Cheney: Free Pass For CIA Interrogators Gone Wild

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Former New York governor George Pataki who was in Manhattan when the World Trade Center was hit, used the opportunity to criticize the decision by Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate CIA interrogators who went beyond their legal guidance, saying it "jeopardizes" national security:

When the question of the day was the overall legitmacy of the legal opinions drafted by the DOJ's Office of Legal Council, every supporter touted the unambigious language that clearly defined the boundries and limitations for these enhanced interrogation tactics. However, now that he know that some CIA Interrogators went beyond the legal guidance outlined in those opinions, George Pataki and former Vice President Dick Cheney are now of the opinion that investigating even those that went beyond those clearly defined limits would "jeapordize" national security.

"Placing CIA officials who were acting in the aftermath of the worst attacks against our country and civilians in our history in possible criminal jeopardy years after the fact is in my mind a horrible decision. It jeopardizes our ability to continue to effectively protect our country against those who hate us and want to attack us again."

Oddly, Pataki claimed that his disapproval of the investigation sprung from a concern for the rule of law. "We must make sure we obey the rule of law and act in ways that are not just legal but moral," said Pataki. "But now, years after the fact, to consider charges is wrong for our country, wrong for our security and wrong for the entire world that believes in the rule of law." -

President Bush's war policy has taken this country so far into the abyss that he's left the Republican Party with the impossible task of trying to defend the undefendable at all cost. It has made honesty, integrity, and logic obsolete and no longer compatable with public discourse.

Instead, Bush defenders now have to rely on tender notions, contridiction, and prefaced statements to offer up even a flimsey argument. If you look at Pataki's statement above, he could have said that "Placing CIA officials in possible criminal jeopardy years after the fact is in my mind a horrible decision." But the right has lost the luxury of being direct and to the point. They have to sell everything now by making it a threat to national security or plain old unpatriotic.

Instead, Pataki had to add a sentance within a sentance as an excuse. So now it reads like "Placing CIA officials who were acting in the aftermath of the worst attacks against our country and civilians in our history in possible criminal jeopardy years after the fact is in my mind a horrible decision." Oh...so they broke the law while acting in the aftermath of the worst attack against our country. Well shit! - That's different then! - We can't have the rule of law getting in the way of fighting a war and torturing our prisoners.

When we start ignoring the rule of law or allowing public opinon to determine when it should or shouldn't apply, that is when we jeapordize national security. When we start to rationalize criminal acts based on the circumstances under which they were committed, that's when he jeapordize national security. When we begin to excuse criminal acts based on a flimsey rationalization that it jeapordizes our ability to effectively protect our country against those who hate us and want to attack us again, we're just a hop, skip, and a jump away from becoming a rogue nation.

It's quite clear now that to people like Former Gov. Pataki and Former Vice President Dick Cheney, that there are no limits or boundries to anything done in the name of national security. With a new chapter in the Bush-Cheney saga leaking out of the CIA like a book of the month club, I fear that it will not be long before we learn that what we already know is just the tip of the iceberg.

I fear that some really bad Deer-Hunter kind of shit has gone down at these secret prisons and that Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney's magical history tour actually had fuck-all to do with waterboarding. In a few years time, waterboarding will be a tender notion compared to random execution and negligent homicide in the process of "enhanced interrogation" People like Dick Cheney don't jump into CYA mode to the extent that he has just because we sprinkled some fucking water on someones face. Give me a break!

Chico Brisbane

More CIA Documents Fail To Back Up Cheney's Torture Claim

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For what I hope is the last time, former Vice President Dick Cheney has had his claims about his torture policy shot down and yet again not substantiated by another CIA memo released. The former Vice President needs to focus on which federal prison he’ll be spending time in and not spinning an alternate reality, which he has created for himself since leaving office.

On Monday, the CIA released two memos from 2004 and 2005, which Vice President Cheney said would “show specifically what we gained” from the Bush administration’s enhanced interrogation program. As people like Spencer Ackerman noted, those documents didn’t end up showing that at all, however:

Strikingly, they provide little evidence for Cheney’s claims that the “enhanced interrogation” program run by the CIA provided valuable information. In fact, throughout both documents, many passages — though several are incomplete and circumstantial, actually suggest the opposite of Cheney’s contention: that non-abusive techniques actually helped elicit some of the most important information the documents cite in defending the value of the CIA’s interrogations.

Despite the fact that they devoted heavy coverage to Cheney’s initial claims, major media outlets have largely buried these new facts. But as Greg Sargent notes, last night on CNN, even former Bush homeland security adviser Frances Fragos Townsend had to admit that Cheney still hasn’t been vindicated:

It’s very difficult to draw a cause and effect, because it’s not clear when techniques were applied vs. when that information was received. It’s implicit. It seems, when you read the report, that we got the — the — the most critical information after techniques had been applied. But the report doesn’t say that.



Cheney, of course, refuses to back down from his initial claims. Earlier this week he put out a statement saying that “individuals subjected to Enhanced Interrogation Techniques provided the bulk of intelligence we gained about al Qaeda.” However, there is still no evidence that the torture techniques were responsible and necessary for producing the intelligence.

Spanish Prosecutor Narrows Focus To Bush Six

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Spain narrows it’s focus to the “Bush Six” which places US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other senior Bush administration officials at risk going to jail for crafting the policies that led to the torture of prisoners at Guantánamo? As of yet, no government prosecutor is targeting them in the United States. But thousands of miles away, Spanish attorney Gonzalo Boyé is chasing after Gonzales and five other lawyers, and he has a chance—perhaps not a large one—of convincing his country's legal system to charge these former Bush aides with human rights violations.

