Given all the media coverage on Pelosi and the CIA briefings it comes as no surprise that there are other big news stories going on behind the scenes. This is typical of this administration and the liberal super majority ~ they create a crisis or a smoke screen and work fast behind the scenes to pass an agenda item without the full knowledge of the electorate.
Several items of interest have gone on over the last week or so. Although I have not been able to post as much as I would like to, I have been keeping abreast by listening to C-Span during the weekdays and much of what I have caught is not giving me that shiny happy feeling…
Some items of note are the Census Director hearing, health care, Internet Neutrality, media bailouts, media contributions to the Obama campaign, Cap and Trade, and executive pay caps.
Census:
Robert Groves, who we reported on a while back, had his hearing on Friday, interestingly enough, no votes were taken on Friday and therefore, almost all the senators had gone home to their home states. Groves has been associated with faulty sampling that could game the system and was deemed unconstitutional back in the 90′s. Although he is incredibly intelligent and qualified as a statistician, ethics, morals, and integrity are required to run the Census, since it is such a sensitive department. The Census has the capability of changing the entire political/voting landscape of a country and could have a long lasting effect that would ensure the redistricting gives the upper hand to one party over the other if not done ethically or properly. The Census has had past associations with ACORN, the same ACORN that is facing charges of voter fraud in more than over a dozen states. ACORN was also reported to have been marking front doors and canvassing neighborhoods using GPS as recently as last week.
Health care:
The Senate version is mandating everyone carry health care as of 2013… exempting only illegal immigrants and those opposed for religious reasons. Odd concept since in some parts of the country, it is the illegal immigrant population driving up the costs.
All employers will be mandated to provide insurance to their workers, or face a “special tax”. Additionally, the government will be mandating the four levels of coverage provided by that employer… from lowest to highest. And no annual or lifetime limitations allowed either.
Not only will the government regulate the marketing of commercial insurance premiums to families and employers, they will also regulate premium prices, allowing workers to drop out and seek a better deal…. no doubt that offered by the federal government plan.
Not enough? They plan to dictate sales commissions as well.
Under the Senate proposals, the government would regulate not only insurance products, but also the marketing of insurance and sales commissions paid to insurance agents and brokers.
Under these auspices, the private insurer – who requires a profit to stay in business – cannot compete with the government who just sucks more out of the taxpayer as their costs increase. With government mandates controlling everything from premium price for coverage to marketing, their demise is imminent. Indeed, it is being orchestrated.
One of the most notable features of the Senate proposals is that workers could drop out of an employer’s group health plan and buy private insurance on their own, outside the workplace. The employer’s normal contribution for a worker would be paid to the insurance exchange.
Democrats said that people dropping out of employer plans would, in many cases, be eligible for tax credits to defray their premiums.
Employers worry that this feature would destabilize the health plans they provide to employees.
“If people can opt out of employer-sponsored insurance and get a tax credit, that will lead to a death spiral for employer-sponsored plans,” said James P. Gelfand, senior manager of health policy at the United States Chamber of Commerce.
“People who are sick will stay in employer plans, and many young, healthy people will opt out,” Mr. Gelfand said.
The House version accomplishes something similiar, using a government “health insurance exchange” that mandates participation by all private insurers. The government would also label all insurers with “quality ratings”…. a Good “House”keeping Seal of Approval, so to speak.
Consumers could sign up for insurance at hospitals, schools, Social Security offices and state departments of motor vehicles.
~~~
Under the Democratic proposals, the government would offer tax credits to help people buy insurance. The credit would be available to people with incomes up to four times the poverty level ($88,200 for a family of four).
The government would also provide tax credits to help small businesses buy insurance for employees. The credit would be available to businesses with up to 25 employees, and businesses with the lowest-wage workers would get more aid.
The below summary encapsulates a great argument against government intervention with the health care industry and especially the single payer system. John Lechleiter of Eli Lilly spoke before the US Chamber of Commerce on May 15, 2009. He did not get political but stated his concern that policy makers would enforce a system that would leave out innovation and would actually create the opposite results than what would be originally intended:
In remarks before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce today, John C. Lechleiter, Ph.D., chairman and CEO of Eli Lilly and Company (NYSE: LLY) said that federal policymakers’ attention to access, quality and costs in health reform should also include a focus on innovation – or the results could include “unintended side-effects.” Innovation, he said, helped boost the average Americans life expectancy from 47 to 78 years, a rise of 66 percent over the past century and “unprecedented in human history.” In his keynote speech before a group of business, government and health care representatives, Lechleiter identified specific policy proposals and their implications for patients and for developing breakthrough treatments and cures.
