Using Cheney Logic

Dick Cheney was his usually morally repugnant self yesterday on FoxNews Sunday, shamelessly advocating torture. And there is a lot in the interview for people to take apart but I want to focus on something he said early on. Its one of the best recent example of Orwellian double speak that I could possibly even imagine. First lets look at the question and answer in its entirety and then we can take it apart a little.

WALLACE: This is your first interview since Attorney General Holder named a prosecutor to investigate possible CIA abuses of terror detainees.

What do you think of that decision?

CHENEY: I think it's a terrible decision. President Obama made the announcement some weeks ago that this would not happen, that his administration would not go back and look at or try to prosecute CIA personnel. And the effort now is based upon the inspector general's report that was sent to the Justice Department five years ago, was completely reviewed by the Justice Department in years past.

They made decisions about whether or not there was any prosecutable offense there. They found one. It did not involve CIA personnel, it involved contract personnel. That individual was sentenced and is doing time. The matter's been dealt with the way you would expect it to be dealt with by professionals.

Now we've got a political appointee coming back, and supposedly without the approval of the president, going to do a complete review, or another complete investigation, possible prosecution of CIA personnel. We could talk the whole program about the negative consequences of that, about the terrible precedent it sets, to have agents involved, CIA personnel involved, in a difficult program that's approved by the Justice Department, approved by the National Security Council, and the Bush administration, and then when a new administration comes in, it becomes political.

They may find themselves dragged up before a grand jury, have to hire attorneys on their own because the Justice Department won't provide them with counsel.

It's a terrible, terrible precedent.

Ok lets work backwards here. Dick Cheney is worried about a special prosecutor looking into whether or not any CIA personnel broke the law by going outside the guidance of the OLC memos. He says the fallout from such a probe woudl be:

We could talk the whole program about the negative consequences of that, about the terrible precedent it sets, to have agents involved, CIA personnel involved, in a difficult program that's approved by the Justice Department, approved by the National Security Council, and the Bush administration, and then when a new administration comes in, it becomes political.

They may find themselves dragged up before a grand jury, have to hire attorneys on their own because the Justice Department won't provide them with counsel.

It's a terrible, terrible precedent

So he says that it will set a "terrible precedent" and that the decision to look into the program is "political" He then goes further shortly after in another answer to describe what he thinks will be the impact of this investigation.

CHENEY: Well, you think, for example, in the intelligence arena. We ask those people to do some very difficult things. Sometimes, that put their own lives at risk. They do so at the direction of the president, and they do so with the -- in this case, we had specific legal authority from the Justice Department. And if they are now going to be subject to being investigated and prosecuted by the next administration, nobody's going to sign up for those kinds of missions.

It's a very, very devastating, I think, effect that it has on morale inside the intelligence community. If they assume that they're going to have to be dealing with the political consequences -- and it's clearly a political move. I mean, there's no other rationale for why they're doing this -- then they'll be very reluctant in the future to do that.

So this investigation is going to lead to nobody wanting to "sign up for those kinds of missions" and its going to have a "very, very devastating...effect...on morale inside the intelligence community".

Well my goodness who knew that just investigating to see if any wrongdoing occured should have such adverse effects on the intelligence community? But wait, there is one thing that isn't really adding up to me here. If investigating the CIA for wrong doing creates so many problems, why did the Bush administration do just that?

Lets go back to the Cheney's answer again.

And the effort now is based upon the inspector general's report that was sent to the Justice Department five years ago, was completely reviewed by the Justice Department in years past.

They made decisions about whether or not there was any prosecutable offense there. They found one. It did not involve CIA personnel, it involved contract personnel. That individual was sentenced and is doing time. The matter's been dealt with the way you would expect it to be dealt with by professionals.

So wait, Dick Cheney himself admits that the Justice Department while he was still Vice President did in fact investigate and prosecute at least one bad actor in this whole situation. He makes the distinction that it was a CIA contractor but the truth is the two men who actually orchestrated the torture program were ALSO CIA contractors too so its a distinction but not much of one. Now using his own logic shouldn't this have devastated the CIA?! Shouldn't they have all been pulling out their fainting couches and refusing to protect the nation after that prosecution? Shouldn't we have been attacked by bin Ladin many times over due to the fact that DOJ even looked into the allegations put forth by the CIA's Inspector general? And wasn't Alberto Gonzales who led that inquiry ALSO a political appointee?

Oh wait, I keep forgetting, Its Okay If You're A Republican.

What would be great would be if some journalist points out this contradiction in the man's logic, but I won't hold my breath.