For more than a decade, Spanish courts have been the terror of torturers and genocidaires the world over. Operating under the principle of "universal jurisdiction," the country has claimed the right to investigate and, if necessary, prosecute human rights cases that occurred beyond its borders if the countries in question fail to act. Spain first invoked its status as the world's court of last resort in 1998, when Judge Baltazar Garzón of the National Court in Madrid issued an arrest warrant for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for his regime's torture and murder of Spanish citizens. Pinochet ultimately escaped prosecution in Spain, but Garzón's move paved the way for more cases.

Sixteen are currently moving through Spanish courts, targeting perpetrators from Israel, China, Guatemala, Argentina, and El Salvador, among other countries. Still, for all the shuffling of paper, Spain has produced only one conviction under the banner of universal jurisdiction: that of Adolfo Scilingo, an Argentinean convicted in 2005 of assassinating left-wing dissidents during the country's "dirty war."

Most recently, Garzón has turned his attention to six former Bush administration figures accused of putting forth specious legal arguments to justify clear violations of the United Nations Convention Against Torture. The so-called "Bush Six" case targets Gonzales; John Yoo, former Justice Department attorney and lead author of the "torture memos"; Douglas Feith, former deputy secretary of defense for policy; William Haynes II, Pentagon general counsel; Jay Bybee, former assistant attorney general; and David Addington, former chief of staff and legal adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.

The investigation is the handiwork of Boyé, a human rights lawyer who represents several former Guantánamo detainees. According to their criminal complaint, they allege that the Bush Six "participated actively and decisively in the creation, approval and execution of a judicial framework that allowed for the deprivation of fundamental rights to a large number of prisoners," and legitimized "the implementation of new interrogation techniques including torture." In March, Garzón took up Boyé's case and initiated an official investigation; another National Court judge, Ismail Moreno, has since taken over the matter. Theoretically, assuming investigators gather sufficient evidence, indictments and prosecutions could follow, though it's unlikely that any of the Bush administration lawyers would choose to show up in Spain for a trial.

Boyé himself is no stranger to terrorism cases. He spent eight years in a Spanish prison for his involvement in the 1988 kidnapping of businessman Emiliano Revilla, who was held hostage for eight months by members of ETA, a Basque separatist group that appears on the US State Department's list of international terrorist organizations. Boyé claims to only have lent the kidnappers his ID and characterizes his incarceration as the result of "a very unfair trial."
Now, Boyé has become something of a de facto prosecutor. But a recent resolution passed by the Spanish parliament could undermine his case. Spain's two leading political parties—the Socialists and the People's Party—overwhelmingly passed a measure on May 19 calling for a law that would restrict the use of universal jurisdiction. Will the measure quash the Bush Six investigation?

Liz Cheney: Defending Daddy Tour Raises Call For Investigation

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As Liz Cheney's whirlwind media junket slips into overdrive, her mug and message have been seen and heard on national television 22 times in the passed 24 days. Ms. Cheney who is not a member of the media, not a journalist, not a politician nor a candidate for public office, yet she seemes to have been given open access to a media platform to repeat the same old rationalizations in defense of her father's enhanced interrogation program, vis-a-vis torture.


Liz Cheney has made seven national appearances since Monday to defend her father, while similtaniously attacking Obama with rediculous Republican talking points. None of the networks that has featured Cheney's daughterit have questioned why they are seeking commentary on Dick Cheney's national security efforts from his own daughter. Liz Cheney not only sounds like her father, she lies like her father routinely on national television, she occasionally even
repeats bogus arguments that even her father won't say anymore. This isn't to pick on MSNBC, which has featured Liz Cheney's on-air attacks four times in the last eight days, and six times in the last 24 days. The other cable nets are just as bad.

In an interview with NBC News' Andrea Mitchell, Cheney insisted that her father had always disavowed the notion that there was a link between Iraq and al Qaeda and September 11th, while simultaneously suggesting that such a link was true. Then she sort of got snippy with Mitchell for the way she kept intimating that maybe this was all a little nonsensical.


The segment began generically enough, with Liz Cheney saying that she was, is, and continues to be troubled by the way the current administration keeps characterizing torture and rendition and the maintenance of Kafka-esque penal colonies as a bad thing. Where things really got testy -- downright mindbending -- was this exchange over Vice President Dick Cheney's appearance at the National Press Club, at which time, as Mitchell pointed out, he "seemed to be taking a step back" from contentions he had previously made about the connections between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

WATCH VIDEO :

Liz Cheney not only sounds like her father, she lies like her father routinely on national television, she occasionally even repeats bogus arguments that even her father won't say anymore. This isn't to pick on MSNBC, which has featured Liz Cheney's on-air attacks four times in the last eight days, and six times in the last 24 days. The other cable nets are just as bad.
In an interview with NBC News' Andrea Mitchell, Cheney insisted that her father had always disavowed the notion that there was a link between Iraq and al Qaeda and September 11th, while simultaneously suggesting that such a link was true. Then she sort of got snippy with Mitchell for the way she kept intimating that maybe this was all a little nonsensical.

MITCHELL: Has he rethought that? Was he rephrasing it?

LIZ CHENEY: No, this is something he has actually said for many years. There was a report in the aftermath of 9/11 that came from the CIA that Mohammad Atta had met in Prague --

MITCHELL: It was quickly discredited!

LIZ CHENEY: Well, let me finish. So, there was a report, and when the report was outstanding, you had a number of people in the administration publicly talking about the fact that there could have been a connection in terms of the Mohammad Atta meeting. Once it became clear that the report didn't hold up, he and others in the administration were out publicly saying that and there's been a real attempt in my view to blur the distinction. He has not said that there is a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.


That's the core foundational document of the Iraq War and in it, clearly, the administration is arguing vehemently that there was a link between Iraq and both the September 11th attack and al Qaeda.

