Congress, Constitutional Law, Criminal law, International, Military, Politics, Society

Cheney: “I Was a Big Supporter of Waterboarding”

Former Vice President Dick Cheney came out this weekend in an interview with ABC’s Jonathan Karl to proclaim “I was a big supporter of waterboarding.” It is an astonishing public admission since waterboarding is not just illegal but a war crime. It is akin to the Vice President saying that he supported bank robbery or murder-for-hire as a public policy.

The ability of Cheney to openly brag about his taste for torture is the direct result of President Barack Obama blocking any investigation or prosecution of war crimes. For political reasons, Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have refused to carry out our clear obligations under international law to prosecute for such waterboarding. Indeed, before taking office, various high-ranking officials stated that both Obama and Holder assured them that they would not allow such prosecutions. While they denied it at the time, those accounts are consistent with their actions following inauguration.

By the way, this is the same man who insisted that acknowledging waterboarding was barred under national security laws — a position accepted by ranking Democrats who were eager to avoid the issue during the Bush Administration.

We have now come to this: a Vice President who feels perfectly comfortable in bragging out his support for a torture program. It is a moment that is more of an indictment of Obama than (the unindicted) Cheney. It is fruit that comes from an Administration that chose politics over principle — even at the cost of precedent forged in the Nuremberg trials and the Geneva Conventions. Cheney’s statement should be a moment of unspeakable national shame.

For the full interview, click here.

192 thoughts on “Cheney: “I Was a Big Supporter of Waterboarding””

  1. @Duh: Torture does not work, so there’s no reason to go into an analysis of when it might be justified.

  2. @The Artist Formerly Known As FFN: You just made a cost benefit analysis. You might weigh the “rule of law” very high, but you are still making a judgment call applying your own values and perceptions to the analysis. I personally weigh other things I outlined as more important–you call those things “false choices”, but I don’t see it that way–they are to me pretty clear opportunity costs, and (giving the Obama administration the benefit of the doubt here) I think they see it the same way. War crimes prosecutions or the domestic agenda outlined above? It is unfortunately a very real and unavoidable choice. Life does not allow you to have it all–you have to pick and choose.

  3. Gyges,

    I can’t prove to you that torture is effective, and you can’t prove that it isn’t effective. For the benefit of this argument, let’s just operate on the premise that it does work.

  5. Duh,

    Really?

    I’ll let you in on a little secret that pretty much everyone (especially people who torture).

    Torture has one only purpose: To get whoever you’re torturing to say whatever you want them to say, even if what you want them to say isn’t true. As a method of getting information, it doesn’t work.

    So in essence your question is like asking: You know there’s a bomb in the building, do you ritually slaughter a goat and consult the entrails or not?

  6. Henry,

    SO are you saying that torture could be considered acceptable in some circumstances? And if it is performed in a circumstance that you find acceptable, it would then be acceptable if it was not prosecuted?

  7. Duh,

    I think you’re missing my point. I don’t think we should torture anyone, ever, under any circumstances. My point was rather that reasoning from false premises gets you to a point where these kinds of immoral, illegal decisions might seem logical. Unfortunately, this is how a lot of our political debate is conducted. Like in the presidential debates: “Would you use nuclear weapons if…” or the ticking time bomb scenario.

  8. Duh, you must distinguish two distinct questions: (1) should torture be legal in any circumstance?, and (2) given that torture is illegal in all circumstances, should one torture anyway in a ticking-time-bomb situation and risk being prosecuted (knowing that, if it really was a ticking-time-bomb situation and you saved numerous lives, it is unlikely that you would be prosecuted)?

  9. FFN said “the “Ticking Time Bomb” argument: torture the prisoner, or the world ends. Well, then of course you torture the prisoner”

    Anyone agree or disagree?

  10. Alan,

    Your analogy sets up a false choice. I don’t know of a single instance in history where that happened to be the case. You can make anyone agree to anything illogical if these kinds of choices are set up. It’s an argument rather akin to the “Ticking Time Bomb” argument: torture the prisoner, or the world ends. Well, then of course you torture the prisoner, but the scenario is based on so many false assumptions it’s hard to untangle them all. See here for a great discussion: http://www.progressive.org/mag_mccoy1006

    Furthermore, your ‘cost-benefit analysis’ argument is weak. I’ve heard this response from many people when faced with a difficult question. They think that CBA is magic fairy dust that can be sprinkled on a problem to make it go away. But CBA depends on pricing things. So let’s assume your approach. How do you price something like our system of law? How do you price something like human rights? How do you price lives? That is the plainly impossible task you are faced with when using CBA.

    Of course, when most people refer to CBA as a solution they don’t take into account these costs because there’s no way to price them. Or even if there is an attempt, they are usually “under-valued” because the people doing the pricing have certain interests and motives that do not coincide with, say, civil liberties. There is no such thing as an objective CBA. For instance, if the airlines and the government do a CBA on how much security to put in at airports, you can be sure that the airlines’ profits and the government’s financial/political interests get emphasized, but privacy rights not so much.

    So you see, in a CBA like the one you proposed, the public always loses. There are some things, like the sanctity of law, that are invaluable to a society.

  11. Tsutsugamushi, I agree with you that prosecutorial discretion should not be used to forgo prosecuting torture. But you seem to miss the point that prosecutorial discretion MAY NOT be used to forgo prosecuting torture, because the Geneva Conventions REQUIRE that torture be prosecuted. Obama is not merely making a bad choice in not prosecuting; he is breaking the law.

  12. To be absolutely clear I am not part of the “costs don’t matter crowd,” I subscribe to legal arguments, and therefor, am part of the “rule of law crowd.” You may have read about that concept: it appears to be part of the US tradition. Under the principle that justice is blind we should apply the law without debating costs or benefits. They simply are irrelevant!

    I appreciate that at times we do not have sufficient means to prosecute every suspected criminal. However, certain crimes are/should be beyond debate, and should never require a cost vs. benefit rationale. Those types of crimes, for me, would include crimes against humanity.

  14. Howard’s comment, “Waterboarding took place under Bill Clinton too. Get over it,” suggests that he (and probably most defenders of Bush’s torture regime) think that this is only about politics — that those of us who oppose torture do so only when Republicans do it. They are wrong. Our concern is moral, not political.

  15. Howard, what’s the evidence of that? And what difference does it make except that, if it’s true, then whoever was responsible for it should be prosecuted too. You’re not suggesting, are you, that two war crimes make a right?

  16. Howard,

    Then let’s prosecute people in the Clinton administration.

    This isn’t political score keeping, this is about the law.
    Torture is illegal and evil (which is a word I hardly ever use). Not prosecuting those involved in torture is illegal and evil.

  20. Abraham Lincoln claimed, or perhaps wished, in the Gettysburg Address that we are “a nation of laws and not of men.” But yet today, because men like Cheney, who now boldly admit to advocating war crimes, are deemed “too high to prosecute” (sounds a lot like “too big to fail”) the laws are widely judged to not apply to them, which is the crux of our problems as a nation today.

    Thomas Paine proclaimed that in America, “the law is King!” but in modern America, people like Cheney are judged to be the new kings and the is only applied to those who can’t afford to purchase this status.

    As Steve Earle said, “it just gets tougher every day to sit around and watch it as it slips away.”

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