Sometimes Its Better To Just STFU

Dick Cheney has a bad case of diarrhea of the mouth since he has been out of office. Yesterday he went on propandist Sean "Have you heard of Jeremiah Wright?" Hannity's show and once again took shots at President Obama and his foreign policy. Now considering the fact that most people believe that Cheney himself was the architect of the torture program at GITMO and that he bears most of the responsibility for the subversion of the Constitution during the Bush Years, you would think this clown would want to go somewhere and hide and hope nobody ever asks questions. Instead he has decided to antagonize from his wheelchair and try to gin up outrage against the Obama administration. Well President Obama had an answer for Dick Cheney today:

President Barack Obama is leaving the door to open to possible prosecution of Bush administration officials who devised harsh terrorism-era interrogation tactics.

snip

Obama has said he doesn't support charging CIA agents and interrogators who took part in waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics, acting on advice from superiors that such practices were legal. But he also said that it is up to the attorney general whether to prosecute Bush administration lawyers who wrote the memos approving these tactics.

*Now updated with video

Be afraid Dick. Be VERY afraid!

*Just want to give a h/t to frequent commenter Jack T who posted the link to the story about President Obama opening the door to torture prosecutions in another thread.

Not So Fast...

Turns out Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón who has been pushing for investigations and prosecutions of BuschCo is moving ahead even though the prosecutor voiced his opposition last week. To put it succinctly they ain't out of the fire just yet!

183 Times

For all of the torture apologists on the right I just have one question. If waterboarding was so effective, why did the CIA have to waterboard Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in one month and Abu Zubaydah, whom we now know wasn't the high level al Queda agent that the CIA initially thouoght he was, 83 times in one month. Until you can answer that question you don't have a right to even engage in the conversation about whether those who ordered torture should be prosecuted.

Tell Em Why You Mad Son

There is an opinion piece over in the Washington Post written by two lawyers who formerly served in the Reagan White House and the Bush41 White House claiming that there shouldn't be any truth commission nor prosecutions of Bush Co over "policy differences". Oh and the best part is they have comments open so I think you should go over there and give them YOUR opinion on it. So far a lot of people aren't exactly agreeing with them in the comments section. I think they are going to have the unintended effect of showing just what the sentiment is out there in terms of people wanting to see Bush Co frog marched.

THIS Is Who You Want To Protect?!?!?

Meet John Yoo, the guy who helped to "authorize" torture in the Bush Administration. I keep hearing people say that investigations would be bad for the country but do you really know what kind of sleaze bags you are attempting to shield from prosecution? Well allow me to present Professor Yoo's take on President Obama banning torture.

While these actions will certainly please his base -- gone are the cries of an "imperial presidency" -- they will also seriously handicap our intelligence agencies from preventing future terrorist attacks. In issuing these executive orders, Mr. Obama is returning America to the failed law enforcement approach to fighting terrorism that prevailed before Sept. 11, 2001. He's also drying up the most valuable sources of intelligence on al Qaeda, which, according to CIA Director Michael Hayden, has come largely out of the tough interrogation of high-level operatives during the early years of the war.

Right, because we NEVER stopped terrorist attacks before 9/11. Maybe someone should remind this jackass of the PDB that was entitled "bin Laden determined to strike in the United States" that was NOT the product of any torture interrogations. But what he's not done...

What such a review would have made clear is that the civilian law-enforcement system cannot prevent terrorist attacks. What is needed are the tools to gain vital intelligence, which is why, under President George W. Bush, the CIA could hold and interrogate high-value al Qaeda leaders. On the advice of his intelligence advisers, the president could have authorized coercive interrogation methods like those used by Israel and Great Britain in their antiterrorism campaigns. (He could even authorize waterboarding, which he did three times in the years after 9/11.)

Attorney General Eric Holder pay attention. I think we have a public admission of guilt here. And we didn't even have to use torture to get it!

The CIA must now conduct interrogations according to the rules of the Army Field Manual, which prohibits coercive techniques, threats and promises, and the good-cop bad-cop routines used in police stations throughout America. Mr. Obama has also ordered that al Qaeda leaders are to be protected from "outrages on personal dignity" and "humiliating and degrading treatment" in accord with the Geneva Conventions. His new order amounts to requiring -- on penalty of prosecution -- that CIA interrogators be polite. Coercive measures are unwisely banned with no exceptions, regardless of the danger confronting the country.

Eliminating the Bush system will mean that we will get no more information from captured al Qaeda terrorists. Every prisoner will have the right to a lawyer (which they will surely demand), the right to remain silent, and the right to a speedy trial.