This warped recall of historical fact continues:

LIZ CHENEY: The issue is whether there's a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, which as he mentioned in that speech, George Tenet himself testified to, there's much evidence between the connection of Saddam and al Qaeda and Saddam and other terrorist organizations.

MITCHELL: Well, al Qaeda in Iraq, which was an offshoot, but didn't exist before the start of the war.

LIZ CHENEY: That's actually not true.

No, Liz, it actually is true, the testimony of "George Tenet himself" (I gather the "himself" is added to imply we should revere this historic bungler) notwithstanding.

In July of 2004, the 9-11 Commission found that there was no "collaborative operational relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda:

"We have seen no evidence that these or the earlier contacts ever developed into a collaborative operational relationship. Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq cooperated with al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks against the United States."
At around the same time, the Senate Intelligence Committee agreed with these findings:


MITCHELL: Has he rethought that? Was he rephrasing it?


LIZ CHENEY: No, this is something he has actually said for many years. There was a report in the aftermath of 9/11 that came from the CIA that Mohammad Atta had met in Prague --


MITCHELL: It was quickly discredited!


LIZ CHENEY: Well, let me finish. So, there was a report, and when the report was outstanding, you had a number of people in the administration publicly talking about the fact that there could have been a connection in terms of the Mohammad Atta meeting. Once it became clear that the report didn't hold up, he and others in the administration were out publicly saying that and there's been a real attempt in my view to blur the distinction. He has not said that there is a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.



She's correct that there's been a real effort to blur the distinction! But it's her father and the administration he participated in said effort. If you are looking for evidence of this, well, heck! Let's take a look at the 2002 Joint Resolution to Authorize the use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq.
In plain English, it says:


Whereas members of al-Qaida, an organization bearing responsibility for attacks on the United States, its citizens, and interests, including the attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, are known to be in Iraq;



Whereas Iraq continues to aid and harbor other international terrorist organizations, including organizations that threaten the lives and safety of American citizens;


Whereas the attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001, underscored the gravity of the threat posed by the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction by international terrorist organizations;


Additional false foundation comes later in the Authorization:
Whereas Congress has taken steps to pursue vigorously the war on terrorism through the provision of authorities and funding requested by the President to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such persons or organizations;


Whereas the President and Congress are determined to continue to take all appropriate actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such persons or organizations.


That's the core foundational document of the Iraq War and in it, clearly, the administration is arguing vehemently that there was a link between Iraq and both the September 11th attack and al Qaeda.

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Previously undisclosed Justice Department e-mail messages, interviews and newly declassified documents show that some of the lawyers, including James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general who argued repeatedly that the United States would regret using harsh methods, went along with a 2005 legal opinion asserting that the techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency were lawful.

That opinion, giving the green light for the C.I.A. to use all 13 methods in interrogating terrorism suspects, including

waterboarding and up to 180 hours of sleep deprivation, "was ready to go out and I concurred," Mr. Comey wrote to a colleague in an April 27, 2005, e-mail message obtained by The New York Times.

While signing off on the techniques, Mr. Comey in his e-mail provided a firsthand account of how he tried unsuccessfully to discourage use of the practices. He made a last-ditch effort to derail the interrogation program, urging Attorney General

Alberto R. Gonzales to argue at a White House meeting in May 2005 that it was "wrong."

"In stark terms I explained to him what this would look like some day and what it would mean for the president and the government," Mr. Comey wrote in a May 31, 2005, e-mail message to his chief of staff, Chuck Rosenberg. He feared that a case could be made "that some of this stuff was simply awful."

The e-mail messages are now in the hands of investigators at the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which is preparing a report expected to be released this summer on the Bush administration lawyers who approved waterboarding and other harsh methods. The inquiry, under way for nearly five years, will be the Justice Department’s fullest public account of its role in the interrogation program, which

President Obama has ended.

In years of bitter public debate, the department has sometimes seemed like a black-and-white moral battleground over torture. The main authors of memorandums authorizing the methods —

John C. Yoo, Jay S. Bybee and Steven G. Bradbury — have been widely pilloried as facilitators of torture.

Others, including Mr. Comey,

Jack Goldsmith and Daniel Levin, have largely escaped criticism because they raised questions about interrogation and the law. But a closer examination shows a more subtle picture. None of the Justice Department lawyers who reviewed the interrogation question argued that the methods were clearly illegal.

For example:
Mr. Goldsmith, now a

Harvard law professor, unnerved the C.I.A. in June 2004 by withdrawing a 2002 memorandum written by Mr. Yoo that said only pain equal to that produced by organ failure or death qualified as torture.

In addition, in a previously undisclosed letter to the agency, Mr. Goldsmith put a temporary halt to waterboarding. But he left intact a secret companion memorandum from 2002 that actually authorized the harsh methods, leaving the C.I.A. free to use all its methods except waterboarding, including wall-slamming, face-slapping, stress positions and more.

¶Mr. Levin, now in private practice, won public praise with a 2004 memorandum that opened by declaring "torture is abhorrent." But he also wrote a letter to the C.I.A that specifically approved waterboarding in August 2004, and he drafted much of Mr. Bradbury’s lengthy May 2005 opinion authorizing the 13 methods.

¶Mr. Comey, who had forced a 2004 showdown with White House officials over the

National Security Agency’s surveillance program, concurred in that Bradbury opinion. His objections focused on a second legal opinion that authorized combinations of the methods. He expressed "grave reservations" and asked for a week to revise the memorandum, warning Mr. Gonzales that "it would come back to haunt him and the department," Mr. Comey said in a 2005 e-mail message to Mr. Rosenberg.

Justice Department lawyers involved in the opinions felt torn between what was legal and what was advisable, Mr. Levin said. "Obviously you can only do that which is legal," he said in a recent interview. "But that does not mean you should automatically do something simply because it is legal."

