Sargent: The White House has decided to declassify and release a classified 2004 CIA report about the torture program that is reported to have found no proof that torture foiled any terror plots on American soil — directly contradicting Cheney’s claims. ... — and its release will almost certainly trigger howls of protest from conservatives.
- Steve Benen adds: That's no doubt true, but what will conservatives be able to complain about? Aren't they the ones demanding that the administration declassify more relevant materials?
Mark Fiore on Party purity
Andy Borowitz: Cheney to Travel Around Country in Sound Truck
Hopes to Bring Pro-Torture Message to Every State
In a sign that he has no intention of going away quietly, former Vice President Dick Cheney embarked today on a nationwide road trip in a sound truck equipped with a state-of-the-art bullhorn.
The formerly reclusive Mr. Cheney has been a ubiquitous fixture on Sunday talk shows and right-wing radio programs in recent weeks, but his decision to tour the nation in a 2000-watt sound truck shows a heightened determination to spread his pro-torture message from coast to coast.
According to aides to the former vice president, Mr. Cheney had briefly considered starring in an IMAX film called "The Dick Cheney 3-D Experience" before settling on the less costly sound truck idea.
But Mr. Cheney's "Pro-torture Tour '09" has not managed to skirt controversy thus far, as the former Vice President has already had to contend with grievances about the noise levels produced by his high-wattage truck.
Residents of the town of Keene, New Hampshire were awakened at 5 AM this morning by a familiar voice blaring, "We're less safe than we were under the last administration. Run for your lives!"
As townsfolk rubbed their eyes, Mr. Cheney's voice could be heard extolling waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques.
For his part, a buoyant Mr. Cheney brushed off complaints from the New Hampshire citizens that he had disturbed the peace with his early-morning rant: "All this proves is that sleep deprivation works."
Sully: Quote For The Day
Sully: How Cheney Remembers His Oath"In its damning totality, the memorandum is an indictment of Bybee himself, evidence that he is morally, ethically and legally unfit to serve on the federal bench. His continued presence there is an affront to the integrity of the judiciary, to a nation founded on laws and ideals protecting human dignity, and to all Americans who once believed their government would never indulge in the same human rights violations we have long condemned in other countries.
Bybee, a graduate of Brigham Young University and its law school, should show himself capable of better judgment -- and of remorse -- by resigning his lifetime appointment. If he does not, Congress should begin impeachment proceedings to force him from the bench," - Salt Lake Tribune.
Here's how he recounts it in his interview yesterday:
Now, if you'd look at it from the perspective of a senior government official, somebody like myself, who stood up and took the oath of office on January 20th of ‘01 and raised their right hand and said we're going to protect and defend the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic, this was exactly, exactly what was needed to do it.
Here's the actual oath:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.My italics, of course. Is Cheney's ultimate defense is that he didn't understand the oath he took?
hilzoy: How Dare He?
Dick Cheney on Face The Nation:
"SCHIEFFER: What do you say to those, Mr. Vice President, who say that when we employ these kinds of tactics, which are after all the tactics that the other side uses, that when we adopt their methods, that we're weakening security, not enhancing security, because it sort of makes a mockery of what we tell the rest of the world?
CHENEY: 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."
I'm not going to rehearse again all the reasons to think that torture is immoral, does not work, and makes us less safe, not more. I've said all that many, many times before. What I do want to say is just this:
Dick Cheney forfeited the right to lecture anyone on their willingness to sacrifice American lives the day he decided to deceive us into an unnecessary war.
He might have forgotten about the 4,287 American lives that have been lost because of him and the administration he was a part of -- not to mention the 318 other coalition troops, and God alone knows how many Iraqis. But I have not. And I don't think I'm alone.
- Sargent: White House To Declassify “Holy Grail” Torture Report That Could Undercut Cheney
There’s a big piece of news about Dick Cheney and torture buried toward the end of this big Washington Post piece about the torture wars.
Specifically: The White House has decided to declassify and release a classified 2004 CIA report about the torture program that is reported to have found no proof that torture foiled any terror plots on American soil — directly contradicting Cheney’s claims. The paper cites “allies” of the White House as a source.
Dem Congressional staffers tell me this report is the “holy grail,” because it is expected to detail torture in unprecedented detail and to cast doubt on the claim that torture works — and its release will almost certainly trigger howls of protest from conservatives. Tellingly, neither the CIA nor the White House knocked down the story in response to my questions, with spokespeople for both declining comment. Here’s the key nugget from the Post piece:
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…
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.
This news is particularly timely in light of Cheney’s continuing high-profile claims that torture may have saved “hundreds of thousands of lives.” The report is the one I wrote about recently that the ACLU obtained through litigation in highly redacted form. It has an entire redacted section that discusses the “effectiveness” of torture — or lack thereof.
