SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA BACK WHEN THEY OPPOSED AL QAEDA INSTEAD OF W:

Hill Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002: In Meetings, Spy Panels' Chiefs Did Not Protest, Officials Say (Joby Warrick and Dan Eggen, 12/09/07, Washington Post)

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

Heck, Ms Pelosi defends the "right" of her constituents to do worse to one another for fun.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 9, 2007 11:30 AM