Pelosi's Tell

Nancy Pelosi, like everyone, has a tell: her left eyelid twitches when she's weaving her particular tangled webs.

I'd love to point out that the matter hardly matters, but the matter matters. It's the transparency thing, the consistency thing.

I don't doubt that, as a ranking member of the Intelligence Committee back in 2002-3, she regularly encountered much top secret information swirling round regarding terrorism intel and attended meetings during which she was briefed on torture policy. I don't doubt that trying to juggle what should be public now versus what we thought needed secrecy then -- is no easy task.

I'd love to say it is a simple matter of telling the truth, but it is not. In our favorite version of the world, of course, it would be. Still, the question she is being asked -- did she know about the use of waterboarding? -- shouldn't require the invention of yet more revisionist history. While not simple, it's not complicated either.

I support President Obama, and, as an extension, the Democratic Party, in large part because he seems to "get" that the U.S. citizenry has been treated like mental midgets for a long time, and that it is time to exercise all those little grey cells atrophied by studied disuse.

In other words: I can handle the details, even without a spin. I can figure out how information flows, and how its flow is sometimes impeded by extraordinary circumstances. But it is up to me and my various moral codes to decide what Pelosi's apparent knowledge of the actual use of waterboarding requires of her.

It does not require the twitching of an eye.

A small part of me is glad that she is such a terrible liar.

UPDATE: 14 May 2009

Under fire from Republicans for what she knew about harsh questioning of terror detainees, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday acknowledged that she had learned in 2003 that the C.I.A. had subjected suspects to waterboarding, but she asserted that the agency had misled Congress about its techniques.

At a tense press conference, Ms. Pelosi said for the first time that a staff member alerted her in February 2003 that top lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee had been briefed on the use of tough interrogation methods on terror suspects.

But she said the fact that she did not speak out at the time due to secrecy rules did not make her complicit in any abuse of detainees. She accused the C.I.A. and Bush administration of lying to Congress about what was actually transpiring with the detainees.

“I am saying that the C.I.A. was misleading the Congress and at the same time the administration was misleading the Congress on weapons of mass destruction,” Ms. Pelosi said.

Ms. Pelosi said she was told at that briefing that waterboarding, one of the most controversial of the harsh techniques employed, was not being used.

The C.I.A., reacting to Ms. Pelosi’s remarks, said that agency records declassified last week and cited by congressional Republicans show that Ms. Pelosi had taken part in a September 2002 briefing on interrogation techniques was “true to the language in the Agency’s records.”

A tempest in a teapot, but only if, in her transparency, she can refrain from shrill tits and grating tats.