The release of this thing is going to be a big deal. You heard it here first.
- Sully: Full Cheney Panic
I don't know how else to interpret his obviously self-destructive grandstanding this weekend. But think of the long view for a moment. Here is a former vice-president, who enjoyed unprecedented power for eight long, long years. No veep ever wielded power like he did in the long history of American government. In the months after 9/11, he swept all Congressional resistance away, exerted total executive power, wielded a military and paramilitary apparatus far mightier than all its rivals combined and mightier than any power in history, tapped any phone he wanted, claimed the right to torture any suspect he wanted (and followed through with thousands, from Bagram to Abu Ghraib) and was able to print and borrow money with impunity to finance all of it without a worry in the world. But even after all that, he cannot tolerate a few months of someone else, duly elected, having a chance to govern the country with a decent interval of grace.
What character does this reveal? The same character that sees torture - torture - as a "no-brainer". The same man who believes that freezing naked prisoners to hypothermia or strapping them to a board for a 175th near-drowning or stringing them up in stress positions so long the shackles rust up is in line with America's constitutional history and custom. The same tyrannical temperament that cannot abide another reality existing which isn't hammered or tortured into the shape he wants and demands.
Worse: he launches verbal assault after assault on the men and women who succeeded him. He accuses them of risking the lives of Americans, of making America less safe, and openly brags that his violation of the Geneva Conventions worked. Not content with writing his memoirs and letting history judge, he flails around like some prize fish, flapping on the deck of the boat, opening and shutting his mouth as his career expires.
And as history slowly accepts that this man disgraced his office more profoundly than any before him, as it sinks in that this man did not merely make mistakes, as all flawed politicians do, but committed war crimes, with pre-meditation and elaborate subterfuge, he slowly realizes what's happening to him. He can feel it. And so he resists the way he always resists - by lashing out, attacking, smearing, snearing, and grabbing every inch of the limelight he can.
Those of us who want him to face real accountability should, of course, welcome all this. Cheney does not seem to understand that he is incriminating himself further with every interview, every time he adjusts his story, every time he moves from torture as a "no-brainer" to a "last resort", every time he assaults yet another person who knows too much about him and what he did.
But does Cheney really believe that in a battle for the judgment of the American people, and for history, he will win a brawl with Colin Powell, with a man who is actually on record early on warning of the dire consequences of weakening or abandoning the Geneva Conventions?
Cheney wants a war with him? Now? Judged in the theater of public opinion - outside the Hannity-Limbaugh-Coulter ghetto?
They really do want to commit suicide, don't they? Well, I'm not in a rush to stop them.
- Attaturk: Endless Love
Seeing Dick Cheney state that he prefers Rush Limbaugh to Colin Powell strikes some people as further evidence of the former's shallow depravity.
And they would be correct. Though I'm not interested in defending Colin Powell, who has a lot to defend himself about.
But who the heck can be surprised Dick Cheney prefers Rush Limbaugh's company to a military veteran?
Cheney and Limbaugh have more in common. They both like to get together on the occasional weekends and swap stories of their bravery. Dick can talk about all five of his deferments from Vietnam and Rush can talk about how he got out of service through a defective balloon knot. Dick can talk about shooting a friend in the face, Rush can talk about how he did the same thing with a stranger in the Dominican Repu...HEY, let's just move on shall we?
Oh, how they have a good laugh over that. It is a good thing to talk about while they're winding down from a long day of drowning puppies.
- hilzoy: Sleep Deprivation
A major newpaper has an interesting story on the CIA's use of sleep deprivation:
"Because of its effectiveness -- as well as the perception that it was less objectionable than waterboarding, head-slamming or forced nudity -- sleep deprivation may be seen as a tempting technique to restore.
But the Justice Department memos released last month by Obama, as well as information provided by officials familiar with the program, indicate that the method, which involves forcing chained prisoners to stand, sometimes for days on end, was more controversial within the U.S. intelligence community than was widely known.
A CIA inspector general's report issued in 2004 was more critical of the agency's use of sleep deprivation than it was of any other method besides waterboarding, according to officials familiar with the document, because of how the technique was applied."
As well they should have been. The story suggests that the concerns involved the methods used to keep detainees awake:
"The prisoners had their feet shackled to the floor and their hands cuffed close to their chins, according to the Justice Department memos.
Detainees were clad only in diapers and not allowed to feed themselves. A prisoner who started to drift off to sleep would tilt over and be caught by his chains."
But that's not the only reason for concern. The various kinds of psychological torture, of which sleep deprivation is one, are just as disturbing as physical torture; possibly more so, since their aim is to induce regression and learned helplessness, which is a way of inflicting serious psychological damage. Keeping someone awake for long periods of time, or using sensory deprivation, isn't awful in the obvious ways that, say, beating someone to a pulp is. But even though it does not leave visible scars, it's profoundly wrong.
