...Pelosi has uncorked Washington’s least believable and most internally inconsistent denial since Bill Clinton wagged his finger over “that woman.”
Pelosi’s motivation for putting her reputation — and perhaps her speakership — on the line is more subtle than Clinton’s. She is sacrificing her credibility on the altar of moral vanity and rhetorical excess. She is trapped under the terrible freight of the word “torture,” the Left’s obligatory swearword for the Bush interrogation program. Torture is a war crime, and anyone complicit in it is a war criminal. It admits of no wiggle room. For Pelosi to acknowledge she knew of torture as far back as 2002 and did nothing to stop it is to condemn herself as an unindicted co-conspirator in George W. Bush’s crimes. Better to obfuscate and dodge, and remain adamant about a “truth commission,” even when she can’t tell the truth herself.Pelosi’s inaction years ago speaks more eloquently than her denunciations of the Bush administration since. Even if she was uncomfortable with the use of waterboarding, she clearly didn’t consider it torture. If she had been told that the CIA was burning detainees with cigarettes, would she also have implicitly approved? Let’s hope not. But given the choice between forswearing the simplistic and morally self-gratifying attack on Bush as a torturer, and hurling herself on a pyre in front of the national press corps, Pelosi chose self-immolation....