Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Opinion

John Aloysius Farrell

Bush Torture Witch-hunt Could Take Pelosi Down Too

May 01, 2009 04:09 PM ET | John Aloysius Farrell | Permanent Link | Print

By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

Do we really want to see the first woman speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives resign in disgrace as an enabler of torture?

That is a not-so-wild prediction of what may have to happen if the Left keeps pushing for show trials over U.S. interrogation methods after the 9-11 attacks.

It is undeniable that Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic leaders were briefed about the CIA's interrogation methods.

And conservatives are asking, fairly, whether the various proposals to stage Capital Hill hearings or independent commissions won't have to address the question of congressional complicity.

They should, and they will.

So, if you believe that former President Bush and former Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld and other high-ranking officials should face a public burning for their roles in this drama, how can you not include Pelosi as well?

You must.

I'm not an apologist for torture. As Tom Friedman pointed out the other day, more than a hundred individuals died in American custody in the war on terror. Very bad things were done in our name.

But President Obama is correct. We are still waging that war. The last thing we need is a circus that divides and distracts us.

And you know what? We are all complicit. To one degree or another, almost all of us went along.

Witch-hunting liberals, motivated by their hatred for Bush, would be wise to spend time thinking about the potential unintended consequences of their demands. There is only top-ranking official from the era, still in town, still wielding a gavel.

They may shoot at Bush, and hit Pelosi. 

Check out our political cartoons.

Tags: liberals | Nancy Pelosi | George W. Bush | torture

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Reader Comments

OBAMA AND HIS CRONIES

But if they were to come here we don't know what they will do us.

All part of the Obama Plan?

Lets face it, this is a Win-Win-Win-Win for Obama.

Our Favorite Jr Senator IS a GREAT politician which places him slightly below cockroaches. He releases these CIA memos while WE have "boots on the ground" in 2 war fronts ( catering to the ACLU ), he gets to continue attacking the former administration (and their party), he might get rid of Pelosi too

(she was hogging the media limelight) and he can claim bipartisan "transparency" while sitting upon his high "moral" thrown.

He never knew anything 'cause he was just a JR Senator.

BRILLIANT! Shame he doesn't work for US!

Hiroshima Gitmo

If we are going to go down the road of grandstanding about torture (there I said it) at Gitmo, I think we need to go back 64 years and talk about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Lots of people died in the bombing: lots of innocent people. It was done in during a time of war with an enemy who played by a different set of rules. It was done to save lives in the long run. Sound familiar? The difference is that a democratic President authorized it.

The Eisenhower administration did not make a case. We moved on. It was ugly. Innocents died.

If we really want to get information out of these belligerents, we should force them to live, work, and pay taxes in California. I guaranty they would "sing like canaries."

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John Aloysius Farrell is a contributing editor at U.S. News & World Report. An award-winning Washington reporter, he has written for The Boston Globe and The Denver Post and is the author of Tip O’Neill and the Democratic Century and an upcoming biography of the great American defense attorney, Clarence Darrow.

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