Monday, May 18, 2009

Torture inquiry more likely

In a column in the Daily Beast, Matthew Yglesias makes the same point I made a few days ago: that in attacking Nancy Pelosi for her (peripheral) role in the Bush Administration torture scandal, the GOP is making an inquiry pretty much inevitable:

But in their zeal to score a tactical win, the right has made a truth commission more likely not less likely. Obama wanted to avoid a backward-looking focus on torture in part because it distracted from his legislative agenda. But if we're going to be looking backward anyway, thanks to conservatives' insistence on complaining about Pelosi, then the move forward strategy lacks a rationale. And far from forcing a standoff in which Pelosi will abandon her support for an investigation, the right has forced her into a corner from which she can't give in to moderate Democrats' opposition to such a move without looking like she's cravenly attempting to save her own skin.
It's a classic case of cutting off your nose to spite your face.

1 comment:

The Sardonicist said...

despite my democratic leanings, i'm all for having nancy pelosi spill her guts about what was said and when it was said. if she is found to have lied to congress or decieved the american people, let her pay the price. and then we use the same yardstick the republicans lay out to beat the holy tar out of cheney, rove, rumsfeld, and dubya.