NipTucky Tells A Whopper
I would not want to be on the CIA’s naughty list. I’ll answer VDH’s question: no, she doesn’t. Not much in the way of brains, either.
And btw, I’ve always liked Jane Harman. I regarded her as a worthy opponent. I didn’t agree with her, but she’s very intelligent, and, to the extent that I could sense these things, she presented a picture of what a woman from California with a rich husband could be if she had some intelligence, spine, and verbal ability. And who wasn’t overly fond of her plastic surgeon. She gives the impression of having scruples because she keeps losing out to her unscrupulous nemesis, Niptucky. Apparently my faith in her has some basis, as Eli Lake reports in the Washington Times:
Rep. Jane Harman, facing a likely primary challenge from the left flank of the Democratic Party, was one of the only lawmakers in 2003 to challenge the CIA’s program of harsh interrogations, according to a little-noticed letter to the CIA that was declassified last year.
The California Democrat’s position contrasts with that of a longtime colleague and rival, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Mrs. Pelosi has in the past two weeks said she was powerless to stop the interrogation program, which critics say included torture, and that she was never told that the program was actually being implemented.
Mrs. Harman, on the other hand, did voice some objections in 2003.
A Feb. 10, 2003, letter she sent to the CIA said that the interrogation program ‘raises profound policy questions and I am concerned about whether these have been as rigorously examined as the legal questions. I would like to know what kind of policy review took place and what questions were examined.’
Meanwhile, Nancy Pelosi refused to make her chair of the House Intelligence Committee, instead preferring Alcee Hastings, who was so bad he didn’t even make it out of the starting gate.’ So, rather than handing over the reins to someone competent, Nan selected Silevestre Reyes, who famously revealed that he didn’t know that al-Qaeda was a Sunni muslim group, while Hezbollah was an Iranian-backed Shi’ia group. [Ironically, Jeff Stein misspeaks himself while recounting his conversation with Reyes, saying that al-Qaeda was Shiite.]
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(Via Journal.)