Dick Cheney, last week:
This recruitment-tool theory has become something of a mantra lately, including from the president himself. And after a familiar fashion, it excuses the violent and blames America for the evil that others do. It's another version of that same old refrain from the left, "We brought it on ourselves."
Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and notorious Blame-America-First Leftist, this morning.
Mullen dismissed criticism by former Vice President Dick Cheney this week against the president's argument that Guantanamo Bay has served as an effective recruiting tool for al Qaeda.
"The concern I've had about Guantanamo in these wars is it has been a symbol, and one which has been a recruiting symbol for those extremists and jihadists who would fight us. So and I think that centers -- you know, that's the heart of the concern for Guantanamo's continued existence, in which I spoke to a few years ago, the need to close it," Mullen said.
Hasn't Mullen heard? They hate us because we're free.
Just ask Mitt Romney.
- Steve Benen adds:
George Stephanopoulos noted that "everybody's big concern" is that detainees "would pose a danger" if brought onto U.S. soil. Mullen conceded that closing the detention center is a "challenge," but went on to note reality: "We have terrorists in jail right now, have had for some time. They're in supermax prisons. And they don't pose a threat."
So, we have the man Bush/Cheney asked to be Defense Secretary and the man Bush/Cheney asked to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs in agreement: Obama's right about closing Gitmo and lawmakers are wrong about potential dangers.
It seems, if the situations were reversed, and Democratic lawmakers were on the opposite side of the Commander in Chief, the Republican Defense Secretary, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs -- in the midst of two wars -- we might hear a little more talk about why Dems were at odds with the U.S. military.
Except, in this case, it's the entire Republican Party fighting the White House, the Pentagon, and the brass.
Amato (C&L): Matthew Alexander dissects Cheney's speech on Gitmo and torture and more....
Matthew Alexander, a senior interrogator from Iraq actually analyzes Cheney's speech and rebukes most of what Cheney said.
Let me dissect former Vice President Dick Cheney's speech on National Security using this model and my interrogation skills.
First, VP Cheney said, "This recruitment-tool theory has become something of a mantra lately...it excuses the violent and blames America for the evil that others do. He further stated, "It is much closer to the truth that terrorists hate this country precisely because of the values we profess and seek to live by, not by some alleged failure to do so." That is simply untrue. Anyone who served in Iraq, and veterans on both sides of the aisle have made this argument, knows that the foreign fighters did not come to Iraq en masse until after the revelations of torture and abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. I heard this from captured foreign fighters day in and day out when I was supervising interrogations in Iraq. What the former Vice President didn't say is the fact that the dislike of our policies in the Middle East were not enough to make thousands of Muslim men pick up arms against us before these revelations. Torture and abuse became Al Qaida's number one recruiting tool and cost us American lives.
Secondly, the former Vice President, in saying that waterboarding is not torture, never mentions the fact that it was the United States and its Allies, during the Tokyo Trials, that helped convict a Japanese soldier for war crimes for waterboarding one of Jimmie Doolittle's Raiders. Have our morals and values changed in fifty years? He also did not mention that George Washington and Abraham Lincoln both prohibited their troops from torturing prisoners of war. Washington specifically used the term "injure" -- no mention of severe mental or physical pain...read on
C&L: Colin Powell on the Trouble With The Republican Party Base
Susie Madrak Sunday May 24, 2009 11:45am"You can only do two things with a base. You can sit on it and watch the world go by, or you can build on it. I believe we should build on it." - Colin Powell today on "Face The Nation," responding to Dick Cheney's comment that he would choose Rush Limbaugh over Colin Powell.
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell calmly rebutted the GOP Gospel According to Dick on today's Meet the Press. Cheney said in that interview he thought Colin Powell had "left the Republican party."
"By almost every demographic indicate, the Republican party is losing. The number of people who have identified themselves as Republicans have dropped significantly into the low 20s, and not all of them identify themselves as Republicans," Powell said. "I think the Republican party needs to take a good look at itself and decide what kind of party are we."
Host Charles Schieffer asked his reaction to Rush Limbaugh's statement that "the only reason he's [Powell] is voting for him [Obama] is because BO black. Is he calling you a racist?" Powell called the remarks "unfortunate."
"Mr. Limbaugh saw fit to dismiss all those reasons [I gave] and put it in a racial context and ignored all the reasons I listed for it," Powell said. He said in 50 years, he voted for the person he thought was the best qualified at that time to lead the nation, and that he also voted for Lyndon Johnson, John Kennedy and Jimmy Carter.
"He shouldn't have a veto over what someone thinks. He's an entertainer, he is a radio figure and he is a significant one, but he's more than that.
"When the chairman of the RNC, Michael Steele, issues even the mildest of criticisms concerning Mr. Limbaugh, and then 24 hours later, the chairman of the RNC has to lay prostrate on the floor, apologizing for it; and when two congressmen offer the mildest criticism of Mr. Limbaugh, they too then 24 hours later have such pressure brought to bear on them that they too, had to change their view and apologize for criticizing him - well, if he's out there, he should be subject to criticism, just as I am subject to criticism, " he said.
Here's a guy who agrees with Dick...
Think Progress: Sen. Ben Nelson Opposes Transferring Gitmo Detainees To U.S., Supports Bush Torture Techniques
This morning, Fox News Sunday hosted a debate on national security between Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ) and Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE), but it turned out that the two senators agreed on most issues. Nelson declared that trials of Guantanamo detainees should not take place in the United States and detainees should not be imprisoned here. He distinguished between terrorists like the Blind Sheikh — who “committed violations of American law” — and those at Guantanamo to say the latter should be kept out of the U.S.:
NELSON: I think the tribunals can occur anywhere, and I prefer not to see them occur in America, within the continental United States. Once they’re convicted, I’m assuming they will be, then I think we need to work out with their countries an arrangement where they’re incarcerated there. [...]
But for those detainees who have violated the rules of war, we don’t have to worry about bringing them here. I think they need to be kept elsewhere, wherever that is. I don’t want to see them come on American soil.
Nelson also seemed to suggest that torture — or “enhanced techniques,” as he called it — could be used in the future:
NELSON: What we need to do is make sure that the intelligence information that’s gathered is accurate, that we do everything within our power to get good intelligence, and it may or may not consist of coming from enhanced techniques.
Watch it:
As ThinkProgress and others have pointed out, the United States is fully capable of housing terrorist suspects in American prisons. Indeed, this morning on ABC, Adm. Mike Mullen mentioned the dozens of terrorists in U.S. prisons and declared, “They don’t pose a threat.”
And if Nelson is truly concerned with getting “accurate” information and “good intelligence,” he should support President Obama’s unequivocal ban on so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. As military and intelligence experts have stated, over and over, Bush’s enhanced program derived unreliable and inaccurate information. It was the use of “enhanced techniques” that provided the “intelligence” of a link between Iraq and al Qaeda — intelligence that proved to be entirely false.
Read ThinkProgress’ report on why Bush’s enhanced interrogation program failed here.
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