Commission, Nuremberg Trials, 1946.

Source

How could they have been so morally bereft as to think this would not come back to haunt them?  Have they no moral judgment at all?

Pelosi and Dem Leaders Complicit in Bush’s Torture Policy?

Have Congressional Dems known of Bush’s waterboarding and rendition policies since 2002?

What did Congressional Democrats know, and when did they know it?

Is it possible that many Democratic leaders have been informed by the Bush administration over the years about its doubtfully legal activities?

If so, are they therefore complicit in the Bush administration’s lawlessness?

It’s just been disclosed that Representative Jane Harmon and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were briefed by the Bush administration on the use of waterboarding. Harmon objected but Pelosi did not — and when she became speaker of the house, she rejected Harmon for chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

The Administration has frequently responded to charges of Executive usurpation by saying the Congressional leaders were fully briefed on such questionable practices as NSA surveillance, extraordinary rendition, and enhanced interrogation techniques.

And evidence is mounting that they were. According to the Washington Post, since 2002 leading Democrats lawmakers received “about 30 private CIA briefings, some of which included descriptions of waterboarding, overseas rendition sites, “and other harsh interrogation methods.” Officials present at some of the meetings, told the Post that the reaction from legislators “was not just approval, but encouragement.”

If so, it would answer one of the great mysteries of 2007. The Democrats, once in control of Congress, had the courage to pursue cutoff of funds for the Iraq war, even though the Bush administration was happy to take advantage of their effort by characterizing it as failure to support the troops. The obvious companion strategy would have been to conduct intensive investigations to show that the entire Bush project has been to subvert law and Constitutional government in the interests of aggrandizing power nationally and internationally.

But Congressional Democrats have systematically avoided serious investigation of Bush administration lawlessness, and so far have retreated from using the power of contempt when the Bush officials have refused to respond to subpoenas.

(continued at AlterNet)

That explains a lot of things.

All of this bizarre behavior, the constant caving to Bush, the attacks on progressives like when Pelosi sneered at our activism.

“Look,” she (Pelosi) said, the chicken breast on her plate untouched. “I had, for five months, people sitting outside my home, going into my garden in San Francisco, angering neighbors, hanging their clothes from trees, building all kinds of things — Buddhas? I don’t know what they were — couches, sofas, chairs, permanent living facilities on my front sidewalk.”

Unsmilingly, she continued: “If they were poor and they were sleeping on my sidewalk, they would be arrested for loitering, but because they have ‘Impeach Bush’ across their chest, it’s the First Amendment.”

Though opposed to the war herself, Pelosi has for months been a target of an antiwar movement that believes she hasn’t done enough. Cindy Sheehan has announced a symbolic challenge to Pelosi in California’s 8th Congressional District. And the speaker is seething.

“We have to make responsible decisions in the Congress that are not driven by the dissatisfaction of anybody who wants the war to end tomorrow,” Pelosi told the gathering at the Sofitel, arranged by the Christian Science Monitor. Though crediting activists for their “passion,” Pelosi called it “a waste of time” for them to target Democrats. “They are advocates,” she said. “We are leaders.”

Digby

They’re scared.  They know we’ll eventually get around to coming for them too…once we mop up the republican slime.  They are acting guilty (IMHO).  No fucking wonder why impeachment is off the table.  The one’s who took it off the table deserve it as much as Bush and Cheney do.  They are in on the dirtiest little non-secret of them all…American torture.

I think maybe they sense that by supporting barbarism in the twenty-first century they are standing on the wrong side of history.  I would like to think they have at least that much human decency in them.

Or maybe they’ve just come to realize that torture is a war crime.  Come to think of it, that’s probably more likely.  These ‘leaders’ have been less than inspiring to be extremely charitable about it all.

“The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated.”

from Justice Jackson’s Opening Statement for the Prosecution, Nuremberg, 1945

Just know this, Democrat or Republican, if you are a war criminal, we are coming after you.

There will be justice in America.