The e-mail messages and documents provide new details about a critical year in the interrogation saga, beginning in mid-2004. The C.I.A. inspector general had questioned the legality and effectiveness of the harsh methods, prompting a review of the program. Under intense White House pressure, the Justice Department lawyers in May 2005 approved a series of opinions that reauthorized the harshest practices.

The lawyers had to interpret a 1994 antitorture law written largely with despotic foreign regimes in mind, but used starting in 2002, in effect, as a set of guidelines for American interrogators. The law defined torture as treatment "specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering." By that standard, a succession of Justice Department lawyers concluded that the C.I.A.’s methods did not constitute torture.

The only issues that provoked debate were waterboarding, which Mr. Goldsmith questioned, and some combinations of multiple techniques, which Mr. Comey resisted. Some outside experts agree that the language of the 1994 law is strikingly narrow. "There’s no doubt whatsoever that a great deal of coercive treatment that most people would call torture is not prohibited by the federal antitorture statute," said Benjamin Wittes, a

Brookings Institution scholar who has studied interrogation policy.

But many believe that even under that law, the Justice Department should have recognized that waterboarding, at least, was torture. To argue otherwise, said Brian Z. Tamanaha, a

St. John’s University law professor who has studied the interrogation memorandums, required "extraordinary contortions in language and legal analysis."

Waterboarding, the near-drowning method that Mr. Obama has described as torture, was used on three operatives for Al Qaeda in 2002 and 2003. The C.I.A. never used the technique after it was reauthorized in 2005.

Bush Kept America Safe: A Fantasy

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George W. Bush claims that his torture policies have kept America safe for seven years and that information obtained via these violations of the Geneva Convention have assertained specific information that have prevented subsequent terrorist attacks (plural) from taking place. Yet we have not heard word one as to the time, place, manor, and person or persons involved in these thwarted attacks, and what judicial measure of justice has been served upon the would-be terrorist?

Much like the so-called terrorist sleeper cell cases of Detroit, Portland, Lackawana, etal, there seems to be an eliment of fantasy in many of claims that Bush and Cheney make in justifying their torture programs. Cheney recently stated in an interview with CBS that he was convinced, absolutely convinced that these policies have saved hundreds of thousands of American lives. Try as I may, I cannot accept such a claim at face value and particularly due it's source.

If the Septmember 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center claimed 3,500 lives, what kind of attack could Dick Cheney possibly believe his torture policy was directly responsible for interrupting that saved hundreds of thousands of lives. The fact that he says "I'm convinced" that we saved hundreds of thousands of lives makes it quite clear that this claim is nothing more then an assumption, if not wishful thinking and that it has no basis in fact. Therefore, if he is only convinced and not certain that hundreds of thousands of lives were spared, then whatever information that was obtained via the waterboard would also be assumptive and speculative at best.

If you step back and look at the big picture surrounding this issue, I submit that it was actually President Clinton who is responsible for keeping America safe for seven years following the February 26, 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. As disconnected as the FBI, DOJ, CIA, and State Departments were during that time, Ramsi Youseff and a whole list of other individuals responsible were caught and brought to justice rather swiftly. Not only do I disagree that George Bush kept America safe as he cliams, I believe that Bush ignored vital information that was passed on to him by the Clinton Administration during the transition in regards to Osama Bin Ladin.

We all know that Bush gave no creedence to the "Osama Bin Ladin Determined To Strike Inside of The United States." memo and the famous "Okay, you've covered your ass." line when he was briefed yet again in person regarding OBL.

Way back in 1993, many may have wondered whether the World Trade Center bombing itself is not a harbinger of the train wreck coming. Well...we now have that answer and no matter how you want to disect it, it happened on Bush 43's watch, and his lack of attention and concern over Osama Bin Ladin was a key factor.

Chico Brisbane

Dick Cheney Terrified Of Prosecution

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Former Vice President Dick Cheney is suffering from an adrenaline dump now that he has a view of his torture program from the side line. No longer the puppet master, he is seeing not only the totality of what he and George Bush have done over the passed 8 years, but all of the deception to the American people and the congress they felt was necessary to make it happen.

"I’m convinced, absolutely convinced, that we saved thousands, perhaps

hundreds of thousands, of lives," Cheney said recently on CBS.

If a horrific terrorist attack such as 9/11 claimed 3,500 lives. What kind of attack could Cheney possibly be convinced, absolutely convinced was thwarted by his actions and saved hundreds of thousands of lives? The only event where numbers of that magnitude come into play are the number of lives lost in the very war of choice that he and George Bush waged against Afghanistan and Iraq. His frightening realization was only made worse by President Obama releasing the internal memos from the Office of Legal Council that are at best, a pathetic attempt at justifying torture.

You simply cannot make legal what is illegal with a bunch of lawyers in a basement office over at the Department of Justice. That would require an act of congress and both Cheney and Bush knew that they would get no such thing from this congress. With the writing on the wall, Cheney embarked on a media junket, not out of love for his country or the honest belief that his actions were justified, but to save his own ass. This is Dick Cheney we're talking about-- can you imagine the level of desperation this man must be at to enlist the help of his wife and daughter to help fight his battle?

Many in the media have asked this very question. Why is Cheney -- someone who had avoided the media for most of his eight years as vice president -- suddenly looking for an audience no matter what the subject. He's said that the anti-terror policies of the Bush administration were "exactly the right thing to do" and that "there isn’t anybody there on the other side to tell the truth." -- He also says that we are thretened and more unsafe due to Obama abandoning many of these inhanced interrogation tactics. So which it it? -- Does Cheney believe that he could possibly convince Obama to adopt his torture program verbatum? - Does anyone belive that Cheney really cares about the safety of the American people or any person for that matter who is not related to him by blood? -- All Cheney cares about is reducing public support for a criminal inquiry into the torture regime that he authorized. PERIOD! -- He is pinning his hopes on being able to fool a simple majority of Americans one last time so that he can, once and for all, retreat to his beloved undisclosed location.

