It has, of course, been widely reported that Panetta smacked back hard against Pelosi's claim in that note he sent to CIA employees last week. But as Politico's Josh Gerstein pointed out yesterday, a close reading of Panetta's note shows clearly that he did not directly dispute Pelosi's allegations.
The crux of Gerstein's argument is that Panetta said: “It is not our policy or practice to mislead Congress.” That's a statement of current policy and intent, not a rebuttal of Pelosi's claims. And the part of Panetta's statement that does address what was said in briefings is too vague to be conclusive.
But the thing is that torture and Republicans is old news. A yawner. Torture and a Democrat, that's man bites dog -- so the media's going with this shiny new scandal. But even if Pelosi was briefed on waterboarding and did nothing about it, it doesn't change the fact that the Bush administration came up with it, the Bush administration authorized it, and the Bush administration had it done. If Pelosi's guilty of hypocrisy -- and, as we see, there's no evidence of that -- then that's probably all she's guilty of. The Bush administration is still guilty of a crime. If the CIA really did brief her on waterboarding, then she's pretty much just a formerly reluctant witness. It doesn't get Bush and Cheney off.
For Bush apologists, the idea isn't to establish the previous administration's innocence -- that train has left the station. The idea is to pull Pelosi into the scandal. All those people pointing fingers at her are really just hiding behind her skirts. Republicans are out of power and they want to put the kibosh on torture probes; Pelosi's in power. Therefore, the thing to do is to try to force her into a position where she also wants to shut down investigations.
It's desperate and I doubt it'll work.
