As the public becomes more aware of waterboarding and other torturous acts used by our military and CIA, congressional Democrats are turning from support to opposition on the issue. The same was true of the war and occupation of Iraq. It has become increasingly clear to Americans that the only difference between these two parties is their public image. The biggest threats we’ve faced have not been from suspected terrorists, but from our own members of congress. Perhaps Kucinich can now add Pelosi to the top of the list of people begging to be kicked out of office and tried for war crimes. Maybe then, impeachment of Dick and Bush won’t be “off the table” anymore.

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), 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, said two officials present, 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, two U.S. officials said…

…With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

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h/t Make Them Accountable