Nancy Pelosi, Dogged by Waterboarding Lies, Visits Iraq to Expedite Precipitous Withdrawal

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi really has no business conducting foreign policy on behalf of the administration, much less her party's congressional majority. The San Francisco Democrat, who made a made a "surprise visit" to Iraq this weekend, has not one shred of credibility on decisions regarding the disposition of the American deployment. Indeed, she's been one of the leading congresssional Democrats who has literally worked for an American defeat in the conflict.

But as The Politico reports, Pelosi is in Iraq to expedite the Obama administration's policy mandating a precipitous withdrawal of U.S. troops from the theater:

During a brief Mother's Day visit to Iraq on Sunday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi reaffirmed her commitment to ensure that the U.S. military meets its June 30 deadline for withdrawing American troops from major cities in the country, according to a release from her office.

The report indicates that Pelosi talks a big game on veterans' benefits for returning troops, but the Speaker's bald-faced lies on her waterboarding briefings in 2002 demonstrate that she's all about gaining and holding political power, not protecting the lives of American soldiers in the field, or U.S. citizens here at home.

See Captain Ed's post for the details of the dereliction of high office by the Democrats' second-in-line to the presidency, "More Confirmation That Pelosi Lied":

Nancy Pelosi’s attempt to evade responsibility for her role in approving the use of waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques took another hit today in the Washington Post — and this time the fire comes from her side of the aisle. Pete Hoekstra upped the ante as well, demanding the release of precise minutes of Congressional briefings, and Leon Panetta has promised to make them available, at least to Capitol Hill ...

Pelosi tries but fails to latch onto Representative Jane Harmon's timeline for CIA briefings:

Pelosi’s attempt to weasel onto Harman’s objection fails when one looks at the briefing notes. Both Pelosi and Sheehy attended a briefing on September 4, 2002, five months before Harman attended her first briefing. That 9/02 briefing specifically covered EITs and their use on Abu Zubaydah. Harman raised her objection in 2003, not in 2002, as she had yet to attend one of the EIT briefings.

Captain Ed concludes:

Since Eric Holder and Barack Obama have opened the possibility of legal action against people in the loop on waterboarding and other techniques, we have seen competing leaks that give small slices of the overall picture. The act of releasing the OLC memos, while not a leak, was another politically selective act intended to give only a small part of the picture for the administration’s purposes. We need to see all of the documentation, with only the most sensitive information redacted, in order to know exactly what was done, who ordered it, who approved it, and who knew about it — and what we discovered as a result of it. Be sure to read the whole thing, especially Ed's discussion of block quotations indicati

See also, Astute Bloggers, "The Downside of Waterboarding Nancy Pelosi."