Vice President Dick Cheney continued his campaign to get the nation to embrace torture this weekend. He appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation. He insisted that they were “not in the torture business” despite previously admitting to using waterboarding, a well-known torture technique. It may be that he believed that this was more of a passion or calling than a business enterprise. I discussed the interview on this segment of Countdown.
Cheney adopted the image of a virtual Don Quixote of torture: “If I don’t speak out, then where do we find ourselves? … Then the critics have free run, and there isn’t anybody there on the other side to tell the truth.” The truth, of course, is pretty bizarre in the mind of Dick Cheney.
In perhaps the greatest argument for Obama and Holder to stop protecting Cheney and others from investigation, Cheney reaffirmed that he is proud of the torture program: “No regrets,. I think it was absolutely the right thing to do. I’m convinced … that we saved thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives . . . 20 or 30 years from now, you’ll be able to look back on this and say this is one of the great success stories of American intelligence.”
I expect that 20 or 30 years from now, people will ask how a man who helped design this nation’s first torture program would be allowed to walk around freely — giving interviews on the merits of war crimes.
Cheney is continuing the effort to shape the debate on whether torture was successful. The media is helping with this effort by pursuing the issue on whether a war crime was nonetheless productive. Cheney again called for the release of memos and insisted that “I personally know of, written by the CIA, that lay out the successes of those policies and point out in considerable detail all of — all that we were able to achieve by virtue of those policies.” Again, he ignores (like most reporters covering the story) that it remains a war crime regardless of how useful it might prove for a country.
Notably, while Majority Leader Harry Reid insists that the fact are still not clear on torture despite the confirmation of Bush officials of waterboarding and the admission by many that it was torture, Cheney again showed that there was no question on the core facts on who is responsible for the orders: “I certainly, yes, have every reason to believe [President Bush] 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.”
To have accountability or not to have accountability,
That is the question:
Whether tis nobler in the mind to just look forward
And forget the torture and lawlessness of the Bush Administration,
Or, to take up the rule of law, and prosecute them.
And by investigation and prosecution, end them.
Accountability or not—
No more—and by that we say, stop this.
This heartache and thousand felonious shocks
That Bush suffered the country with his legacy.
Tis accountability, devoutly to be wished.
Accountability or not—
Investigation and prosecution. Ay, there’s the rub,
For with that sunshine of facts what crimes may come
When we have revealed the truth of the Neocons
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
For the rule of law that makes us all equal.
For who would spurn the Constitution and its laws,
The cronies backdoor, the corporations outsourcing,
The pangs of Darth Vader, Gonzales’ no recall,
The insolence of Bush, the spurns
That merited the cries of Impeachment!
Then we learned the house and senate
Left our table bare.
How can these representatives say,
To those that grunt and sweat under a weary life,
That the dread of something other than Bush,
And history will prove him a great visionary,
It puzzles the will.
And makes us bear this shame upon our country,
That will last for eternity.
Will investigation make cowards of us all,
Will prosecution derive a resolution
Of the administration that had no law.
With this regard the rule of law
Must not lose the name of action.
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CHUCK SCHUMER SUPPORTS TORTURE
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When is he going to come out of the closet and repeat his words.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/05/12/jesse-ventura-coleman-a-h_n_202629.html
Jill 1, May 12, 2009 at 5:50 pm
FFLEO,
I just found this link. Hope you like it.
“Republicans and Independents for Impeaching Bush and Cheney
not an option, a duty”
===
Former Federal LEO 1, May 12, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Thank you for the link, Jill. I will check the information in more detail later.
===
FFLEO
Please, do share… ;p
We’d love to hear it!
‘Abuse of detainees continues in Gitmo’…
—–
Prove it.
Abuse of detainees continues in Gitmo: (also see the AP and Al Jazeera)
Yemen Guantanamo detainee attempts to kill himself
By Nasser Arrabyee, Correspondent
Published: May 11, 2009, 16:04
Sana’a: A Yemeni Guantanamo detainee attempted to kill himself while in a meeting with his American lawyer in detention, lawyers said Monday.
“Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif attempted to commit suicide during my meeting with him this morning,” his lawyer David Remes told Gulf News from Guantanamo.
The meeting between Remes and his client Abdul Latif took place on Sunday, May 10.
“Without our noticing, he chipped off a piece of the stiff veneer on the underside of our conference table and used it to saw into a vein in his left wrist.”
“As he sawed, he drained his blood into a plastic container and, shortly before it was time for me to leave; he hurled the blood at me from the container.”
Click Here!
“It must have been a good deal of blood because I was drenched from the top of my head to my knees, including my face and arms, and I took a good splash in my right eye,” Remes added.
Remes, who represents 16 of the nearly 100 Yemenis remaining there, called upon both governments of Yemen and US to return Abdul Latif to his family.
Abdul Latif is being held in the Psychiatric Ward. The tube-feeding has brought his weight up to 120 pounds. He is now being force-fed in bed, not in a “restraint chair”, said Remes.
“For humanitarian reasons, I implore the US and Yemen to arrange for Adnan’s immediate return to Yemen. His family understands that he needs treatment, and they are standing ready to help him,” he said.
“Adnan is a very sick man, physically and psychologically. He should be receiving treatment. The only ‘treatment’ he is receiving from the US, however, is to keep him subdued – by drugs if possible, and by force if necessary – so he can continue to be held as a captive without causing disturbance. This is inhumane by any standard.”
Remes, the Legal Director of the Appeal for Justice, a Human Rights and Civil Liberties Litigation Firm, also said he would be asking the court this week to allow him and his colleague lawyers to send an independent physician and psychiatrist to Guantanamo to examine, Abdul Latif.
Abdul Latif has been languishing in the detention for about seven years.” (from Gulf News)