“Encouraging innovation needs to be the purpose of U.S. health care reform, not its victim,” Lechleiter said. “It’s innovation that explains why we are the healthiest, longest-lived and wealthiest human beings ever to occupy the planet.”
But, he asserted, if heath care reform does not encourage innovation, “then the important goals of expanding access, improving quality and controlling costs will prove illusory.”
He cited a Columbia University study that analyzed data from 52 countries and showed that, controlling for other factors, the availability of new medicines alone accounted for 40 percent of the increase in life expectancy during the 1980s and 1990s. He said the medical advances of the past century that made life-expectancy and quality-of-life gains possible included the invention of:
– Antibiotics to cure infections
– Vaccines that have nearly eradicated several conditions, such as polio
– Effective treatments for a growing number of cancers, and
– Medications that have lessened the toll of a number of dreaded diseases,
such that they are now considered chronic, manageable conditions.
He then observed, “The economic payback from these gains is difficult to overstate. The payback is years of productive work, economic value added, consumer spending and tax dollars paid – which together outweighs the costs of treatment overwhelmingly – even if you resist the idea of putting a number on the intrinsic value of being alive.”
Lechleiter expressed hope for similar future gains, but he pointed to major bellwethers warning that innovation is at risk:
– The pharmaceutical industry, he said, is “in the midst of a wave of
defensive consolidations that will leave the world with even fewer
entities capable of taking an idea — a discovery — and turning it into
a medicine approved for patients.”
– “Half of the smaller biotech firms in the U.S. have less than a
year of [operating] cash remaining, and a third are down to their last
six months”; and
– Recent FDA new drug approvals have dropped sharply relative to the past
30 years.
Lechleiter rounded out his speech with a closer look at several areas of public policy under which, depending on the path taken in health reform, innovation will be enhanced or curbed. Prefacing his policy prescriptions, he said: “When it comes to sustaining innovation, the burden remains on us — as it should. We’re not asking for a handout or a bailout. Instead, businesses that live or die by health care innovation in the U.S. ask only that we be allowed to continue doing just that: proving the value of what we’ve developed or failing in the marketplace.”
He urged all stakeholders engaged in health reform to ensure that:
– The value of medicines is evaluated by doctors and patients, who, when
properly informed, can choose from the available alternatives a drug
that’s medically appropriate and best for the individual patient;
– Innovators get a return on investment that accurately reflects the value
of the innovations delivered, thus encouraging investment in new
treatments and cures for patients; and
– Innovators retain ownership, for a reasonable period of time, of their
intellectual property, to provide the necessary incentives for
risk-taking that leads to innovation.
Such an approach to public policy, he contended, would usher in:
– An era of “personalized medicine,” which would tap the
insights of the Human Genome Project and replace the usual
one-size-fits-all approach;
– Market-based health reforms, including access to insurance for all
Americans, supported by public subsidies and tax credits rather than a
government-run option;
– Solid comparative effectiveness research that informs on the benefits,
risks and costs of various treatment options but that does not trump
physician judgment, deny patients access to needed treatments or mandate
prices;
– A 14-year data protection period for biologic drugs, which balances the
prospect of a return on investment with a clear path to lower-cost
copies. The bipartisan “Pathways for Biosimilars Act” in
Congress takes this approach.
Google can pick and choose what sites can be in their searches or what will appear at the top of pages during those searches etc. There is quite a bit of information in this video. Google is also lobbying to be exempt from anti-trust laws. Obama received a lot of money from Google and Silicon Valley so there is a good chance that he will possibly rule in favor of Google. If Google is not held to anti-trust laws this could be a huge problem for any differing ideologies.
Media Bailouts (Exception to Anti-Trust Laws & Tax Cuts):
As Fox News and the Wall Street Journal increase reader and viewership, the liberally biased media continues to slip in ratings and consumers. The serious issue at hand with government media bailouts is the slant of information. The media would openly be in the pocket of government and would act as an arm of a particular party. This begins to look more and more like Pravda, the propaganda….errr… media of Stalin & the USSR. I say openly, because currently, much of the media is ultra liberal and is already a part of the DNC.
