Commentary by Chuck MacNab
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi got caught telling several different versions of her CIA briefings about what she now conveniently calls torture. Why was she caught between a rock and hard place on this subject? After all, isn’t it her fellow Democrat and ally, Barack Obama, who decided to release these CIA documents that put her in a position where she got snagged?
Allow us a moment of to hypothesize about Washington Politics. We recall the days of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Politicians learned early on in dealing with Mr. Hoover that, if they tried to step on his toes or get too “controlling,” he would arrange for something to come up that would change their minds. After a bit of this, the word got around not to challenge the FBI in areas where either their image or their functionality were concerned.
Now we have Mr. Obama’s appointed head of the CIA, several previous Directors and the Administration telling Congress and the media that they don’t believe it’s a good idea to prosecute previous administration officials about their decisions concerning the interrogation of terrorists. According to media reports, Ms Pelosi and some of her left wing pals in Congress want to continue, come hell or high water, along this highly destructive path. Indications are that this is directly at odds with the Administration’s wishes.
A careful observer can see between the lines that Ms Pelosi and her Bush hating, revenge driven, pals are trying to run White House policy as well as legislation in Congress. Their big majority and the egos they have to match seem to have them telling Mr. Obama what he should and should not do, on an almost daily basis. Neither the Congress nor the Administration have anything to fear from the Republicans, as they are leaderless, disorganized and were beaten into near insignificance by voters in the last election. So, Obama’s biggest in-house political problem became how to get Nancy & Company off the Administration’s back and keep her from trying to run their show.
Our guess, from what we see evolving, is that they had a little pow-wow in the boiler room at the White House and decided to use the CIA to get Ms Pelosi out of their hair. As we have previously observed, it may prove as dangerous to mess with the CIA under Panetta as it was with the FBI under Hoover. To prove our point, the CIA released some carefully selected documents and may release more that could continue to be damaging to Madame Speaker! Of course this continues to fan the firestorm in the media that Pelosi is having a most difficult time containing because it is obvious that she has been caught in a lie about an important issue. Obama’s lap dogs in the media are more than happy to have some Democrat meat on the table to chew on for a change. It is worth noting that Leon Panetta, Obama’s hand picked CIA Chief is making statements that directly contradict Ms. Pelosi’s statements, thus indicating that she is not telling the truth about her briefings and previous knowledge about waterboarding and other techniques.
The fat is in the fire, though, because it now looks as though she has raised the odds by indicating that she wants a full investigation of the facts, something the Republicans have been asking for since the issue began making headlines. As things are shaping up, though, we would refrain from calling it a falling out among thieves. If we were even close to being correct in this matter, we would have to raise our estimate of the White House’s tactical abilities to a slightly higher level!
Our guess is that BO and his advisors are sending her a strong message that they will dictate what policies will come out of the White House and they don’t want her pushing suggestions on them that invariably become demands! Not that whatever comes out of either the White House or Congress will be palatable to Republicans or good for the country but we believe this illustrates just how potent the White House can be, under any President, when it comes to holding its own with Congress. We are not fans of Obama’s policies but defending the Presidency against a pushy, far left and power mad Congressional leadership is at least one policy that would seem to be in the best interest of the people.
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