Blame Congress

When you're building the scaffolds for the public lynchings of former Bush administration officials because of their roles as promoters of waterboarding, you better add a few stalls for some members of Congress, including prominent Democrats like Nancy Pelosi:

Republicans, hoping to turn the tables on Democrats who are open to prosecuting Bush-era lawyers for justifying "enhanced" interrogation techniques, are seeking to reveal the names of those lawmakers who were briefed on the tactics as much as seven years ago.

FOX News has learned there were more than 30 meetings and briefings with members of Congress on the subject since 2002.

The first such briefing dealt with the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, the Al Qaeda operations chief who ran the training camps in Afghanistan where the Sept. 11 hijackers were trained. Sources said California Rep. Nancy Pelosi, now the speaker of the House, attended the meeting with then-Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla. (who later became CIA director), and she did not raise any objections.

The briefings were given to the chairmen and ranking members of the intelligence committees in the House and Senate until 2006. That could cover Sen. John Rockefeller, W.Va., and Rep. Jane Harman, Calif., both Democrats, as well as Sen. Pat Roberts, Kan., Sen. Lindsey Graham, S.C., Sen. Richard Shelby, Ala., and Rep. Pete Hoekstra, Mich., all Republicans.

Defenders of the interrogation program note that if Congress had wanted to kill the program, all it had to do was withhold funding, which didn't happen.

Just as they did in the banking crisis, Democrats are crying "SCANDAL!" and pointing at others while trying to hide their own complicity. I personally don't believe that waterboarding is torture and this whole witchhunt is dangerous nonsense, but if we're going to investigate Bush officials then we're going to investigate the Democrats that rubber-stamped the program. If one goes to jail, they all go to jail.

UPDATE: Nancy Pelosi thinks you're stupid:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pushing back on GOP charges that she knew about waterboarding for years and did nothing.

Pelosi says she was briefed by Bush administration officials on the legal justification for using waterboarding — but that they never followed through on promises to inform her when they actually began using "enhanced" interrogation techniques

"In that or any other briefing…we were not, and I repeat, we're not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation techniques were used. What they did tell us is that they had some legislative counsel ... opinions that they could be used," she told reporters today.

Nothing to see here....move along...