Poll: Public Split On Whether CIA Lied To Pelosi
A new Rasmussen poll finds the public closely divided on Nancy Pelosi's claim that she was misled by the CIA on the use of waterboarding, with public opinion on this debate still pretty much up in the air.
The numbers: A 43% plurality of likely voters say it is very or somewhat likely that Pelosi was misled, compared to 41% who say it is not very likely or not at all likely. The margin of error is ±3%.
The pollster's analysis points out that most people seem to be waiting for more information, with only 20% saying it's very likely she was misled and 22% saying it's not at all likely, and others respondents holding softer positions. But some other numbers suggest Pelosi starts out this fight at a disadvantage: "The CIA is viewed favorably by 63% and unfavorably by 24%. For Pelosi, the comparable numbers are 35% favorable and 55% unfavorable."
Josh
Matt
Eric
Ever notice how Mitch McConnel is not to be found unless something comes up where he can score cheap political points, then he's all over it. He's reveling in this Pelosi spin off discussion.
May 18, 2009 10:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is the stupidiest story ever. Are we supposed to care that Pelosi did not "complain" about waterboarding when it would have not made any difference?
Are we supposed to believe that she was complicit in waterboarding? Geez.
The press is following yet another shiny object distraction from the GOP because they don't want to focus on how morally bankrupt they are as a party.
May 18, 2009 10:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
There's an extremely important point there, though. Congressional members on the Gang of Four and the Gang of Eight should be able to do something when they learn that the Administration may be violating the law and they should be held accountable if they don't. The fact that they argue they were helpless - whether that's true or not - shows a desparate need to reform the way that the legislature oversees the administration.
May 18, 2009 10:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, but that's not the story that all over cable news. It's all about what Pelosi knew . . . as if it matters.
May 18, 2009 10:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
No care!!!! Excuse me this idiot is 3rd in line to be president. You bet I care!
May 18, 2009 6:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
You first might want to understand how the Government works. For example, the Speaker is the 2nd in line to the Presidency, and the President Pro Tem is the 3rd.
May 18, 2009 10:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you really cared about idiots being president or in line to be president, you would not be a repuglican. 'nuff said.
May 19, 2009 8:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
The most frustrating part of all of this is that even the supposedly-Democrat-friendly commentators (like Chris Matthews) are buying the Republican/MSM spin instead of carefully reading Leon Panetta's statement. Panetta doesn't actually claim that Speaker Pelosi is wrong; Panetta talks only about what the CIA documents reflect. Panetta can't say anything more. He probably doesn't know anything more: he wasn't in those briefings.
That's where the focus of this story should lie: on what we don't know. That's the last place the Republicans and MSM talking heads want the focus though, because emphasizing what we don't know leads to an obvious conclusion that they desparately don't want: an independent investigation.
May 18, 2009 10:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
The CIA is in the business of lying.
Not that Pelosi isn't - it just isn't in her job description.
May 18, 2009 10:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, it's sort of an irresistable force meets an immovable object kind of situation. No wonder the public can't decide. Oh yeah, that and the who gives a rat's ass factor.
May 18, 2009 3:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think lying was just under her name!
May 18, 2009 6:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think you are a lying asshole. Why don't you just shut up?
May 18, 2009 7:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
People need to be reminded that this is the same CIA that proclaimed a "slam dunk" wrt WMDs. They won't be, of course, by cable news, which shows a disturbing inability to think critically about anything Republicans say.
May 18, 2009 11:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
Good point. Obviously, the CIA did reveal that they were waterboading. After all, they told us the case was a "slam dunk."
May 18, 2009 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
All cable new is against Demos???????
Ever watch CNN????????
May 18, 2009 6:55 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why would anybody actively take the CIA's word on this?
May 18, 2009 11:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
"A 43% plurality of likely voters say it is very or somewhat likely that Pelosi was misled, compared to 41% who say it is not very likely or not at all likely. The margin of error is ±3%."
Compared to what you read in the so-called "liberal" MSM, where everyone knows the CIA is the most truthful agency in our government and everyone assumes either Pelosi is lying or she wasn't paying attention in the briefing.
As a judge once said in a trial I was attending, when two people told opposite stories, "which one has the motivation to lie?"
Hint: it's not Pelosi. Why would she bring down a sh*t-storm on herself by lying?
May 18, 2009 11:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
That same judge might also remark that one side (Pelosi) can testify from personal knowledge while the other side (the CIA) offers only double hearsay.
May 18, 2009 11:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sometime she opens her mouth and puts her foot in it, well most of the time she does not just sometimes. When you lie to make yourself look more important, it has a way of coming back and biting you in the rear.
May 18, 2009 6:57 PM | Reply | Permalink
I'm wondering if the CIA isn't suffering from too many bosses and too many orders coming from different directions. There's something incredibly creepy about Cheney camping at Langley and micromanaging, and wasn't that about the same time that Rumsfeld was setting up his competing intelligence service at DoD? (BTW, what happened to that under Gates?)
Anyway, my point is that I don't think I'd believe anything
the CIA without seeing the provenance of the information. When Nancy Pelosi says that the CIA misled Congress, it seems a perfectly believable statement to me.
May 18, 2009 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is the same CIA that misled the nation into war. This little point keeps getting overlooked in all the discussion about how that big ol' meanie Nancy Pelosi said nasty things about the CIA.
May 18, 2009 11:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm just reading Marcy Wheeler's micro-dissection; she says
That's what I'm talking about, and anyone with sense enough to pour pee out of a boot can see Cheney and his familiars putting hammerlocks on CIA personnel at all levels in the information that's making its way into the public record.May 18, 2009 12:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
You don't remember 9/11 do you?? Have you been to Iraq? I have, I know why we went and why we stay.