I am a strong believer in free enterprise and free markets, therefore, I adamantly disagree with bailing out any entity because it causes bias and goes against the basic principles of doing business in a capitalist society. If a company cannot create a valuable business model it should file bankruptcy, plain and simple – this has caused a nation of lazy, complacent, entitled enterprises and individuals – moral hazard has become the norm.
Four of the suggestions coming out of the policy makers (Kerry):
– Bring copyright laws into the age of the search engine. Taking a portion of a copyrighted work can be protected under the “fair use” doctrine. But the kind of fair use in news reports, academics and the arts — republishing a quote to comment on it, for example — is not what search engines practice when they crawl the Web and ingest everything in their path.
Publishers should not have to choose between protecting their copyrights and shunning the search-engine databases that map the Internet. Journalism therefore needs a bright line imposed by statute: that the taking of entire Web pages by search engines, which is what powers their search functions, is not fair use but infringement.
Such a rule would be no more bold a step than the one Congress took in 1996 rewriting centuries of traditional libel law for the benefit of tech start-ups. It would take away from search engines the “just opt out” mantra — repeated by Google’s witness during the Kerry hearings — and force them to negotiate with copyright holders over the value of their content.
– Federalize the “hot news” doctrine. This doctrine protects against types of poaching that copyright might not cover — the stealing of information not by direct copying but simply by taking the guts of the content. While the Internet has made news vulnerable to pilfering because of the ease of linking from one site to the next, the hot-news doctrine has limited use because it is only recognized in a few states.
Now that many news aggregator sites have taken “linksploitation” to a commercial level by selling ads wrapped around the links they post, Congress has the incentive it needs to pass a federal law protecting hot news. Such a law would give publishers an additional source of legal leverage outside of copyright to demand fair compensation for the content they create.
– Eliminate ownership restrictions. Media insolvency is a greater threat today than media concentration. Congress should abolish caps on ownership of broadcast stations and bars on newspaper and television ownership in the same market. These outdated rules belong to an era when the Web was a home for spiders.
– Grant an antitrust exemption. Congress first came to journalism’s defense with antitrust relief in 1970, when it permitted endangered newspapers to combine their business operations without fear of antitrust suits if their newsrooms remained independent.
As noted in the Kerry hearing, publishers need collective pricing policies for their Web sites to finally break out of the expectation of free content that is afflicting the industry. Antitrust immunity is necessary because most individual news sites can’t go it alone by walling off their content for fees — readers will simply jump to sites that are still free.
A temporary antitrust shelter would serve the public interest by enabling the industry to take steps today to preserve for tomorrow the journalism that benefits us all.
Individual states (Washington) are also giving some unfair treatment to their media by only cutting taxes for those entities and not other businesses.
– Use tax policy to promote the press. Washington state is taking a lead in the current crisis with legislation signed into law this week to slash business taxes on the press by 40 percent. Congress could provide incentives for placing ads with content creators (not with Craigslist) and allowances for immediate write-offs (rather than capitalization) for all expenses related to news production.
Yippeee! And this is what Obama has to say on the matter:
What about those media contributions?
Follow the money.
Some people say rich millionaires own the networks so they support the GOP. That is not true. They’re not owned by a lotta rich Republicans.
Actually, they’re owned by publicly held corporations. General Electric owns NBC, Disney owns ABC, Viacom owns CBS.
Follow the money. (And at the bottom see where FOX News owner News Corp gave it’s money. You will be surprised.)
Here is NBC and ABC breakdown. Didn’t have available CBS (Viacom)
Jeffrey Immelt who is the CEO of GE (NBC) and its PAC have contributed millions of dollars to the DNC and to the Obama campaign.
It gave a million and a half to Dems and about 800,000 to Republicans. $400,000 directly to candidate Obama, and about 80,000 to McCain.
A sister company of NBC, GE Financials (also owned by GE) gave it’s total contribution limits to Democrats. GE Financials is also getting a huge chunk back from the bank bailout.
MSNBC? Follow the money.
Interestingly, the third top contributor to Mr. Obama was Microsoft. Ever hear of MSNBC? And you wonder why it has a liberal slant? $800,000 to Obama from Microsoft, and $400,000 from GE (NBC). Thus the owners of MSNBC (Microsoft and GE) gave candidate Obama $1.2 million in soft money. Other PACS and organizations of GE and Microsoft also contributed to Mr. Obama.