***
You might wonder why I didn't link to the story above. If you want to know, it's here. Read the last paragraph, and then check this link. -- It had not previously occurred to me not to credit sources I was quoting from, so I thought I'd give it a try. And, of course, I wondered how they'd feel about the idea.
- Sully: Cheney Drags Bush In Deeper
How else to interpret this exchange?
SCHIEFFER: Did President Bush know everything you knew?
CHENEY: I certainly, yes, have every reason to believe he knew -- he knew a great deal about the program. He basically authorized it. I mean, this was a presidential-level decision. And the decision went to the president. He signed off on it.
He's not going down alone. Could we ask Bush and Cheney if they watched the actual tapes of torture sessions? And were they in the White House if they did so?
Greenwald: The NYT's definition of blinding American exceptionalism
There's been a major editorial breach at The New York Times today, in this obituary of an American fighter pilot who was captured by the Chinese:
Harold E. Fischer Jr., an American Flier Tortured in a Chinese Prison, Dies at 83. . . .
From April 1953 through May 1955, Colonel Fischer — then an Air Force captain — was held at a prison outside Mukden, Manchuria. For most of that time, he was kept in a dark, damp cell with no bed and no opening except a slot in the door through which a bowl of food could be pushed. Much of the time he was handcuffed. Hour after hour, a high-frequency whistle pierced the air.
After a short mock trial in Beijing on May 24, 1955, Captain Fischer and the other pilots — Lt. Col. Edwin L. Heller, First Lt. Lyle W. Cameron and First Lt. Roland W. Parks — were found guilty of violating Chinese territory by flying across the border while on missions over North Korea. Under duress, Captain Fischer had falsely confessed to participating in germ warfare.
So that's torture now? To use the prevailing American mindset: a room that doesn't meet the standards of a Hilton and some whistling in the background is torture? My neighbor whistles all the time; does that mean he's torturing me? It's not as though Fischer had his eyes poked out by hot irons or was placed in a coffin-like box with bugs or was handcuffed to the ceiling.
Also, using the editorial standards of America's journalistic institutions -- as explained recently by the NYT Public Editor -- shouldn't this be called "torture" rather than torture -- or "harsh tactics some critics decry as torture"? Why are the much less brutal methods used by the Chinese on Fischer called torture by the NYT, whereas much harsher methods used by Americans do not merit that term? Here we find what is clearly the single most predominant fact shaping our political and media discourse: everything is different, and better, when we do it. In fact, it is that exact mentality that was and continues to be the primary justification for our torture regime and so much else that we do.
Along those same lines, I learned from reading The New York Times this week (via The New Yorker's Amy Davidson) that Iraq is suffering a very serious problem. Tragically, that country is struggling with what the Times calls a "culture of impunity." What this means is that politically connected Iraqis who clearly broke the law are nonetheless not being prosecuted because of their political influence! Even worse, protests the NYT, there have been "cases dismissed in the past few years as a result of a government amnesty and a law dating to 1971 that allows ministers to grant immunity to subordinates accused of corruption." And the best part? This: "The United States is pressing the Iraqi government to repeal that law."
Thankfully, we're teaching the Iraqis what it means to be a "nation of laws." We Americans know how terrible it is to have a system where the politically powerful are permitted to break the law and not be held accountable. A country which does things like that can fall into such a state of moral depravity that they would actually allow people to do things like this and get away with it. Who could imagine living in a place like that?
* * * * *
One related point: I'm truly amazed to watch the eruption of "controversy" today over the fact that Nancy Pelosi was briefed in 2002 on various aspects of the CIA's interrogation program, as though (a) this is some sort of new revelation and (b) it has any bearing on whether there should be investigations and prosecutions into Bush crimes. As many of us have long pointed out, the extent to which Democratic leaders in Congress were complicit in Bush lawbreaking -- including torture -- is a major issue that needs resolution, and is almost certainly a key reason why there have been no investigations thus far. There are real disputes still about what these Democrats were and were not told -- how complete the briefings were, the extent to which they obfuscated rather than illuminated what the CIA was doing -- though they were obviously told enough to have warranted further action on their part, to say the least.
But what's the point of all of this? Secretly telling Nancy Pelosi that you're committing crimes doesn't mean that you have the right to do so. And the profound failures of the other institutions that are supposed to check executive lawbreaking during the Bush era -- principally Congress and the "opposition party" -- is a vital issue that demands serious examination. This dispute over what Pelosi (and Jay Rockefeller and others) knew highlights, rather than negates, the need for a meaningful investigation into what took place.
UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan has related thoughts about this obituary.
UPDATE II: I was going to try to excerpt parts of this Digby post regarding this topic but there's just no point. It all needs to be read.
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