Robert Gibbs v. Helen Thomas on torture

By GottaLaff

I tried to catch what I could in this exchange between Helen Thomas and Robert Gibbs at the daily briefing. Most of this is verbatim, but unfortunately, not complete. However, the gist of it is represented accurately:

Helen: "Never look back"? What is this??

Gibbs: Let's not conflate his position on a commission with Webster's definition of history.

Helen, there are important things that face this country right now. We don't doubt that we can learn from history. There are crises [happening right now] [he lists them].

Helen protests strongly: Nobody should pay any price for the horror we've gotten into...? [the rest was hard to hear, as was most of what she said

Gibbs: It's important to understand, Helen, first and foremost to change the policy of this country. History will be left up to historians. The most important step that was taken in all of this debate was to end, once and for all, end the interrogation techniques.

[Torture] won't happen on President Obama's watch.

I loved Helen's questions (what I could hear, that is). I'm not as enthusiastic about Gibbs' answers, if you can call them that.