Last night on CNN, however, Cheney’s daughter Liz revealed that fear of prosecution is indeed a motivating factor in the former vice president’s current media campaign:
L. CHENEY: I don’t think he planned to be doing this, you know, when they left office in January. But I think, as it became clear that President Obama was not only going to be stopping some of these policies, that he was going to be doing things like releasing the — the techniques themselves, so that the terrorists could now train to them, that he was suggesting that perhaps we would even be prosecuting former members of the Bush administration.

Watch it:


Does Liz Cheney also fear that her dad will be prosecuted for his role in the Bush administration’s torture program? Perhaps so. As Steve Benen has noted, "Liz Cheney has been all over the television news" as well, with "12 appearances, in nine and a half days, spanning four networks."

Dick Cheney's Torture Program Exposed

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For all of Dick Cheney's recent efforts to defend his torture program, it all seem too little and too late now that orders to torture have been traced directly back to the former vice president himself.

Am I Wrong To Regret Voting For Obama?

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When George W. Bush invaded Iraq, he committed the United States to the reckless task of disassembling a sovereign nation, and then reassembling it according to his wishes. In the process of mishandling the war, the country and congress became aware of just how misleading the president and his administration were in seeking to gain approval for the war. Now that Bush is out of office, internal DOJ memos are casting a far more sinister light on the former president and vice presidents insatiable appetite for war.

In an attempt to counter the recently declassified memos, the former vice president has embarked on a media tour to justify the torture detainees while other Bush sycophants echo the same flimsy rational. They claim that water boarding is not torture and even if it is, it was necessary to keep America safe from another terrorist attack. The bottom line is that where we go one as a nation, we go all as a nation, and if we facilitate our own Hanoi Hilton, we have no moral ground to stand on should American soldiers be subjected to torture in the future. NONE WHATSOEVER!

When George H.W. Bush was ramping up to the Gulf War, Jimmy Carter sent a letter to the United Nations Security Council urging them not to rush into war without exploring a negotiated solution. The first President Bush and other Republicans in Washington considered this treasonous, a former president trying to thwart a sitting one, lobbying foreign diplomats to oppose his own country on a war resolution.

In 2002, when George W. Bush was ramping up to his war against Saddam, Al Gore made a speech trying to slow down that war resolution, pointing out that pivoting from Osama to Saddam for no reason, initiating “pre-emptive” war, and blowing off our allies would undermine the war on terror.

Charles Krauthammer called Gore’s speech “a disgrace.” Michael Kelly, his fellow Washington Post columnist, called it “vile” and “contemptible.” Newt Gingrich himself said that the former vice president Gore asserting that President Bush was making America less safe was “well outside the mark of an appropriate debate.”

“I think the president should be doing what he thinks is best as commander in chief,” Gingrich said flatly.

Now, however, Gingrich backs Dick Cheney when he asserts that President Obama has made America less safe. What was once treasonous is now ones civic duty in the minds of many republicans that fear for the demise of their party. Asked by Bob Schieffer on Sunday how America could torture when it made a mockery of our ideals, Cheney blithely gave an answer that surely would have been labeled treasonous by Rush Limbaugh, if a Democratic ex-vice president had said it about a Republican president.

“Well, then you’d have to say that, in effect, we’re prepared to sacrifice American lives rather than run an intelligent interrogation program that would provide us the information we need to protect America,” Doomsday Dick said.

The man who never talked is now the man who won’t shut up. The man who’s “SO WHAT?” line was the usual response to public opinion is now whining at nausium about how President Obama is holding back documents that should be made public. Cheney, who had five deferments to get out of going to Vietnam, would rather follow an oxy-cotin addict like Rush Limbaugh who has had three divorces and who also avoided Vietnam, than a four-star general who spent his life serving his country.

“Bush 41 cares about decorum and protocol,” said an official. “I’m sure he doesn’t appreciate Cheney acting out. He is giving the whole party a black eye just as Jeb is out there trying to renew the party.”

Cheney unleashed, egged on by the combative Lynne and Liz, is pretty much the same as Cheney underground: He’s batty, and he thinks he was the president. Bush admired Cheney’s balls, but grew increasingly skeptical of him, the more he learned about foreign policy himself, and the more he got pulled into a diplomatic mode by Condi in the second term. There were even reports of W. doing a funny Cheney imitation and that it dawned on him that Cheney and Rummy represented a scofflaw, paranoid Nixon cell within his White House.

“Toward the end, 43 was just as confused as anybody about what makes Cheney tick,” said a Bush family loyalist.

Cheney’s numskull ideas — he still loves torture (dubbed “13th-century” stuff by Bob Woodward), Gitmo and scaring the bejesus out of Americans. He has no coherent foreign policy viewpoint. He still doesn’t fathom that his brutish invasion of Iraq unbalanced that part of the world, empowered Iran and was a force multiplier for Muslims who hate America. He left our ports unsecured, our food supply unsafe, the Taliban rising and Osama on the loose. No matter if or when terrorists attack here — and they’re on their own timetable, not a partisan red/blue state timetable — Cheney will be deemed the primary one who made America more vulnerable. W.’s dark surrogate father is trying to pull the G.O.P. into a black hole of zealotry, just as the sensible brother who lost his future to the scamp brother is trying to get his career back on track.

