Remember Daniel Ellsberg?

John Aravosis at Americablog has this to say about today's revelation that Pelosi et al were briefed on the CIA torture tactics in 2002 and did nothing:

It's pretty clear that either one of the Republican members of Congress at the meeting, or the CIA, decided to leak what happened at a super-classified post-9/11 briefing in order to embarrass Pelosi and the Democrats. And I don't doubt for a minute that Bush approved the leak, as he always does.

It's also clear that had Pelosi raised any private objections during the meeting - remember, it took place in the first year after September 11 - Bush and the Republicans would have leaked that fact to the public (like they just did) and destroyed her career and marked her publicly as a traitor. No member of Congress, no American, could have spoken up about anything in the months after September 11 and survived. It's patently unfair to suggest that somehow because Pelosi didn't object then that she doesn't have the right to object now.

I'm sorry, but I simply can't agree that this excuses their acquiescence in the torture activities. Sometimes there are acts so execrable you can't just let them pass, even if it means you have to fall on your own sword to fight them. Torture is one of those. This is a stain on our country, on us as its citizens, and on humanity as a whole that simply won't wash away, no matter how many years may pass. We may well go down in history as the worst major power since Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union. If not, it will be because we led humanity into the abyss of depravity we ourselves have fallen into.

I have far more admiration for Daniel Ellsberg, who risked life in jail to let the world know what Nixon and his henchmen were up to than for Nancy Pelosi who was either too wedded to her job to try to save her country or too morally deficient to understand the depravity of torture.