At this point I am reminded from a quote I posted a couple of days ago coming from retired Major General Paul Eaton “torture is the tool of the lazy, the stupid, and the pseudo-tough." John Yoo is a typical NeoCon who is scared of his own shadow yet is a cheerleader for torture. What I would love to see is him get waterboarded much like journalist Christopher Hitchens did and then see him give another legal opinion that it is not torture.

Now could someone find for me the section of the Geneva Conventions that deals with a right to an attorney or a right to remain silent? Those are rights afforded to United States citizens not enemy combatants or even for that matter for captured soldiers of another country. Or maybe they just forgot about all that during WWI and WWII. It should say something that the guy who said torturing enemy combatants didn't violate the Geneva Conventions doesn't have a good understanding of the Geneva conventions in the first place.

It is naïve to say, as Mr. Obama did in his inaugural speech, that we can "reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." That high-flying rhetoric means that we must give al Qaeda -- a hardened enemy committed to our destruction -- the same rights as garden-variety criminals at the cost of losing critical intelligence about real, future threats.

Is it naive to believe that our ideals should really mean something in this country or cynical to assert that they shouldn't? Again thats the kind of guy some of you out there want to get away scott free "for the good of the country". And what happens the next time a Republican wins the presidency? What will stop John Yoo from being appointed to a position that doesn't require confirmation? While you think on that let me provide you with his coupe de grace.

But in his decisions taken so precipitously just two days after the inauguration, Mr. Obama may have opened the door to further terrorist acts on U.S. soil by shattering some of the nation's most critical defenses.

So there you have it ladies and gentlemen. In order to justify his own and the rest of the Bush Administration's advocation of torture John Yoo practically invites terrorist attacks on our soul. What a great American he is. How proud many of you Bush apologists must be. If we as a country don't have the heart to investigate and prosecute this asshole and his asshole bretheren for ripping up our Constitution and our international treaties then we don't deserve to be called a democracy.

Yeah, What Keith Said

Keith Olbermann special comment on prosecuting Bush Co.

Pelosi Is Coming Around

I don't know if this is some cover your ass rhetoric or not by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi but the woman who infamously said upon taking her post two years ago that "Impeachment is off the table" instantly earning herself disgust and scorn from liberals, centrists and progressives in the Democratic party might actually be changing her tune. This morning on FoxNews Sunday she not only said that prosecutions of Bush administration officials might still happen, she went further and said Congress might have a legal obligation to do so. I have learned not to get too excited over this kind of pronouncement but I have to say it does give me hope that those involved in abuses of office might see justice after all.

From FauxNooz:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is receptive to the idea of prosecuting some Bush administration officials, while letting others who are accused of misdeeds leave office without prosecution, she told Chris Wallace in an interview on "FOX News Sunday."

"I think you look at each item and see what is a violation of the law and do we even have a right to ignore it," the California Democrat said.

snip

She hinted that the law might compel Democrats to press forth on some prosecutions, even if they are politically unpopular, adding: "That's not up to us to say that doesn't matter anymore."

"We cannot let the politicizing of, for example, the Justice Department to go unreviewed," she added. "I want to see the truth come forth."

A full throated endorsement of prosecutions it isn't but at least its a start.

Update: Glenzilla points out with support from Hilzoy that investigation and prosecution of torture is an obligation according to law, not something that can be selectively ignonred. An excerpt:

CONVENTION AGAINST TORTURE and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (signed by the U.S. under Ronald Reagan):

Article 2

1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.

2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.

3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture. . . .

Article 4

1. Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture.
Article 7

1. The State Party in territory under whose jurisdiction a person alleged to have committed any offence referred to in article 4 is found, shall in the cases contemplated in article 5, if it does not extradite him, submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution

snip

All of the standard excuses being offered by Bush apologists and our political class (a virtual redundancy) -- namely: our leaders meant well; we were facing a dangerous enemy; government lawyers said this could be done; Congress immunized the torturers; it would be too divisive to prosecute -- are explicitly barred by this treaty (i.e., binding law) as a ground for refusing to investigate and prosecute acts of torture.

This is also why the standard argument now being offered by Bush apologists (such as University of Chicago Law Professor Eric Posner, echoing his dad, Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner in Chicago) as to why prosecutions are unnecessary -- namely: there is "prosecutorial discretion" that should take political factors into account in order not to prosecute -- are both frivolous and lawless. The Convention explicitly bars any such "discretion": "The State Party in territory under whose jurisdiction a person alleged to have committed any offence referred to in article 4 is found, shall . . . submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution." The principal purpose of the Convention is to remove the discretion involved in prosecuting acts of torture and to bar the very excuses which every torturing society proffers and which our own torturing society is now attempting to invoke ("we were dealing with real threats; there were 'exceptional circumstances' that justified it; we enacted laws legalizing the torture; our leaders meant well; we need to move on").

