Maybe, for instance, the speaker doesn't remember that in September 2002, as ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, she was one of four members of Congress who were briefed by the CIA about the interrogation methods the agency was using on leading detainees. "For more than an hour," the Washington Post reported in 2007, "the bipartisan group . . . was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.
"Among the techniques described," the story continued, "was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder."
Can it be that it was all so simple then? Or has time re-written every line? If we had the chance to do it all again, tell me, would we? could we?
Sadly, those leaders who were once for it are now against it, and our reporters don't seem particularly interested in noting this evolution in thinking. What's too painful to rememberwe simply choose to forget, it seems.
The memories are getting misty, aren't they?