Disney (ABC) gave $300,00 to Obama, $84,00 to Hillary and $21,000 to McCain.
Democrats are the biggest recipient of money from the companies that own broadcasting networks.
Follow the money.
The entire motion picture industry gave $12.7 million to Dems and $1.3 million to GOP.
Commercial TV gave $3.3 million to Dems and $2.2 million to GOP.
Viacom (CBS) is much harder to analyze, but I’ll get back to that.
So, if you follow the money, major broadcasting networks are big time sources of campaign money for Democrats.
Oh, and FOX News? Owned by the News Corporation and Rupert Murdoch? It gave $1.5 million dollars in contributions to campaigns, 68% of that went to Democrats, or roughly about $1.02 million dollars. Less than a half million went to GOP.
Cap and Trade:
The latest IBD/TIPP poll shows that cap and trade is a no go in the public eye. More people are beginning to understand what it actually entails/means. Indiana has also found a way around cap and trade this past week.
However, the Obama administration seems as though it may want to advance this agenda, but just under a different name.
How does the “The Clean Energy Divide” sound to you?
The Obama administration is exploring alternative names for cap and trade legislation.
People don’t really know what cap and trade means, but they don’t like it. So a new name is being concocted to gather support for the legislation.
It doesn’t look like the names “carbon tax” or “regressive tax” are in the mix, though. How does “clean energy divide” grab you?
WSJ: Seeking to bolster public support for climate legislation, the Obama administration is consulting pollsters who advocate avoiding phrases such as “cap-and-trade” and “global warming.” On Monday, the White House Council on Environmental Quality was scheduled to meet with Robert Perkowitz, president of ecoAmerica, a Washington-based nonprofit that uses “psychographic research” to “shift personal and civic choices of environmentally agnostic Americans,” according to its Web site.
“We’re trying to give them phrases that work,” Mr. Perkowitz said in an interview. He said that in a survey of some 2,000 Americans conducted by his group in March and April, less than half of the respondents said they would support a “cap-and-trade” policy, and that only 24% said they knew what the phrase means. “If you call it ‘clean energy dividend’…almost anything other than ‘cap and trade,’ you’ll get people responding a lot more favorably,” he said.
Isn’t that nice? let’s trick the American people so we can still strap the poor and the middle class with tax hikes to obtain our faulty liberal green agenda so Al Gore can receive a bunch of profits as well as GE, Google and Microsoft…
Executive Pay Caps:
The Obama administration has begun serious talks about how it can change compensation practices across the financial-services industry, including at companies that did not receive federal bailout money, according to people familiar with the matter.
The initiative, which is in its early stages, is part of an ambitious and likely controversial effort to broadly address the way financial companies pay employees and executives, including an attempt to more closely align pay with long-term performance.
Administration and regulatory officials are looking at various options, including using the Federal Reserve’s supervisory powers, the power of the Securities and Exchange Commission and moral suasion. Officials are also looking at what could be done legislatively.
Socialism? Fascism? You be the judge…
Actually, just keep looking away and don’t pay attention to what’s really going on behind the scenes – rather watch the below video instead:
You don’t think there could be a reason she is hiding do you? Could it be that she doesn’t want to be trapped in yet another lie or contradictions from previous recollections of her CIA briefings?
The Speaker was invited to appear on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” ABC’s “This Week,” “Fox News Sunday” and CNN’s “State of the Union,” according to sources at the networks.
One source said Pelosi (D-Calif.) will be attending her granddaughter’s first communion in Phoenix on Sunday.
The Sunday morning talk show circuit is a traditional place to find politicians trying to recover from political missteps or trying to explain themselves after a week at the top of the news cycle. It can also give them a chance to set the agenda for the week ahead. A Sunday show appearance, with its in-depth, one-on-one interview format, gives politicians a chance to answer many questions on a specific topic, often resulting in a controversy being put to bed.
Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.), for example, opted to go on the Sunday morning show circuit after his decision to switch parties, appearing on “Meet the Press” and CBS’ “Face the Nation” on May 3.
Am I buying the “communion?” Nope! Everyone knows that you go on the Sunday morning circuit if there are current events going on in which you are involved… As many of us already know, the controversies will not be put to bed because Nancy Pelosi is not smart enough to lie well and tends to put her foot in her mouth. The fact that these lies are directed at the national intelligence community only hurts her more.