When Cheney was in the first Bush administration, he was odd man out. Poppy, James Baker, Brent Scow croft and Colin Powell corralled Cheney’s “Genghis Khan” side, as it was known, and his “rough streak.” Cheney didn’t care for Powell even then.But with W., “Back Seat” — Cheney’s Secret Service name in the Ford administration — clambered up front. Then he totaled the car. And no amount of yapping on TV is going to change that when history is written. On the other hand, I have become so frustrated by President Obama's soft stand on holding those responsible for these war crimes accountable, that I am on the verge of regretting my November 3, 2008 for one Barack Hussein Obama. Was Sean Hannity right all along?

Chico Brisbane

Bob Graham: I Don't Recall Being Briefed On Waterboarding

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From TMP
By Zachary Roth - May 11, 2009, 4:13PM

Bob Graham, the Democratic former Florida senator, has said he has no memory of being told in a briefing about waterboarding or other harsh interrogation techniques, as a recently released CIA document indicates. Graham told Greg Sargent this afternoon: "I do not have any recollection of being briefed on waterboarding or other forms of extraordinary interrogation techniques, or Abu Zubaydah being subjected to them."

Greg adds:
Graham denied being told about EITs, and argued that the presence of two staff members at the meeting (as indicated in the records) would have made it "highly unusual" for the briefers to divulge such sensitive info. "I don't recall having had one of those kinds of briefings with staff present," he said. "That would defeat the purpose of keeping a tight hold" on the info.
Graham's claim would appear to cast further doubt on the accuracy of a CIA document released last week. The document indicates that Graham, at the time the chair of the Senate intelligence committee, attended a CIA briefing in September 2002, at which the use of harsh interrogation techniques on Zubaydah was discussed.

The document also indicates that a briefing a few weeks earlier for Nancy Pelosi, who was then the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, covered the same subjects. And that a top Pelosi aide was told in 2003 that torture had been used. Republican have used the documents to attack Pelosi, who has said that she wasn't briefed on the fact that the techniques had already been used. CIA director Leon Panetta noted in a letter accompanying the document that it may not be entirely accurate. We have our own call in to Graham and will let you know what we hear from him.

Investigators Examining Interrogations, Legal Advice

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Yesterday, the Washington Post published an article on the Senate Intelligence Committee’s investigation of Bush-era interrogation techniques. Greg Sargent flagged two paragraphs of the story revealing that the White House intends to release a 2004 CIA report that casts serious doubt on the effectiveness of Bush’s torture program:

When the Justice Department said seven years ago that CIA interrogators at a secret prison in Thailand could make a suspected al-Qaeda leader fear he was drowning, it prescribed precise limits: Water could be poured from a cup or small watering can onto a saturated cloth covering his mouth and nose, inhibiting breathing for up to 40 seconds. It could be repeated, after allowing three or four full breaths, for up to 20 minutes.

But when the technique was employed on Abu Zubaida and later on 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and al-Qaeda planner Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the interrogators in several cases applied what the CIA's Office of Inspector General described in a secret 2004 report as "large volumes of water" to the cloths, explaining that their aim was to be more "poignant and convincing," according to a recently declassified Justice Department account.

To assess whether interrogators complied with the department's guidance, Senate intelligence committee investigators are interviewing those involved, examining hundreds of CIA e-mails and reviewing a classified 2005 study by the agency's lawyers of dozens of interrogation videotapes, according to government officials who said they were not authorized to be quoted by name. Officials familiar with the Justice Department's inquiries into policymaking on detainees during the Bush administration said Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has not ruled out conducting a similar investigation.

The issue has attracted scrutiny because of President Obama's statement April 22 that those involved would be immune from prosecution if they "carried out some of these operations within the four corners of legal opinions or guidance that had been provided from the White House."

Portions of the CIA inspector general report that have been made public and an account of detainees' experiences by the International Committee of the Red Cross highlight other potential excesses: the punching and beating of at least nine detainees in ways that appeared to go beyond authorized abdominal and facial "slaps"; the extended confinement of at least one detainee in a box so small that he had to crouch despite approval only for seated confinement; the slamming of detainees into firm walls, instead of the authorized pushing into a "false" wall that gave way; and the shackling of detainees' arms to overhead hooks or pipes, requiring that the prisoners stand for days at a time, despite the apparent absence of clear, written authorization by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel for such shackling before 2005

The videotape study, which the Senate intelligence committee demanded to see in 2005 but did not receive until last year, assessed the legality of interrogations that occurred between April and December 2002. Its conclusions have not been disclosed, and the CIA destroyed the videotapes in late 2005. As early as October 2002, a lawyer for the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, Jonathan Fredman, told officers at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that "the videotaping of even totally legal techniques will look 'ugly,' " a recent report by the Senate Armed Services Committee said.

Government officials familiar with the CIA's early interrogations say the most powerful evidence of apparent excesses is contained in the "top secret" May 7, 2004, inspector general report, based on more than 100 interviews, a review of the videotapes and 38,000 pages of documents. The full report remains closely held, although White House officials have told political allies that they intend to declassify it for public release when the debate quiets over last month's release of the Justice Department's interrogation memos.

According to excerpts included in those memos, the inspector general's report concluded that interrogators initially used harsh techniques against some detainees who were not withholding information. Officials familiar with its contents said it also concluded that some of the techniques appeared to violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, ratified by the United States in 1994.

Although some useful information was produced, the report concluded that "it is difficult to determine conclusively whether interrogations have provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks," according to the Justice Department's declassified summary of it. The threat of such an imminent attack was cited by the department as an element in its 2002 and later written authorization for using harsh techniques.
When the report was finished, CIA official Constance Rea told a New York court in January 2008, the inspector general "notified DOJ and other relevant oversight authorities of the review's findings." But two Bush administration officials privy to its conclusions said it did not provoke a specific CIA "referral" to the department suggesting an investigation of potential criminal liability, and no such investigation was undertaken at the time.

