Latest Pelosi Lie About Waterboarding: I Knew About It, But Chose Not To Protest

Because she wanted to, uh, “respect” the proper channels for registering such dissent. So she’s gone from saying she was never briefed about waterboarding to saying she was briefed about it’s possible use as a future technique to, now, saying she knew it was happening but chose not to protest.
Following that? Dizzy yet?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi learned in early 2003 that the Bush administration was waterboarding terror detainees but didn’t protest directly out of respect for “appropriate” legislative channels, a confidant of the San Francisco Democrat said Monday…
…there’s no dispute that on Feb. 4, 2003 — five months after Pelosi’s September meeting — CIA officials briefed Pelosi aide Michael Sheehy and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), then the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, on the specific techniques that had been used on Zubaydah — including waterboarding.
Harman was so alarmed by what she had heard, she drafted a short letter to the CIA’s general counsel to express “profound” concerns with the tactic — going so far as to ask if waterboarding had been personally “approved by the president.”
According to the Pelosi confidant, Sheehy told Pelosi about the briefing — and later informed Pelosi, the newly elected minority leader, that Harman was drafting a protest letter. Pelosi told Sheehy to tell Harman that she agreed with the letter, the Pelosi insider said. But she did not ask to be listed as a signatory on the letter, the source said, and there is no reference to her in it…
“She felt that the appropriate response was the letter from Harman, because Jane was the one who was briefed,” said the person. Pelosi “never got briefed on it personally, and when Harman got a ‘no response’ from the CIA, there was nothing more that could be done.”

What I find most interesting about all this is that Pelosi apparently wasn’t even going to these meetings herself. She was sending staffers. Now, I understand that being in Congress is a big job and know that these politicians can’t do everything themselves, but given the big bloody deal Pelosi and her fellow liberals have made about waterboarding…couldn’t she have made time to maybe show up in person?
Also, what credibility does the left have on this issue? Nancy Pelosi is among the most liberal Democrat members of Congress. She is the Speaker of the House, and has been among those screeching the loudest about waterboarding routinely. And now it turns out that she not only knew about what was going on (and subsequently lied repeatedly about knowing), but actually refused to protest it when given an opportunity to do so.
Clearly, Pelosi was never really against waterboarding. Clearly she embraced it with a sort of private pragmatism she is incapable of in public, recognizing that sometimes things like waterboarding need to be on the table as an option in order to keep hundreds or even thousands from dying.
Maybe it’s time for the left to admit that waterboarding isn’t really torture, but rather an extreme mean that should sometimes be authorized in order to achieve an extreme end. Because the ends don’t always justify the means, but sometimes they do.