May 18, 2009 6:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
I highly doubt you have ever been to Iraq, however, my doubt is as valid as your claim. You can't prove it, because this is an online forum, where only your ideas matter, not whatever claim you can come up with, or try to taunt people with.
Your two line comments are only convincing people you don't know what you are talking about, and you are here as a troll.
May 18, 2009 11:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
Too funny. Seriously. Bleating about 9/11 and Iraq, as if they're connected. I bet you know where those WMDs are, too. And in the stash of WMDs that only you know about, there's a photo of Hussein and Bin Laden planning 9/11 right?????
May 19, 2009 12:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
This is backfiring on the Republicans because the media seems to be using this Pelosi accusation to push for a truth commission.
May 18, 2009 11:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Truth commission, she does not want that, lying under oath, jail time!!!!!
May 18, 2009 7:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think it's extremely unlikely that public opinion polling can tell us anything useful about this situation. The average person has no idea what's going on here and is probably responding solely on the basis of a preconceived opinion about Pelosi.
May 18, 2009 12:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good lord, if it wasn't so pathetic it would be funny. The better question would be "Does the CIA ever tell the truth?"
If there's a government entity that has wreaked more evil havoc on the world (& US) it's probably so secret we've never heard of it.
It should be renamed: CIAL (Cause I Always Lie)
May 18, 2009 12:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Why is TPM reporting on this staged GOP smokescreen? And if you're going to report on it, why on earth would you do so by giving more exposure to a Foxmussen push-poll?
What's next? Free ad space for the O'Reilly Factor on TPM?
Come on, guys.
May 18, 2009 12:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
The
pelosi bashing is the poorest excuse ever for the media to massage an item beyond any reasonableness.
And Boehner plus Newt advising her what is appropriate--pass the barf bags...
The CIA by its very reason for being is to avoid revelation....and anyone that thinks the gwb admin wasn't twisting arms at that agency must have been asleep for 8 yrs....and what about the restrictions on the eight members of Congress that are supposed to receive briefings - my understanding is they are sworn to secrecy and because of this Sen Jay Rockefeller wrote a personal note to the record to express his impressions because their lips are sealed.
meri
May 18, 2009 12:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Does it really matter whether Nancy Pelosi -- who in September 2002 was neither Speaker (Dennis Hastert) or even Minority Leader (Dick Gephardt), but rather merely the Minority Whip and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee -- knew that waterboarding was being conducted by George "Slam Dunk" Tenet's CIA at that time?
I would also point out that at that particular time, Ms. Pelosi was the leading voice in the House against the then-pending congressional resolution authorizing President Bush to use military force to enforce U.N. mandates in Iraq, for which the vote would take place within three weeks of this supposed full-fledged CIA disclosure to Pelosi and then-Intel Committee Chair Porter Goss of its use of enhanced interrogation techniques.
From a purely practical (if completely amoral) standpoint, why in the world would George Tenet disclose to one of the Bush administration's leading congressional critics that the CIA was waterboarding detainees in an effort to provide some sort of link between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and Osama bin Laden's al Qa'eda? The whole argument that Nancy Pelosi was somehow in on the deal collapses like a house of cards over this very salient point.
That the Republicans can still push the buttons driving Beltway media outputs and panel discussions speaks to the compelling need for the Obama administration to address the issue of the late Bush administration's torture policies by commencing a wide-ranging legal investigation of the events surrounding this most lamentable and disreputable episode in our nation's recent history, and bringing the true perpetrators of this monstrous war crime before the bar of justice.
The Republicans want to fight over this? Then bring it on, and let's take it to where they live and breathe.
May 18, 2009 1:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
I wish they would do something! All they are doing is spending more of the taxpayers money and lying about the last 8 years!
May 18, 2009 6:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes it matters when she lies.
May 18, 2009 7:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Something tells me both sides are right. The CIA is saying they briefed her truthfully. They may have but not fully and kept some of the actual happenings back. If they are talking '02 had the authorizing memos been drafted for their protection? Isn't that when it was reported CIA agentss were buying legal protection because they knew what they were asked to do was illegal? And Speaker Pelosi too, if she says she wasn't briefed on waterboarding and other 'enhanced interrogation methods' being enacted. All the howling and bellowing can and could be solved with a healthy dose of sunlight. It seems most are calling for a truth commission. Bullcrap! Get an Independent Prosecutor! Fitzgerald!! The media is more concerned with this 8th grade tit for tat than focusing on the real problem of TORTURE!
May 18, 2009 1:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry, I'm not buying this. The CIA under Tenet was hell-bent on proving WMD was in Iraq and that the Iraq War Resolution was needed. Pelosi, at the same time, was leading House Democrats in opposition....and the majority of House Democrats voted against that war resolution. This is what was actually going on in the fall of 2002.
Pelosi supports Congressional investigations in Bush torture policies. Now, who is under threat with those investigations--the previous administration and the CIA folks administering these techniques. Pelosi came under attack not because of a he said/she said that is a made up thing but because she supports investigations.
May 18, 2009 1:56 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Democrats "voted against the war". Where were you, oh excuse me, you must have been rewriting history, Demos do that so well!!!!
May 18, 2009 6:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Torture and the Pelosi Obsession
Ed Kilgore
http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/strategist/2009/05/torture_and_the_pelosi_obsessi.php
May 18, 2009 1:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Comparing a favorability rating for the CIA and a congressional leader as if they were apples and apples is patently ridiculous.
May 18, 2009 2:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
The next election cannot come soon enough. Obama is a one time president. If this country survives a Republician will put us out, as usual
May 18, 2009 7:04 PM | Reply | Permalink