If there was one thing you could always say about President Bush, it is that he always stood on his principles and values. He had an enormous amount of integrity and did not compromise any of those things for political expediency. He firmly believed every move and decision he made was based on what was best for the American people. He did not rely on polling data or popularity statistics. President Bush’s firmly held beliefs in a post 9/11 world are what guided him.
Now President Obama, on the other hand, stands on his teleprompter. As he has “navigated” his way through the first 100 days in the Oval Office, we have yet to really see the characteristics of integrity or doing what is right by the American People. At least two of his cabinet members should have been tossed; Turbo Tax Tim Geithner and Secretary Napolitano, both of whom have embarrassed the Oval Office and outraged the American people. If he really stood on principle and integrity they would have been gone.
President Obama showed signs of this early in the election cycle when he said he would accept public financing of the campaign, but when the primary season was over and he was the nominee, he opted out of the system and continued to collect just shy of 3/4 of a billion dollars, most of which is untraceable. That in itself goes against the Open Government Act by fully disclosing all donors.
President Bush walked his talk after the campaign. He worked with the Democratic leadership, showing bipartisanship on the budget, FISA, immigration and other issues. The only thing he would not compromise on (thank goodness) was a troop withdrawal time table. Democrats tried in vain to force his hand as the Obama backing MSM flooded the evening news night after night with each road side bomb image they could find. Very little attention was paid to the success we were having, only the carnage. This unwavering stance against a timed withdrawal was significant because he did not want give the emboldened insurgency a window in which to “wait it out”, and to prevent these politicians from micromanaging commanders in the field. True, there was pressures to change strategies in order to combat this issue, and the administration did just that; they initiated the “surge”. And guess what, it worked! Now Mr. Obama on the other hand has shown about as much bipartisanship as Iran has shown cooperation with the UN….Uh that would be none! The GOP has been completely shut out of the administration, being told to basically shut up and sit down because “we” (the Dems) won. So much for a new era of cooperation and open government.
What people fail to realize in Iraq, is that not only did we rid the world of a very evil dictator, who’s atrocities are well documented (so in fact there is you weapon of mass destruction), shut down Dr. Germ Rihab Taha (who was identified by UN weapon inspectors specifically), the mission also brought stability to the region as a whole.
If you look back, Moamar Kadafi quickly and quietly ended their rebellious ways and cracked down on terrorists in Libya. Syria also became much more user friendly, and cooperative. So there were broader positive effects.
Mr. Obama who was not a Senator when the Congress initially authorized action in Iraq, on the campaign trail he waved the “No More War” flag like the checker flag at the end of a car race. The election was soundly anti-Bush, and all the rhetoric that goes with that. ‘When he is elected president, we will be out of Iraq in 16 months at the most. There should be no confusion about that’.
Well as you all know, the mission (and I am not complaining about this) remains on target and is, in fact, in a winding down phase. We have consolidated much of our operations to specific areas in Iraq, handed over control and security operations to the Iraqi Army and Police force in many areas, continue to train and equip those forces so when we do leave, there will be stability and peace inside the borders. Mr. Obama’s rhetoric got him into the White House, but the reality of the situation on the ground in Iraq dictated his actions. And if the people who were so hell bent on completely ditching the quote “Bush Doctrine” (as Charlie Gibson tried to nail Sarah Palin with) they would have realized that this notion of up and run out of Iraq was not plausible in the least.
President Bush was thrust into a situation that day in September, unbeknown to America or our intelligence agencies. We went from a 20 plus year time of relative peace and suddenly thrust into war, against an enemy that does not belong to a nation or state, but operates in the shadows among innocent people whom they will sacrifice without any hesitation. Yes, mistakes were made. But this nation was kept safe, and still is, by those policies President Bush put into place.
Now we have a floppy fish in the White House. Yes he was thrust into an economic situation that has not been pretty. However, Mr. Teleprompter as not shown us anything except he is bent on a socialistic agenda and that he changes his word like we change underwear.
Now Mr. Obama wants to openly (yes there is that word open again) and without preconditions, have talks with these nations that simply hate the United States. Iran, who is pursuing nuclear weapons and calling for the destruction of Israel, North Korea, who has nuclear material but can not build a delivery vehicle, Venezuela, who just yesterday seized American Owned and Operated energy sites and equipment, and Cuba, where money can now flow freely without using a 3rd and 4th party intermediary. Oh yes lets not forget Mexico. Yet, another apology from Mr. Obama and Secretary Clinton for causing the drug war along the boarder.