A U.S. intelligence official, asked for comment Friday, said that at the time of the inspector general report, the agency's general counsel "took issue with the interpretations of law put forward" in that report. "The bar for criminal referrals is low -- basically the possibility that a crime may have been committed. If it was all as clear-cut as the IG narrative suggests, why were no referrals made?"

The report's conclusions nonetheless prompted CIA general counsel John A. Rizzo to request fresh statements by the Justice Department that what the agency had been doing was indeed legal. Steven G. Bradbury, then deputy assistant attorney general, responded in May 2005 by issuing three opinions explaining why the interrogations did not violate the Convention Against Torture.

Legal experts say that bringing criminal charges against the CIA interrogators or those who ordered harsh methods would be akin to prosecuting police officers for brutality, but it could require also proving that the interrogators acted in bad faith.
David Kaye, a former State Department lawyer who runs UCLA's International Human Rights Program, said, "I don't think we know . . . the mechanics of how OLC legal advice made its way to people in the field, and it's the mechanics that will help investigators know whether there was bad faith in the interrogation program on the ground."

He added that U.S. anti-torture laws bar even "the conspiracy to commit torture," and those are the provisions that "should cause concern for [any] senior-level officials" who sanctioned improper interrogations, even from a distance.

Why Do Republicans Only Apply The Law To Democrats?

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Why Do Republicans Only Apply The Rule Of Law To Democrats?

TORTURED LOGIC

From: TNR – By: Jonathan Chait

Remember the Rule of Law? In the late 1990s, it was all the rage in conservative circles. Having maneuvered Bill Clinton into a position where he could either lie under oath or suffer massive personal and political embarrassment, conservatives reasoned that Clinton must be held accountable for perjury or the basic underpinnings of democracy would be shattered. The Republican sensibility was best reflected by the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which not only crusaded for impeachment but demanded, in 2001, that Bill Clinton be indicted even after leaving office. The Journal rejected the logic of promoting healing and insisted that a post-presidency indictment would uphold "the principle that even Presidents and ex-Presidents are not above the law."

Over the last decade, though, the right's thinking on this question has evolved. Today, the administration malfeasance consists of illegal torture, a crime I'd argue is no less serious than lying under oath about fellatio. Yet Republicans now believe that the Rule of Law is not only consistent with letting administration crimes go unpunished but actually requires it. To prosecute the departed administration would make us (to use their new catchphrase) a "banana republic"--the premise being that banana republics are defined not by their use of torture but by their overly zealous enforcement of anti-torture laws.

The GOP line is once again reflected by the Journal editorial page, which now thunders against "a new Administration prosecuting its predecessor for policy disagreements." The editorial notably fails to even address the question of whether the previous administration complied with the law, which is apparently no longer an important element of the Rule of Law.
The right's newfound outrage is a more hysterical manifestation of the mainstream sentiment that it would be an unseemly form of vengeance or "looking backward" to hold the previous administration legally accountable for torture. It's a bizarre sentiment. The prosecution of any crime is inherently backward-looking. We prosecute law-breakers to keep them or others from breaking the law.

Now, exceptions can be made, and the question of whom to prosecute is tricky. It seems unfair to prosecute CIA agents who tortured, as they had been specifically advised that techniques like waterboarding were legal. It's likewise tricky to prosecute the Bush administration lawyers who wrote torture-authorizing memos. Administration defenders assert that those lawyers were "acting in good faith." And, yes, they were making a good-faith effort to stop terrorism, but to suggest that they were making a good-faith effort to interpret the law insults their intelligence and ours. A recent Washington Post story leaves the impression that torture-memo author Jay Bybee, now a federal judge, realized the tendentiousness of his memos, which said waterboarding isn't torture (and therefore is legal) because it does not inflict "severe physical or mental pain or suffering."

The best defense against holding Bush officials accountable for torture is that September 11 freaked out the entire country and that we can't judge their actions by the standards of how they look "on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009," as Obama's intelligence director puts it. This argument would carry more weight if Republicans had changed their thinking on torture and could be expected to follow the law the next time they won the presidency. Alas, they show little sign of intellectual progress.

Even after the release of the torture memos, Republicans persist in denying that techniques like waterboarding or chaining a prisoner in a standing position for hours constitute torture. The most common defense of waterboarding is that we subjected our own soldiers to it. That's true--as a way of training them to withstand enemy torture. When you reverse engineer a torture-resistance program, you're almost by definition engaging in torture.

In reality, Bush's waterboarding methods did differ from the U.S. military's torture-resistance training, in that our soldiers knew how far we'd go and could stop the exercise if they couldn't bear it. Conservatives have inadvertently confirmed this point. Numerous Republicans object that the release of the torture memos will render waterboarding and other techniques useless--"terrorists are now aware of the absolute limit of what the U.S. government could do to extract information from them," complain former Bush officials Michael Hayden and Michael Mukasey.

It's true. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition, or torture methods devised thereby. Our chief weapon is surprise. (Surprise and fear. ... Amongst our weaponry are such elements as surprise and fear, as Michael Palin might put it.) That's exactly why training soldiers to withstand waterboarding is different than actually waterboarding.

The worst part is that conservatives continue to view torture through the stylized prism of the Fox drama "24." They discuss the practice as if the subjects are always terrorists, the interrogators always know just what information to ask for, and the answer can prevent imminent destruction. All of these premises are shaky.

First, there's no such thing as a government policy of "torturing terrorists. " There's only a policy of torturing people the government thinks are terrorists. Many of the suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, subjected to agonizing stress positions, turned out not to be terrorists--not because the soldiers who captured them were venal, but because they were human.

