I swear I've seen more of Cheney in the past month than I think I did during Bush's last year in office. And if it were at all possible, I think I like him less.
My biggest problem with him right now is, in the midst of the torture debate going on in the news and in the blogosphere, that we know he's a lying sack of crap. He lied about WMD's in Iraq and the Iraq-al Qaeda thread long after it was fashionable or practical for anyone to do so. And so he pushed the "Liberty Tower lie" on a show like Sean Hannity's, where, because Hannity simply doesn't possess an inch of forehead, it went unquestioned.
It just doesn't seem to have happened the way it gets told by the Bushies. As far as the "well, it worked" line of crap goes, there's plenty of people who are ready to see it doesn't, so much.
The recent op-ed by Ali Soufan illustrates this:
There was no actionable intelligence gained from using enhanced interrogation techniques on Abu Zubaydah that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics. In addition, I saw that using these alternative methods on other terrorists backfired on more than a few occasions — all of which are still classified. The short sightedness behind the use of these techniques ignored the unreliability of the methods, the nature of the threat, the mentality and modus operandi of the terrorists, and due process.
Defenders of these techniques have claimed that they got Abu Zubaydah to give up information leading to the capture of Ramzi bin al-Shibh, a top aide to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and Mr. Padilla. This is false. The information that led to Mr. Shibh’s capture came primarily from a different terrorist operative who was interviewed using traditional methods. As for Mr. Padilla, the dates just don’t add up: the harsh techniques were approved in the memo of August 2002, Mr. Padilla had been arrested that May.
One of the worst consequences of the use of these harsh techniques was that it reintroduced the so-called Chinese wall between the C.I.A. and F.B.I., similar to the communications obstacles that prevented us from working together to stop the 9/11 attacks. Because the bureau would not employ these problematic techniques, our agents who knew the most about the terrorists could have no part in the investigation. An F.B.I. colleague of mine who knew more about Khalid Shaikh Mohammed than anyone in the government was not allowed to speak to him.
What I've been able to glean from reading page after page of commentary about this "enhanced interrogation" the Bush Administration had claimed was necessary, seems to indicate that it wasn't, particularly. There were other ways. Legal ways. And that the intelligence that the interrogators were supposed to extract in those early days--
The whereabouts of Bin Laden? The hypothetical "ticking time bomb?"
No. A connection between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, which never materialized because it didn't exist.
Understandably, the information they got was mostly of the historical variety. You know, like the 8/6/01 PDB was supposed to be historical. It seems like the lawful intelligence-gathering methods we already had in place got us good information. When the 9/11 hijackers struck, Bush could tell us two days later it was al-Qaeda. How did he do that, if our intelligence agencies didn't have people who were quite good at what they did, and also already had the capabilities they needed?
But let's leave aside the question of "Did it work?" and even allow that some intelligence was produced that way (but don't be like Bill O'Reilly--read through to this conclusion:
"The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means,” Admiral Blair said in a written statement issued last night. “The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."
Let's not even go into the debate of was it moral. I say no. I don't look to religion for my morality, but reason, and the basic principal that I wouldn't want these life-wrecking, mind-wrecking things to be done to anyone, for whatever reason, because the ends do not justify the means. But oddly, Ralph Reed, a Christian, says yes.
(I never get Christians regarding support of different things, politically. The three things, just going by the Passion, that all Christians should detest with a "passion", should be capital punishment, torture and blashphemy laws. You would think. The railroading of Jesus Christ and his subsequent mistreatment and state-sponsored murder are in actual fact, tragic to read and think about. If I were around then, and I knew the Romans were executing a radical liberal Israeli religious reformer because of something he said, I might've passed the hat to see if we could've gotten him a lawyer or something. A stay of execution. I certainly would've protested his treatment. It was unconscionable.)
No, the real question is--Was it legal? Was it torture, and did it violate the Geneva Convetion on torture, which is a treaty we signed on to and the Constitution does say that we should respect treaties as binding law of the land. Historically, some Japanese were tried and hanged for torture, which included waterboarding, after WWII. Or, as Shep Smith of Fox News just so eloquently put it--"We do not fucking torture!"
And we shouldn't. It just shouldn't be done in our name. I don't remember being asked if I signed off on torture, or if I thought it was worth it. No Americans were, and how do we square acceptance of torture by this country, when we would despise it in any other? And also, I reject the idea that, well, some things aren't so bad, so they are just "harsh interrogation" and not this "torture" which would be illegal.
Bullshit. Words have meanings, and laws have precedents. It's easy enough to look them up and realize this stuff is what they call torture, and we should, and face the fucking music.
Hearing from Dick Cheney, or his daughter, for that matter, on this topic gives me a sense of revulsion. The former Vice-President, given to snarls lately about how Obama isn't doing anything the Cheney would've (and bully for Obama--the past Admin screwed up royally), is potentially culpable for his foreknowledge and acceptance of these war crimes. If the acts of torture were in fact committed so as to push a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq, perhaps this was Cheney's "hair on fire", "ticking time-bomb" sense that intell on an al-Qaeda/Iraq link would've been needed just in case the WMD in Iraq justification for war petered out. (As it looked like it was going to in the months leading up to the invasion, as the UN team never did find nothin'.)
The war was good enough for Halliburton, KBR, and Lockheed-Martin, I've no doubt. It really has been inconvenient, though, to the famillies of over 4000 American troops who've died there, the many wounded, the at least 100,000 Iraqis directly dead through war violence, the possibly hundreds of thousands more dead, the roughly one million refugees and the maybe 1.5 or two million internally displaced. And the US budget probably misses all the billions we have sunk into this conflict. And it's regrettable we probably have lost prestige around the world for what happened, and people have known for years about this before these memos came out, and finally--
Cheney needs to quit it, but he won't and I'm half-glad. I'm not the only person who can't stand him. I hate to be a poll-troll, but his numbers are bad, people don't trust him, and Hillary Clinton was dead-on perfectly right when she dismissed his blather by saying she didn't consider him a reliable source. The more he defends himself--the more he's going to need to. It brings attention to what happened, and that's how popular support for investigation and trials should start.
But in the meantime, the Rich Lowrey's and O'Reilly's and the Hannity's (who really should at least be the man Christopher Hitchens was and give waterboarding a go, since he said he would, don't you think?) need to get this through their thick, Cro-Magnon skulls--
Torture is illegal. There are reasons for it. There is a moral reason, and there is a practical reason. It harms a person. It gets bad intelligence. The problems only build from there, when the time comes to prosecute or to act on the intelligence so obtained. There are other methods, and they are often better methods, with the added benefit of being legal. And if any of you just simply feel safer knowing someone, somewhere, is having their human rights violated--then you are a coward of the worst sort, because you have decided that your safety is more valuable to you than scruples. You've already decided that anything goes. You've already fitted yourself for the torturer's halter, and said, "why not?"
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