Pelosi vindicated

And, uh, Cannon vindicated too. But don't take my word for it: Here's Marcy Wheeler quoting Time's piece "Pelosi's probably right"...

Porter Goss was careful to parse his words in the conditional future tense when talking about what, exactly, he and Pelosi were briefed on in September 2002

And Senator Richard Shelby also carefully avoided saying he'd been briefed on EITs that had already been used, saying only that he'd been told about the techniques.

Bob Graham, who was theoretically in the room with Shelby, says he has no recollection of the meeting at all – this from a man who famously details his every waking minute. Perhaps the most astonishing response has been from the CIA Director Leon Panetta, who basically said: Don't trust our records. Which begs the question: what other issues have they kept questionable records on?

I dunno. Oswald's 201 file?

By the way, Ron Elving's piece on Pelosi has to be the ultimate in smarm. Savor these words, for they achieve smarmgasm:

No one will ever mistake House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former Vice President Dick Cheney for soul mates, but the two have a lot in common.

Lately, they have in common the issue of torture, and the burden of things they knew about it, did about it or said about it...

Cheney defends the use of "extreme techniques" while refusing to call waterboarding torture. Pelosi insists she did not know about waterboarding despite claims to the contrary, and she accuses the CIA of lying to her and to Congress.

See? There's a moral equivalence there, when you think about it. Elving has convinced me that both parties are equally guilty of torture. Then again, perhaps the Dems bear an even greater burden of guilt. After all, Hillary more or less started the Iraq war all by herself (or so said the Kossacks throughout 2008).

I tried to measure Elving's piece with my trusty smarmometer, but it burst. Now I have to buy a new smarmometer.