The fact that Pelosi (and her intelligence aide) and then-House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss and dozens of other members of Congress knew about the enhanced interrogation and said nothing, and did nothing to cut off the funding, tells us something very important.
Our jurisprudence has the "reasonable man" standard. A jury is asked to consider what a reasonable person would do under certain urgent circumstances.
On the morality of waterboarding and other "torture," Pelosi and other senior and expert members of Congress represented their colleagues, and indeed the entire American people, in rendering the reasonable person verdict. What did they do? They gave tacit approval. In fact, according to Goss, they offered encouragement. Given the circumstances, they clearly deemed the interrogations warranted.
Moreover, the circle of approval was wider than that. As Slate's Jacob Weisberg points out, those favoring harsh interrogation at the time included Alan Dershowitz, Mark Bowden and Newsweek's Jonathan Alter. In November 2001, Alter suggested we consider "transferring some suspects to our less squeamish allies" (i.e., those that torture). And, as Weisberg notes, these were just the liberals.
So harsh interrogation methods were acceptable to some who now say waterboarding is a crime. If waterboarding was torture, why did all these people say nothing when they learned of it? Don't seriously tell me that you believe it is a justification to now say that the people doing the so-called torture told the Congress members and staff that it was against the rules to not talk about it--and obeying the torturers' rules trumped exposing human rights violations of those same people! I thought we established long ago that just following orders is no defense. Either those leaders and writers screaming now are guilty of supporting torture or they are wrong to claim what we did was torture.
No, these people who now scream about torture thought what we did was acceptable.
Look, I don't think we should torture except in extreme conditions. And that is a proper debate. So too is the debate over what is torture and what is harsh or even just unpleasant. I don't think waterboarding is torture, as unpleasant and scary as it is. Looking at a nude photos of Jeanine Garafalo would be unpleasant and scary to me (who am I kidding, just listening to her is that)--but who would consider that torture? And it is even a proper debate to decide what we are willing to do or not do to get information, whether those methods are torture, harsh, or unpleasant. We don't need to decide waterboarding--or any other method--is actually torture to outlaw it.
If you want to say that what was once acceptable under the circumstances of the time following 9/11 is now unacceptable, that is a reasonable decision to make if you want. But realize that the risk of another terrorist attack goes up if we do so. You may think that another crater in an American city is a small price to pay to uphold that view, but it is a risk. And yes, even that is a legitimate point of debate.
But focusing our debate on defining waterboarding as torture is for one purpose only, to punish the former administration for doing what was once viewed as acceptable. The Left, dragging elements of Congressional leadership along, is on a witch hunt to prosecute Bush administration officials with no interest in any debate over how best to protect us from our enemies and uphold our standards, and how to resolve those two objectives in cases where they conflict.
