Analysis: Pelosi flap could advance 'truth commission'

[ProSense]

Analysis: Pelosi flap could advance 'truth commission'

By Mike Soraghan

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's fight with the CIA has put her in one of the toughest spots she's been in since she became speaker.

But it may also have advanced her goal of creating a "truth commission" to investigate the Bush administration's interrogation techniques and whether they amounted to illegal torture.

If nothing else, Pelosi's hard-to-prove assertion that the CIA lied to her in a briefing has renewed interest among Republicans and Democrats in what the Bush administration was doing with detainees six years ago and what it told Congress and other officials.

That's exactly what President Obama was trying to avoid earlier this year when he shot down the idea of a truth commission by saying he wanted to “look forward, not backwards.”

His position seemed to square at the time with Republicans, who also don't want the Bush administration in the news as they try to dig out of an electoral hole.

But to go after Pelosi, Republicans have had to start looking back, too. Republican former speaker Newt Gingrich is talking about a House investigation into Pelosi's claim. Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, is demanding increasingly detailed records of what the CIA told Congress about its interrogation program in 2002 and 2003.

The House is historically averse to investigating its own in the manner Gingrich has suggested. Without such an inquiry, it's not clear what would be done with the documents that Hoekstra is seeking.

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[ThomWV]

1. I think the Republicans now want a Commission because it will pollute evidence

and stay prosecutions.

[Cirque du So-What]

2. I hope this analysis is the correct one

I've read conjecture that the kerfuffle over what Ms. Pelosi knew and when she knew it could derail a truth commission.