The CIA says Nancy Pelosi was briefed about its interrogation methods. Pelosi says they’re lying. Bob Graham, the former Senator with an 
anal retentive habit of tracking his movements to the minute in a spiral notebook, says they’re lying too: the CIA claims they briefed him on four occasions, but Graham’s notebook says different — and after he confronted them about this, they caved. There was only one briefing, and Graham says waterboarding was never mentioned. Jim Fallows:
Part of the payoff of reaching age 72 and having spent 38 years in public office, as Graham has, is that people have had a chance to judge your reputation. Graham has a general reputation for honesty….If he says he never got the briefing, he didn’t. And if the CIA or anyone acting on its behalf challenges him, they are stupid and incompetent as well as being untrustworthy. This doesn’t prove that the accounts of briefing Pelosi are also inaccurate. But it shifts the burden of proof.
Agreed. If the CIA could screw up — or lie, or whatever — that badly in Graham’s case, obviously they could have done it in Pelosi’s case too. DougJ has an optimistic view of what this all means:
To me, though, the big take away here is that the right is losing the torture debate. It started with “Dick Cheney was just keeping us safe from teh terrorists, don’t you libtards watch ‘24’?”. Then it became “mistakes were made, but it was a difficult time.” And now it’s “okay, maybe the whole thing was fucked up, but Pelosi knew about it so it’s her fault.” It’s just another variation on “Clinton did it too” and it’s essentially a defensive posture.
I’m not sure I believe this, but it’s a nice thought. Anybody else feel like the good guys are finally making some progress on the torture debate?
