WASHINGTON- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has stepped up Democrats’ calls to form a torture “truth commission,” urging President Obama not to give immunity to anyone who illegally abused terror thugs. Pelosi on Wednesday seized on Obama’s openness to prosecuting top Bush administration lawyers who formulated policies to strip, slap, shove and waterboard detainees said to be among Al Qaeda’s worst in U.S. custody after 9/11.
“It gives further impetus among members to have some kind of truth commission as to what happened,” Pelosi said. “I do not think immunity should be granted to everyone in a blanket way,” she added. Complicating matters was the disclosure that the CIA used waterboarding – which simulates drowning – on 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed 183 times. But ex-CIA Director Michael Hayden claimed at a congressional hearing last year that the practice ceased within a week of Mohammed’s March 1, 2003, capture. CIA officials could not explain the seeming discrepancy.