STEYN: Pelosi peregrinations

Uh-oh. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s performance at her press conference re waterboarding has raised, according to The Washington Post, “troubling new questions about the speaker’s credibility,” The dreaded T-word: “troubling.”

I doubt it will “trouble” the media for long, or at least not to the extent of bringing the Pelosi speakership to a sudden end - and, needless to say, I’m all in favor of Mrs. Pelosi remaining the face of congressional Democrats until November 2010. But her inconsistent statements do suggest a useful way of looking at America’s tortured torture debate:

Question: What does former Vice President Dick Cheney think of waterboarding?

He’s in favor of it. He was in favor of it then; he’s in favor of it now. He doesn’t think it’s torture, and he supports having it on the books as a vital option. On his recent TV appearances, he has sometimes given the impression he would not be entirely averse to performing a demonstration on his interviewers, but generally he says its use should be a tad more circumscribed. He is entirely consistent.

Question: What does Mrs. Pelosi think of waterboarding?

No, I mean really. Away from the cameras, away from the Capitol, in the deepest recesses of her - if she’ll forgive my naivete - soul. Sitting on a mountaintop, contemplating the distant horizon, chewing thoughtfully on a cranberry-almond granola bar, what does she truly believe about waterboarding?

Does she support it? Well, according to the CIA, she did way back when, more than six years ago.

Does she oppose it? According to Mrs. Pelosi, yes. In her varying accounts, she has:

c Accused the CIA of consciously “misleading the Congress” as to what it was doing.

c Admitted to having been briefed that waterboarding was in the playbook but that “we were not - I repeat - were not told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used.”

c Belatedly conceded she knew back in February 2003 that waterboarding was being used but had been apprised of the fact by “a member of my staff.”

As she said on Thursday, instead of doing anything about it, she decided to focus on getting more Democrats elected to the House.

It’s worth noting that, by most if not all of her multiple accounts, Mrs. Pelosi is as guilty of torture as anybody else. That’s not an airy rhetorical flourish, but a statement of law. As National Review’s Andy McCarthy points out, under Section 2340A(c) of the relevant statute, a person who conspires to torture is subject to the same penalties as the torturer.

Once Mrs. Pelosi was informed that waterboarding was part of the plan and actually was being used, she was in on the conspiracy and was as up to her neck in it as whoever actually was sticking it to poor old Abu Zubaydah and the other blameless lads.

That is, if you believe waterboarding is torture.

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