Cheney Refuted

from Cheney’s attempt to poison the jury pool speech today

In top secret meetings about enhanced interrogations, I made my own beliefs clear. I was and remain a strong proponent of our enhanced interrogation program. The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed. They were legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do. The intelligence officers who questioned the terrorists can be proud of their work and proud of the results, because they prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people

The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists…

The Unending Torture of Omar Khadr

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after other efforts failed.

From MSNBC

Ali Soufan, testifying to a Senate panel behind a screen to hide his identity, said his team’s non-threatening interrogation approach elicited crucial information from al-Qaida operative Abu Zubaydah, including intelligence on “dirty bomb” terrorist Jose Padilla.

Soufan said his team had to step aside when CIA contractors took over. They began using harsh methods that caused Zubaydah to “shut down,” Soufan said, and his team had to be recalled the get the prisoner talking again.

They were legal,

Via Patriot Daily

April – May 2002:  Col. Wilkerson, Powell’s COS, says Bush administration authorized tortured months before DOJ memos.

   Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002–well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion–its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa’ida.

This is key:  The WH “authorization” of torture prior to the issuance of the DOJ torture memos shows that putative defendants Bush and Cheney can not rely on the defense of advice of counsel that they included in the law to CYA.  

Bombshell Report Ties Gonzo to Torture, Months before “Authorization”

Leaving aside the validity of the Yoo, Bybee and Bradbury memos….which have been called into question by nearly every legal review published so far and have had no one defend them that I can recall…torture was used both before the memos were written AND outside the parameters that the memos defined.

These memos were withdrawn by the Bush Administartion. Once they realized how bad and what an embarrassment and liability they really were.

Under these memos, John Yoo was able to make this statement (from the same link via Patriot Daily)

In 2005, John Yoo Argued Pres. Bush Had Legal Power to Torture Children by Crushing Testicles.

   During a debate in Chicago, John Yoo said that presidential powers include the right to order the torture of suspects, including their children.

   This is a text transcript excerpt of this exchange between International Human Rights expert Doug Cassel and John Yoo:

 

Doug Cassel: If the president deems that he’s got to torture somebody,  including by crushing the testicles of the person’s child, there is no  law that can stop him?

   John Yoo: No treaty.

   Doug Cassel: Also no law by Congress — that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo…

   John Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.

Legal my ass.

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essential, justified, successful,

The Plum LineGreg Sargent’s blog Flashback: Bush’s FBI Director Said Torture Didn’t Foil Any Terror Plots

Now that Bush administration officials have launched a major campaign to persuade us that torture “worked,” perhaps it’s worth recalling that George W. Bush’s own FBI director said in an interview last year that he wasn’t aware of a single planned terror attack on America that had been foiled by information obtained through torture.

Robert Mueller, who was appointed by Bush in 2001 and remains FBI director under Obama, delivered that assessment at the end of this December 2008 article in Vanity Fair on torture:

 

 I ask Mueller: So far as he is aware, have any attacks on America been disrupted thanks to intelligence obtained through what the administration still calls “enhanced techniques”?

   “I’m really reluctant to answer that,” Mueller says. He pauses, looks at an aide, and then says quietly, declining to elaborate: “I don’t believe that has been the case.”

That stands in direct contrast to Dick Cheney’s recent claim that torture has been “enormously valuable” in terms of “preventing another mass-casualty attack against the United States.”

Back to Ali Soufan.

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And…..they knew in advance that it would not work.

Countdown: Pentagon’s Chief Lawyer Was Warned That Torture Would Produce Unreliable Information

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And of course we now know WHY Cheney authorized and aggressively pressed for torture. To justify the illegal invasion of Iraq.

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And finally, Cheney seems to completely ignore the OTHER facet of the Bush Organized Torture Program, the fact that US soldiers were trained to torture at Gitmo. And that these soldiers and techniques were spread to Iraq and Afghanistan, where at least a hundred detainess were tortured to death… and the abuse in the pictures from Abu Ghraib became official policy.

   Sen. Carl M. Levin: In my judgment, the report represents a condemnation of both the Bush administration’s interrogation policies and of senior administration officials who attempted to shift the blame for abuse – such as that seen at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and Afghanistan – to low ranking soldiers. Claims, such as that made by former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz that detainee abuses could be chalked up to the unauthorized acts of a “few bad apples,” were simply false.

   The truth is that, early on, it was senior civilian leaders who set the tone. On September 16, 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney suggested that the United States turn to the “dark side” in our response to 9/11. Not long after that, after White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales called parts of the Geneva Conventions “quaint,” President Bush determined that provisions of the Geneva Conventions did not apply to certain detainees. Other senior officials followed the President and Vice President’s lead, authorizing policies that included harsh and abusive interrogation techniques.  

Dick Cheney is a liar and a War Criminal. Period.