While the Pelosi sideshow plays out, here's two genuine bombshells.
First, from Lawrence Wilkerson in The Washington Note (also diaried by bob fertik):
...what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002--well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion--its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.
Second, from former NBC producer Robert Windrem in The Daily Beast:
*Two U.S. intelligence officers confirm that Vice President Cheney’s office suggested waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner, a former intelligence official for Saddam Hussein, who was suspected to have knowledge of a Saddam-al Qaeda connection.
*The former chief of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, in charge of interrogations, tells The Daily Beast that he considered the request reprehensible.
Now it's true that there's no good reason for Nancy Pelosi to be at the center of the debate on torture, but if that's the way it's going to be, even if it's that way because of self-inflicted wounds, maybe it's time to start asking her if she was aware that the Bush administration -- led by Dick Cheney -- was using torture to gather information to justify a war with Iraq that ultimately cost thousands of American lives without turning up a single WMD or link to 9/11.
Or maybe somebody should just ask the question of Dick Cheney. After all, he seems to be fairly accessible these days.