The confusion surrounding the topic of torture was picked up when the Democrats took the majority US House, not before.

December 9, 2007
By Kevin Drum

HARSH INTERROGATION....(click here) The sources for this story are so obviously intent on discrediting congressional Democrats that it's hard to know whether to take it at face value, but theWashington Post reports today that Democratic leaders in the House and Senate were fully briefed about the CIA's "harsh" interrogation methods beginning shortly after 9/11 and — with the exception of Jane Harman — issued no protests:

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

....Long before "waterboarding" entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

...."In fairness, the environment was different then because we were closer to Sept. 11 and people were still in a panic," said one U.S. official present during the early briefings. "But there was no objecting, no hand-wringing. The attitude was, 'We don't care what you do to those guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people.' "...

A lot of the information regarding all this was being digested by Americans through blogs that had no dog in the fight basically. There was a lot of political tone to the country because of the nationalism following the events of September 11th. Consequently, while the blogs were attempting to make sense out of all of this political mess they were deriving their information from Journalist Stenographer Judith Miller. So, the bloggers were doing their best, but, the information was tainted from the power players in the White House.

I have to laugh when I read the statement, "...issued no protests."

Legislators are going to issue protests in briefings. They are after all legislators. They attend briefings so they can meet in committee and formulate changes to the laws of the land. When US House Representative Pelosi was briefed on the subject of torture there were laws already established to prevent it. Thirty briefings doesn't mean US Rep. Pelosi or anyone else was at all thirty briefings.