Lefty blogs are saying that GOP pressure on Nancy is some kind of ploy to avoid a “truth commission” or prosecute Bush officials, and that the whole strategy could backfire.

Obama apologist, former TPM muckracker Greg Sergent cites, heh, Fox News, to make this point:

“Fox News: Focus On Pelosi Changes Subject From Whether To Prosecute Bush Officials

Check out this surprisingly candid moment on Fox, where a top network correspondent says that the GOP’s attack on Nancy Pelosi over what she knew about torture is a winner for the GOP because it changes the subject from whether Bush officials should be prosecuted:

The Fox correspondent, Jonathan Hunt, says the Pelosi focus is a distraction from a real debate about torture:

“Instead of this debate being about national security, what is and isn’t torture, what the Bush administration should and shouldn’t have allowed and whether anybody in that administration should now be prosecuted, the Republicans are now able to frame this debate as to whether Nancy Pelosi is fit to continue as Speaker. So they are not about to let their foot off the gas in any way, shape, or form.”

This mirrors what many Republicans, excited about the way this one is going, are saying privately. It’s also interesting that this level of candor is only likely to fire up the GOP base, which is hungry for a display of GOP aggressiveness and a win at all costs.

One other point: In an odd twist, you’d be unlikely to find such brazen GOP honesty about the motives at play here on any other major network.”

Dream on. The amature psychic abilities of a “network correspondent” aside, we didn’t start this fire, Pelosi did, and indeed if these “truth commissions” go forward there will a couple of other Democrats doing the Nancy Shuffle.

As I said before, other Democrats knew about the IHTs and gave their thumbs up in the fall/spring of 2002/03. It’s a matter of record. Only after they conspired later to make interrogations, the war, a political opportunity, did they’re tune change. Indeed I suspect that more memos may “surface” in the coming weeks to show just who knew what and when they knew. Remember, Obama doesn’t want this distraction now when he’s trying to save the world and as the Panetta memo shows he’s not above throwing his own beneath the bus to get this off the radar.

Once again there will be no “prosecution of Bush officials”, there is nothing to prosecute. If getting prosecuted for giving legal opinions were possible Janet Reno would have gotten the needle by now.

What has happened is that Republicans have pulled Democrats bluff on having hearings and Pelosi’s situation is but a tip of a very large piece of crow.

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