Waterboarding IS Torture Because We Said So In The Past

I was reading Glenn Greenwald's new post today about the reasoning behind why all most of the media folk are pushing back against prosecuting President Bush and his minions for war crimes. It is a very interesting read, but at the bottom in an update he links to this article from 2007 on waterboarding. I have to admit that while having researched what waterboarding is and why it should be considered torture I hadn't really spent any time looking for historical precedent. Well after perusing the article it turns out that there really is no way to claim, as Dick Cheney recently tried to, that waterboarding ISN'T torture. Why you ask? Well because America has actually prosecuted and convicted people for torturing people with waterboarding.

Sometimes, though, the questions we face about detainees and interrogation get more specific. One such set of questions relates to "waterboarding."

That term is used to describe several interrogation techniques. The victim may be immersed in water, have water forced into the nose and mouth, or have water poured onto material placed over the face so that the liquid is inhaled or swallowed. The media usually characterize the practice as "simulated drowning." That's incorrect. To be effective, waterboarding is usually real drowning that simulates death. That is, the victim experiences the sensations of drowning: struggle, panic, breath-holding, swallowing, vomiting, taking water into the lungs and, eventually, the same feeling of not being able to breathe that one experiences after being punched in the gut. The main difference is that the drowning process is halted. According to those who have studied waterboarding's effects, it can cause severe psychological trauma, such as panic attacks, for years.

The United States knows quite a bit about waterboarding. The U.S. government -- whether acting alone before domestic courts, commissions and courts-martial or as part of the world community -- has not only condemned the use of water torture but has severely punished those who applied it.

After World War II, we convicted several Japanese soldiers for waterboarding American and Allied prisoners of war. At the trial of his captors, then-Lt. Chase J. Nielsen, one of the 1942 Army Air Forces officers who flew in the Doolittle Raid and was captured by the Japanese, testified: "I was given several types of torture. . . . I was given what they call the water cure." He was asked what he felt when the Japanese soldiers poured the water. "Well, I felt more or less like I was drowning," he replied, "just gasping between life and death."

snip

After Japan surrendered, the United States organized and participated in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, generally called the Tokyo War Crimes Trials. Leading members of Japan's military and government elite were charged, among their many other crimes, with torturing Allied military personnel and civilians. The principal proof upon which their torture convictions were based was conduct that we would now call waterboarding.

snip

The United States (like Britain, Australia and other Allies) pursued lower-ranking Japanese war criminals in trials before their own tribunals.

snip

As a result of such accounts, a number of Japanese prison-camp officers and guards were convicted of torture that clearly violated the laws of war. They were not the only defendants convicted in such cases. As far back as the U.S. occupation of the Philippines after the 1898 Spanish-American War, U.S. soldiers were court-martialed for using the "water cure" to question Filipino guerrillas.

More recently, waterboarding cases have appeared in U.S. district courts. One was a civil action brought by several Filipinos seeking damages against the estate of former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos. The plaintiffs claimed they had been subjected to torture, including water torture. The court awarded $766 million in damages, noting in its findings that "the plaintiffs experienced human rights violations including, but not limited to . . . the water cure, where a cloth was placed over the detainee's mouth and nose, and water producing a drowning sensation."

In 1983, federal prosecutors charged a Texas sheriff and three of his deputies with violating prisoners' civil rights by forcing confessions. The complaint alleged that the officers conspired to "subject prisoners to a suffocating water torture ordeal in order to coerce confessions. This generally included the placement of a towel over the nose and mouth of the prisoner and the pouring of water in the towel until the prisoner began to move, jerk, or otherwise indicate that he was suffocating and/or drowning."

The four defendants were convicted, and the sheriff was sentenced to 10 years in prison.

It is pretty apparent that we have convicted perpetrators of waterboarding of war crimes not only when engaged in a war but also as a violation of a person's civil rights by law enforcement personel. So how is it that anybody can even question whether using waterboarding is a war crime or not? I can only guess its because for some it only matters when its being done to us, not when we are the ones doing it. But that goes against everything I was taught that our nation and our constitution stands for and I will not be decieved. No matter of rationalizing or editorializing changes the fact that our government officials participated in waterboarding which means they engaged in war crimes and the word came from the top to do it so the people at the top must be punished. If there is any justice in this world and in this country President Elect Obama will see to it that this happens.