With a h/t to Tampa Bay political consultant Gregory Wilson, here’s a contrarian view on scoring yesterday’s pseudo-debate on terror, Gitmo and national security. I agree with Congressional Quarterly’s assessment of Barack Obama on conventional political terms. It is a truism: When you’re ’splaining, you’re losing. And I believe Obama made no headway with the crazy left who wants to shutter Guantanamo immediately and just cut loose the terrorists or bring them on down to circuit court for good ol’ U.S. justice system trials.

But Obama won the day, make no mistake about it. He was historic, clear in his ethics, determined in his purpose that we can win against terror without becoming terrorists ourselves. He may have lost in terms of short-term public opinion but he wins the longer war. And that is what CQ, in its traditional wisdom, fails to grasp.

Having said that, reading the full CQ article makes ya think…

Excerpts from the article after the jump:

From CQ:

There are certain rules to get you through campaigns:

When you’re explaining, you’re losing.

What counts is not what you’re saying, what counts is what you’re talking about.

Always shoot at the guy above you, and never shoot at the guy below you unless he’s catching up so fast you have no other option.

When you choose to engage, do so on terrain of your choosing, where you are strong and your enemy is weak.

And once you’ve chosen to engage on the terrain of your choice, make sure that if he brings a knife, you bring a gun.

Barack Obama — who ran a textbook, disciplined campaign for President, abiding by each of these rules and then some, and was rewarded for it by becoming only the third Democrat since 1945 to win a majority of the vote — appears this week to have totally abandoned the discipline that got him to where he is.

It may have been the worst news conference performance by a sitting Speaker of the House ever. Yesterday, Nancy Pelosi harmed her own cause and ratcheted up the torture debate in a newser in which she parsed her knowledge of CIA waterboarding briefings and accused the spy agency of lying to Congress.

Even Florida’s former Sen. Bob Graham (and his infamous lil’ notebooks) has leapt to her side, telling HuffPo that he, too, was lied to by the CIA about torture tactics and use. From that interview:

“When this issue started to resurface I called the appropriate people in the agency and said I would like to know the dates from your records that briefings were held,” Graham recalled. “And they contacted me and gave me four dates — two in April ‘02 and two in September ‘02. Now, one of the things I do, and for which I have taken some flack, is keep a spiral notebook of what I do throughout the day. And so I went through my records and through a combination of my daily schedule, which I keep, and my notebooks, I confirmed and the CIA agreed that my notes were accurate; that three of those four dates there had been no briefing. There was only one day that I had been briefed, which was September the 27th of 2002.”

Video of the full Pelosi news conference after the jump.

And here is how MSNBC played it:

So where does the truth stand in all of this? It’s muddy.

• Liberal Media Matters defends Pelosi and says the nets are ignoring a caveat on the original CIA notes that say they may not be accurate accounts of the briefings.
• The Hill says this is a classic “change the subject” move by Republicans, since Pelosi didn’t participate in ordering the torture and certainly doesn’t condone it today.
• Pelosi, however, raised the stakes in the fight over future torture investigations and possible criminal prosecutions by accusing the CIA of lying to Congress, Political Wire says.
• “Pelosi, CIA should have one of those Twitter fights, loser goes to jail.” — Wonkette

Has anyone else noticed that Dick Cheney just won’t go away?  Maureen Dowd of The New York Times has.  Her take on Cheney as the new “Rogue Diva of Doom” after the jump.

In Dowd’s latest she writes:

Cheney has replaced Sarah Palin as Rogue Diva.  Just as Jeb Bush and other Republicans are getting kinder and gentler, Cheney has popped out of his dungeon, scary organ music blaring, to carry on his nasty campaign of fear and loathing.

Read the rest of the article here.

This comes after Cheney appeared in an interview with CBS’ Bob Schieffer on Sunday still declaring the effectiveness and rightness of torture.

Cheney could very well be hurting the republican party rather than helping it. The GOP has been searching for a leader but instead has found nothing but prima donnas starting with Sarah Palin. During the McCain/Palin campaign, Joe the Plumber emerged as the Republican populist hero. Lately Rush Limbaugh has taken a leadership role for Republican purists. Just a week ago Ms. California stole the spotlight with her marriage protection activism. Now Cheney could be added to the lot of them as nothing but lost voices without a party to turn to.

One thing is for sure. Cheney isn’t going to provide strong leadership for the Republican Party because he doesn’t speak for the majority of conservatives. Leadership can only rise through the consensus of the Republican Party. SInce the party is rife with disagreement, and Cheney only exacerbates such disagreement, the party willl continue to struggle with its identity.

President Barack Obama has reveresed himself on how open his Administration will be on the torture approved by the previous George W. Bush Administration of Horrors, refusing to release Abu Ghraib torture photos. Daily Dish reports:

In what can only be seen as a stunning reversal, the president is now refusing to release photographs that would help prove that the abuse and torture techniques revealed at Abu Ghraib were endemic in the Bush military. I can’t help but wonder if this is related to his decision to appoint Stanley McChrystal as the commander of his Afghanistan war and occupation. There is solid evidence that McChrystal played an active part in enabling torture in Iraq, and his activities in charge of many secret special operations almost certainly involved condoning acts that might be illustrated by these photos. The MSM has, of course, failed to mention this in their fawning profiles of McChrystal.

A high-profile 2007 story by ABC News and correspondent Brian Ross was wrong when it reported that an Al-Quaeda suspect broke after a brief waterboarding.

The Plum Line reports:

The original 2007 story aired former CIA officer John Kiriakou’s unverified and second-hand claims that suspected terrorist Abu Zubaydah broke after being waterboarded for “probably 30, 35 seconds.” The story was suddenly the focus of renewed attention when The New York Times ran a big story earlier this week pointing out that the extensive waterboarding detailed in the torture memos sharply contradicted ABC’s widely-cited tale.

ABC News’ correction appears almost in passing in the network’s new story. It mentions that the new memos show that waterboarding was used far more often than originally thought, adding that Zubaydah was waterboarded “at least 83 times.” It continues:

That contradicts what former CIA officer John Kiriakou, who led the Zubaydah capture team, told ABC News in 2007 when he first revealed publicly that waterboarding had been used.

ABC doesn’t mention the huge role played by original story in shaping the subsequent debate, and to my knowledge the network hasn’t said it regrets the error. While it’s good that ABC corrected the record, the damage of the original story has long since been done.

“We are America! I don’t give a rats ass if it helps! We do not fucking torture!”

Can you really blame Shep for losing his cool? He’s surrounded by sycophants and morons of the worst kind. (Hello, Hannity!) I couldn’t take the studio tour at Fox News without losing my cool and getting Tazered by security.

On a side note, the banging on the desk was a nice touch. Video after the break …