John Nichols | The Nation, July 9, 2009
In May, at a point when congressional Republicans and their amen corner in the media were attempting to defend the Bush-Cheney administration’s torture regime, their primary defense was: Pelosi knew.
The spin held that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as a member of the House Intelligence Committee, had in 2002 been secretly briefed about the use of harsh interrogation techniques on terror suspects.
Pelosi said the Central Intelligence Agency had failed to inform her about the character and extent of the harsh interrogations.
Pelosi accused the CIA of “misleading the Congress of the United States.”
Republican senators screamed.
“It’s outrageous that a member of Congress should call a terror-fighter a liar,” howled Missouri Senator Kit Bond, the vice chair of the Senate intelligence committee. “It seems the playbook is, blame terror-fighters. We ought to be supporting them.”
CIA officials denied lying to Congress and the American people, and that seemed to be that. “Let me be clear: It is not our practice or policy to mislead Congress,” said CIA Director Leon Panetta. That is against our laws and values.”
But, now, we learn that, in late June, Panetta admitted in secret testimony to Congress that the agency had concealed information and misled lawmakers repeatedly since 2001.
Some of the details of Panetta’s testimony are contained in a letter from seven House Democrats to Panetta that was released Wednesday morning.
In the letter, the members (Anna Eshoo of California, Alcee Hastings of Florida, Rush Holt of New Jersey, Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, Adam Smith of Washington, Mike Thompson of California and John Tierney of Massachusetts) wrote: “Recently you testified that you have determined that top CIA officials have concealed significant actions from all members of Congress, and misled members for a number of years from 2001 to this week.”
The letter continued: “In light of your testimony, we ask that you publicly correct your statement of May 15, 2009.”
Pelosi’s critics are claiming that Panetta’s admission does not resolve the debate about whether the speaker was lied to in briefings about harsh interrogations.
What does the CIA say?
That’s where things seem to get confusing — but, as we’ll see, not too confusing.
Panetta “stands by his May 15 statement,” CIA spokesman George Little claimed after the letter from the House members was released.
The problem is that Little also said: “This agency and this director believe it is vital to keep the Congress fully and currently informed. Director Panetta’s actions back that up. As the letter from these … representatives notes, it was the CIA itself that took the initiative to notify the oversight committees.”
So, officially, CIA director Panetta stands by his statement that: “It is not our practice or policy to mislead Congress.”
But…
Panetta’s spokesman is seemingly rather proud that “it was the CIA itself that took the initiative to notify the oversight committees” that the agency had in the words of the House members “misled members for a number of years from 2001.”
Can we reconcile these statements?
Yes.
Panetta, who has only headed the CIA since February of this year says that “it is not our practice or policy to mislead Congress.”
But he tells Congress that it was in fact the consistent practice of the CIA to lie to Congress during the Bush-Cheney years.
So what are we left with?
Perhaps a measure of vindication for Pelosi, but the speaker’s wrangling with the Republicans is a distraction from the fundamental revelation.
Far more important is Panetta’s reported admission that his agency has “concealed significant actions” and “misled members of Congress.”
No matter what anyone thinks of Pelosi or waterboarding, there is a clear case for dramatically expanding congressional oversight of the CIA. Of course, more House and Senate members should have access to briefings — and should have the authority to hold CIA officials (and their White House overseers) to account for deliberate deceptions. But that ought not be the first response to the latest news.
Step one must be to get to the bottom of exactly what the CIA was lying about.
Did it have anything to do with the case for invading and occupying Iraq? Afghanistan? Torture?
CIA defenders will claim that some secrets must be kept. Perhaps. But the Congress and the American people have a right to know the broad outlines of the deception — and the extent to which it may have warped, and may continue to warp, U.S. policy.
Dr David Kelly
But is that story real, or imagined? On the streets, 
Peace and Justice Post 
Escalation Scam: Troops in Afghanistan
July 10, 2009Norman Solomon, The Huffington Post, July 9, 2009
The president has set a limit on the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. For now.
That’s how escalation works. Ceilings become floors. Gradually.
A few times since last fall, the Obama team has floated rising numbers for how many additional U.S. soldiers will be sent to Afghanistan. Now, deployment of 21,000 more is a done deal, with a new total cap of 68,000 U.S. troops in that country.
But “escalation” isn’t mere jargon. And it doesn’t just refer to what’s happening outside the United States.
“Escalation” is a word for a methodical process of acclimating people at home to the idea of more military intervention abroad — nothing too sudden, just a step-by-step process of turning even more war into media wallpaper — nothing too abrupt or jarring, while thousands more soldiers and billions more dollars funnel into what Martin Luther King Jr. called a “demonic suction tube,” complete with massive violence, mayhem, terror and killing on a grander scale than ever.
As war policies unfold, the news accounts and dominant media discourse rarely disrupt the trajectory of events. From high places, the authorized extent of candor is a matter of timing.
Lots of recent spin from Washington has promoted the assumption that President Obama wants to stick with the current limit on deployments to Afghanistan. Soon after pushing supplemental war funds through Congress, he’s hardly eager to proclaim that 68,000 American troops in Afghanistan may not be enough after all.
But no amount of spin can change the fact that the U.S. military situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate. It would be astonishing if plans for add-on deployments weren’t already far along at the Pentagon.
Meanwhile, the White House is reenacting a macabre ritual — a repetition compulsion of the warfare state — carefully timing and titrating each dose of public information to ease the process of escalation. The basic technique is far from new.
In the spring and early summer of 1965, President Lyndon Johnson decided to send 100,000 additional U.S. troops to Vietnam, more than doubling the number there. But at a July 28 news conference, he announced that he’d decided to send an additional 50,000 soldiers.
Why did President Johnson say 50,000 instead of 100,000? Because he was heeding the advice from something called a “Special National Security Estimate” — a secret document, issued days earlier about the already-approved new deployment, urging that “in order to mitigate somewhat the crisis atmosphere that would result from this major U.S. action . . . announcements about it be made piecemeal with no more high-level emphasis than necessary.”
Forty-four years later, something similar is underway with deployments of U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
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Tags:Afghanistan, escalation policy, military escalation, Norman Solomon, President Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam, President Obama, U.S. troops, war
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