Second, torture is designed to force prisoners to provide an answer the interrogator already knows. The torturer relents when his subject provides the "correct" answer. Intelligence gathering, by contrast, is designed to garner answers the interrogator does not already know.
Finally, yes, we can imagine ticking-time-bomb situations where regular interrogation methods work too slowly and extreme measures might prove helpful. But this premise bears the same relationship to the question of legalizing torture as the morality of stealing a loaf of bread to feed your starving family does to the question of legalizing theft.
It's worth thinking about how likely the ticking-time-bomb scenario is to occur, and how our military and intelligence apparatus can be legally structured to account for it. But, first, Republicans are going to have to be disabused of their dramatic fantasies and reminded that a long war needs to be guided by the rule of law.

Jonathan Chait is a senior editor of The New Republic.

Shepard Smith: We do not fucking torture!

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Every once in a while, The Fox News Channels Shepard Smith says something amazing. It seems to be happening with greater frequency lately.

He freaks when Trace Gallagher trys to do what most Fox News talking heads do when trying to sell a talking point. In this video, Gallagher trys to claim that it's still not clear if waterboarding is considered torture or if it's illegal. Shepard freaks out and sets him straight.

Watch this:

Waterboarding Is Torture

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Author Christopher Hitchens undergoes the controversial drowning technique, at the hands of men who once trained American soldiers to resist—not inflict—it.

As you will see in the video below, the first drop of water hits his face at 3:15 on the clock and a mere 17 seconds later, he gave the predetermined signal that he was drowning. I would like to see every public official who says that this is not torture to under go the cruel process 138 time for 10 to 20 minutes per session as was done to Kahlid Shahk Mohommad. I wonder what "vital intel" we could extract from them.

Once upon a time, waterboarding was something that Americans were being trained to resist, not to inflict. It was endured, by those members of the Special Forces who underwent the advanced form of training known as sere (Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape). In these harsh exercises, brave men and women were introduced to the sorts of barbarism that American Soldiers might find at the hands of a lawless foe who shows a total disregarded the Geneva Conventions. This is exactly what and where 8 years of the Bush – Cheney regime has lead our country.

After reading the piece in Vanity Fair “Believe Me, It’s Torture,” by Christopher Hitchens, I’ve had serious reservations about the torture tactic and I call it that because that it what it is, TORTURE! -- Hitchens submitted himself to a brutal waterboarding session in an effort to understand the human cost of America’s use of harsh tactics at Guantánamo and elsewhere. He hesitantly admits that he didn’t last very long and pointed out that unlike actual detainees, he had the luxery of ending the session immediately with a predetermined singal. A signal that Hitchens used only seconds into the torture session that he underwent. This is substantiated by the photo above that shows a couple of one gallon jugs of water on the floor. One is still full and the other is missing less than a quarter of it’s contence. The megor amount of water on Hitchens light blue shirt seem to substantiate his words and the photograph itself.

Hitchens goes on to explain that his particular handlers had only trained American G.I.’s how to resist the torture tactic and had never inflicted it on an actual dteainee. Yet these handlers boasted about how it was their understanding that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the so-called “Mastermind” behind the September 11, attack lasted only two minutes before he cracked. However, Hitchens adds a (By the way, this story is not confirmed) after that claim. You’re God Damn right it’s not confirmed because it’s not true. If he cracked after 2 minutes, why in the fuck would Khalid Sheikh Mohammed need to be waterboarded 183 more times? – While The Fox News Channels Sean Hannity was bullied into undergoing waterboarding by guest Charles Grodin, it’s safe to say that he doesn’t have the balls to actually go through with it.

Hannity Wants To Be Water Boarded

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FROM THINK PROGRESS:

Civil War Emerges At Fox News: ‘We Don’t F*cking Torture’ Vs. ‘Torture, My Ass’

Since President Obama released the Bush administration's OLC torture memos, several Fox News pundits have launched unrelenting, full-throated defenses of torture. Bill O'Reilly dismissed waterboarding yesterday, saying, "Torture, my ass." Also yesterday, Sean Hannity volunteered to be waterboarded for charity (those who have tried it have found it to be rather unpleasant):
GRODIN: We can waterboard you?
HANNITY: Sure.
GRODIN: Are you busy on Sunday?
HANNITY: I'll do it for charity. ... I'll let you do it. I'll do it for the troops' families.
Watch it:



Surprisingly, Fox is not all pro-torture. In fact, there are a handful of pundits who are speaking out against torture at the right-wing network. In multiple segments over the past few days, Shep Smith has been ripping the idea of government-sanctioned torture. "We are America. We don't torture. And the moment that is not the case, I want off the train!" he declared Wednesday afternoon. Yesterday, in Fox's Strategy Room, which was only aired on the web, Smith's anger culminated in an explosion:
SMITH: WE ARE AMERICA! I DON'T GIVE A RAT'S ASS IF IT HELPS. WE ARE AMERICA! WE DO NOT FUCKING TORTURE! WE DON'T DO IT!
Fox News's Trace Gallagher responded, "I'm not saying whether torture is right or wrong. I'm not going there." Watch it (at roughly 3:00):
Smith isn't alone. Judge Andrew Napolitano ("The Judge") -- a staunch conservative -- said in the Strategy Room that the memos "are so fraught with disregarding volumes of law." This week, he wrote a scathing critique of the Bush administration's legal reasoning. "This is not rocket science and it is not art. Everyone knows torture when they see it," he wrote, decrying the "illegal horror," "moral antipathy," and the memos' "attack at core American values."
Furthermore, Fox contributor and former New York Times reporter Judy Miller said yesterday that "enhanced interrogation techniques" are "Orwellian. It's Orwellian for torture." It remains to be seen which faction will come out on top in this Fox News civil war.