Comments on: Crazy Pete Hoekstra Is a Big Fat* Demogoging Liar

By: rjrnab

rjrnab — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:33:38 +0000

Somebody let Sibel Edmonds straighten us all out.

By: sailmaker

sailmaker — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:31:18 +0000

Actually, if the CIA told Pelosi that they didn’t torture, then they lied. Period. If Pelosi said the CIA lied, a day, a month, a year, or years later, then the CIA lied and Pelosi told the truth. Maybe she should have suspected the truth, that the CIA tortured, but that does not alter the fact that the CIA lied to our Congressional Reps in 2002, 2003, 2004. . . and so on.

How is a (then minority party) congressional rep supposed to figure out the truth? Listen to the word on the street? I don’t think that holds up before congress, let alone before any kind of judge. Instigate a ‘fact finding mission’ ? Um, Congressman Leo Ryan comes to mind (Jim Jones’ People’s Temple killed him). And one must bear in mind that the briefings by the CIA were not up for discussion or scrutiny – no talking to your aids, lawyers, whatever was allowed – hence we have Jello Jay writing sternly worded letters to his safe for posterity in lieu of a real investigation. What was Pelosi supposed to do?

By: cregan

cregan — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 04:58:52 +0000

As we all know, the innuendo, rumors what ever you want to call them, were true. And, I think a lot of people sensed they were true.

There was enough of that going on that I would think that any Rep. strongly opposed to waterboarding would or at least should, have raised hell about it. I really don’t know many people who did not strongly suspect it was happening.

Let’s just put it this way Hmmm, if you had the position of a Congressman at the time, would YOU have just sat around and did nothing and asked no questions?

To me, it is like one of those ‘born yesterday’ situations that Pelosi asks everyone to believe. Me, I’m not buying.

Yeah, the CIA might have played it fast and loose on some briefings, but Pelosi must think we are pretty stupid to believe she didn’t have strong enough and specific enough (maybe not nailed down tight, but enough) knowledge or sense of what was going on. Enough that someone who actually was objecting would have raised a lot of hell about it.

She got caught and is only trying to CYA. Which is totally understandable.

By: Hmmm

Hmmm — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 04:06:28 +0000

Rational because you heard innuendo on the street and that gave you feelings. Right.

By: cregan

cregan — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 04:04:54 +0000

By the way, I don’t disagree generally with your characterization of Pete.

By: cregan

cregan — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:54:43 +0000

To any rational person, it is not believable that Pelosi did not understand what the briefing meant. And, certainly, the general public pretty well knew not a long time after that that a few of the detainees were being waterboarded. I’m John Q Citizen and I certainly had no doubt it was happening at least by 2004 (meaning I was aware of it during a time period before 2004). I didn’t see documentation of it, but the word on the street was pretty strong, srong enough that I felt certain it was occuring. I don’t know how Pelosi can say that she didn’t know or strongly suspect it long before she became indignant about it and long before it became politically difficult to have known about it is not believable.

I certainly could be wrong. Maybe she raised hell about trying to confirm that the general knowledge out in the land in 2004 or earlier that this was happening was true and tried to stop it or raise public awareness that something she disagreed with was taking place. I am not aware of any such public stands or trouble making.

The rumors were certainly strong enough that a minority leader violently opposed to it would have checked it out thoroughly and not accepted a pat answer if given.

And, she SHOULD have been raising hell at least by 2004.. Not just asking questions.

The odd thing is that Democrats have amnesia about being told and the GOP members seem to remember it pretty well.

It was CYA all the way.

By: Funnydiva2002

Funnydiva2002 — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:22:39 +0000

Hey, EW
Great news: Rachel Maddow was all over this on her show. She even credited Spencer Ackerman on the “Al Qaida sympathisers in the IC” thing.

YAY!

I feel like those Windoze7 commercials “It was MY IDEA”

Oh and she reminded everyone that you can email the show–they read ‘em.

FWDiva

By: Mullic@

Mullic@ — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 01:36:14 +0000

Demagoguing. Please note the correct spelling.

By: Teddy Partridge

Teddy Partridge — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 00:29:50 +0000

And yet has he ever suffered any punishment for any of this idiocy? Only our country has, as oversight has no doubt suffered due to his making the “can’t trust Congress” argument over and over.

By: cinnamonape

cinnamonape — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:09:36 +0000

Hoekstra…the genius that decided to but up 10,000 Arabic-language documents captured in the Iraq War on an open website so that “Saddam’s evidence of WMD’s or al Qaida links can be discovered”.

Two documents, which had earlier been made available to both the US and the UN after the Gulf War I, actually detailed the construction of a nuclear weapon and the recipes for nerve gas. But the US had known about these for ten years and there was no evidence ever discovered that Saddam continued these programs.

But Hoekstra claiming that “Saddam might give plans of WMD’s to terrorists” actually enabled Arabic-speaking terrorists to obtain plans that Saddam never did!