How much did Nancy Pelosi know about 'harsh interrogation techniques', in particular waterboarding? What was she told about all this and when? Is she being entirely straight on the matter? I don't know and I don't have the time to pursue it further than I have. Enough of what I've seen suggests there's room for disquiet about it.
What I do have some confidence in saying is that the answer matters. I don't buy arguments of this kind:
Besides, the question of what Pelosi knew or didn't, or when she did or didn't know, is irrelevant to how W. and Cheney broke the law and authorized torture.
Or of this kind:
[It] is a complete diversion. Which is the whole reason the rightwing has pressed the Pelosi question in the first place. Every minute of cable television time spent talking about what Pelosi knew and when she knew it is a minute not devoted to talking about what Cheney ordered and when and why he ordered it.
What Pelosi knew and when may well be irrelevant to precisely how the law was broken and by whom, and be an attempted diversion by the right; but it is not irrelevant in general and it is not just a diversion. There is a difference between criminal responsibility, on the one hand, and more general complicity, on the other, and one shouldn't collapse that distinction. If, however, a Democrat of Pelosi's seniority did know and simply went along with it, how could this not matter? It would have been, then, part of the political background to what went wrong, and to what needs now to be assimilated and put right. The use of torture is wrong surely because of what it is, and not only because and when those who authorize, execute or go along with it at the highest levels are Republicans. The gravity of the issue should not be reduced by being made subordinate to considerations of party.