Mr. Obama and his economic team have showered the coffers with billions and billions of dollars in order to prop up the economy. Thus far, nothing. New jobless filings hover around 600K and overall, 6.5 million people are out of work, and counting. Now that Chrysler and GM are making significant cuts, that is going to go up more this year. Not only does that effect line workers in the auto plants, but spills out to the suppliers and peripheral businesses that support them.
Mr. Obama, first week in office broke the most basic of his campaign pledges, saying that the practice of earmarks and pork spending would immediately come to and end. Say what? The first two things he signs into law are pork laden wasteful bills that did nothing. The Stimulus package, which failed to stimulate the American people, was shoved through the congress by the new Dem Majority in the middle of the night in which no one was even able to read. And what was in there (Mr. Dodd)? Bonuses for the executives at AIG, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac!!! Next he signed an Omnibus bill that contained over 9000 earmarks, again pushed through on a Dem freight train in the middle of the night.
Now the administration continues to politicize national security doctrine as the administration stammers on what our evil interrogators did to terror suspects. This emboldens the enemy, teaches them our techniques so now they can prepare for what little we actually do. The September 10th mentality of the administration puts us in jeopardy. Many of the policies that Mr. Obama so vehemently touted against remain in effect. The naval prison at Guantanamo Bay was ordered closed yet remains open as Obama plans where to send its inmates; the president has yet to establish a coherent policy on Iran — following in the Bush administration’s footsteps and while American troops are being removed from Iraq, most will stay in place until 2010.
It is important to note that all the enhanced interrogation tactics that we used actually yielded crucially important intelligence that helped keep this country safe,” with the eight years of safety on the home front since Sept. 11, 2001. Even though congressional leaders claimed to be left out of the loop on these techniques, it was revealed that the same Dem leaders, who bewitched President Bush, were duly informed of those methods. But as Dems, true to color, they pretended to take the moral high road, and were thus outed as hypocrites using this issue for political expediency.
Obama’s own Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, wrote an internal memo last week citing the “high value” information about Al Qaeda’s operations yielded by tactics such as water boarding, but its morality has been called into question by human rights monitors and many others both in and out of the Obama administration.
So therein lays the conflict with this administration. Integrity, direction, political expediency, governing by polling data, and letting Nancy Pelosi write its budget a mere 3 Trillion and some change.
So we as Americans have to wonder, where the transparency, openness, and new era of cooperation is. Yeah, that is right, so sorry, we lost.
We all knew that Ms. Piglosi was lying from the get go when new information came to light regarding who was privy to the CIA briefing about interrogation methods, namely waterboarding. She came up with a Bill ‘Clintonesque’ to attempt to confuse anybody who can’t read or surf the net.
She admitted the CIA briefed her and others on interrogation methods, including waterboarding, on suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay prison. BUT her excuse was she didn’t know that they would ACTUALLY use those methods on the terrorists. She then asked what the definition of IS, is.
Most of us were not born yesterday, so it was obvious she was grasping at straws during her press conference. However, there was no proof, only “he said, she said,” of the briefing; that is until the CIA released their briefing report yesterday.
Intelligence officials released documents this evening saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was briefed in September 2002 about the use of harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda prisoners, seemingly contradicting her repeated statements over the past 18 months that she was never told that these techniques were actually being used.
In a 10-page memo outlining an almost seven-year history of classified briefings, intelligence officials said that Pelosi and then-Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) were the first two members of Congress ever briefed on the interrogation tactics. Then the ranking member and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, respectively, Pelosi and Goss were briefed Sept. 4, 2002, one week before the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The memo, issued by the Director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency to Capitol Hill, notes the Pelosi-Goss briefing covered “EITs including the use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah.” EIT is an acronym for enhanced interrogation technique. Zubaydah was one of the earliest valuable al-Qaeda members captured and the first to have the controversial tactic known as water boarding used against him.
*EITs = Enhanced Interrogation Techniques
Human Events obtained the list of those who were briefed and privy to the interrogation techniques in 2002 – and not surprisingly, Democrat after Democrat is listed on this document:
Nancy Pelosi
John Rockefeller
Harry Reid
Dianne Feinstein
Jane Harman
Babs Mikulski
John Murtha
Adam Schiff
Carl Levin
Russ Feingold
Evan Bayh
Bob Graham
They are going to need another made up CRISIS to get out of this one!
