Media continue to ignore Cheney role in authorizing torture tactics
SUMMARY: Media outlets continue to cite Dick Cheney's criticism of President Obama for releasing previously classified Justice Department memos authorizing the CIA's use of harsh interrogation techniques while ignoring Cheney's self-acknowledged role in authorizing the use of those techniques.
In an April 22 article, The Washington Post asserted that "[c]ritics on the right, including former vice president Richard B. Cheney, said that [President] Obama was jeopardizing national security by releasing" portions of four previously classified Justice Department memos that authorized the use of harsh interrogation techniques by the CIA. Similarly, the Associated Press reported that Obama was "assailed by former Vice President Dick Cheney and other Republicans for, in their view, undermining national security and tipping off the enemy," and The New York Times reported that "Bush administration veterans, starting with former Vice President Dick Cheney, have argued that the harsh methods helped prevent terrorist attacks." The Times added: "In an interview Monday on Fox News, Mr. Cheney called for the Obama White House to release additional memos that he said showed that the techniques were useful." However, in allowing Cheney to criticize Obama for releasing the memos, none of these media outlets noted Cheney's self-acknowledged role in authorizing the techniques -- a role previously explored at length in a June 2007 Post investigation.
This is the second day in a row that the Times has reported on Cheney's attacks without noting his role in authorizing the techniques.
As Media Matters for America has noted, during a December 15, 2008, interview with ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl, Cheney said, "We had the Justice Department issue the requisite opinions in order to know where the bright lines were that you could not cross." Cheney also said he was "aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared" for tactics used against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and said he agreed that waterboarding was "appropriate."
According to the June 25, 2007, Post article by reporters Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, "Cheney and his allies, according to more than two dozen current and former officials, pioneered a novel distinction between forbidden 'torture' and permitted use of 'cruel, inhuman or degrading' methods of questioning. They did not originate every idea to rewrite or reinterpret the law, but fresh accounts from participants show that they translated muscular theories, from [Justice Department lawyer John C.] Yoo and others, into the operational language of government." The article continued:
David S. Addington, Cheney's general counsel, set the new legal agenda in a blunt memorandum shortly after the CIA delegation returned to Langley. Geneva's "strict limits on questioning of enemy prisoners," he wrote on Jan. 25, 2002, hobbled efforts "to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists."
No longer was the vice president focused on procedural rights, such as access to lawyers and courts. The subject now was more elemental: How much suffering could U.S. personnel inflict on an enemy to make him talk? Cheney's lawyer feared that future prosecutors, with motives "difficult to predict," might bring criminal charges against interrogators or Bush administration officials.
Geneva rules forbade not only torture but also, in equally categorical terms, the use of "violence," "cruel treatment" or "humiliating and degrading treatment" against a detainee "at any time and in any place whatsoever." The War Crimes Act of 1996 made any grave breach of those restrictions a U.S. felony. The best defense against such a charge, Addington wrote, would combine a broad presidential directive for humane treatment, in general, with an assertion of unrestricted authority to make exceptions.
The vice president's counsel proposed that President Bush issue a carefully ambiguous directive. Detainees would be treated "humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of" the Geneva Conventions. When Bush issued his public decision two weeks later, on Feb. 7, 2002, he adopted Addington's formula -- with all its room for maneuver -- verbatim.
[...]
The Justice Department delivered a classified opinion on Aug. 1, 2002, stating that the U.S. law against torture "prohibits only the worst forms of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" and therefore permits many others. Distributed under the signature of Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee, the opinion also narrowed the definition of "torture" to mean only suffering "equivalent in intensity" to the pain of "organ failure ..... or even death."
When news accounts unearthed that opinion nearly two years later, the White House repudiated its contents. Some officials described it as hypothetical, without disclosing that the opinion was written in response to specific questions from the CIA. Administration officials attributed authorship to Yoo, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley who had come to serve in the Office of Legal Counsel.
But the "torture memo," as it became widely known, was not Yoo's work alone. In an interview, Yoo said that Addington, as well as [then-Attorney General Alberto] Gonzales and deputy White House counsel Timothy E. Flanigan, contributed to the analysis.
The vice president's lawyer advocated what was considered the memo's most radical claim: that the president may authorize any interrogation method, even if it crosses the line into torture. U.S. and treaty laws forbidding any person to "commit torture," that passage stated, "do not apply" to the commander in chief, because Congress "may no more regulate the President's ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield."
That same day, Aug. 1, 2002, Yoo signed off on a second secret opinion, the contents of which have never been made public. According to a source with direct knowledge, that opinion approved as lawful a long list of interrogation techniques proposed by the CIA -- including waterboarding, a form of near-drowning that the U.S. government has prosecuted as a war crime since at least 1901. The opinion drew the line against one request: threatening to bury a prisoner alive.
Yoo said for the first time in an interview that he verbally warned lawyers for the president, Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that it would be a risky policy to permit military interrogators to use the harshest techniques, because the armed services, vastly larger than the CIA, could overuse the tools or exceed the limits. "I always thought that only the CIA should do this, but people at the White House and at DOD felt differently," Yoo said. The migration of those techniques from the CIA to the military, and from Guantanamo Bay to Abu Ghraib, aroused worldwide condemnation when abuse by U.S. troops was exposed.
Additionally, in a December 16, 2008, Post article, reporter Peter Finn noted Cheney's comments in the ABC interview, writing that during the interview, "Cheney also for the first time acknowledged playing a central role in approving the CIA's use of controversial interrogation tactics, including 'waterboarding,' which simulates drowning."
on yesterday's show (Tuesday, April 21st), Sheer Insannity thought he'd struck gold with Dick Cheney's demand that the CIA release the results of "enhanced interrogations."
Insannity thinks we'll all be down with torture once we see that it works. After all, how else could the North Vietnamese learned the names of the Green Bay Packer's O-Line, without torturing John McCain?
Of course, all we have at this point is Dick Cheney's self-serving claim that torture works. But - what if it does? Do the ends justify the means? Do we abandon the moral high ground and adopt our enemy's values?
Insannity compared Americans to those who cut off Daniel Pearl's head. That's a false comparison - other than to state very simply we refuse to become like them. We can not abandon our ethics and values. Otherwise, this becomes a dog-eat-dog fight for survival.
America is much better than that!
Of course, you're right Newzhound.
But torture is still torture, and torture is still illegal. It's an international war crime.
Cheney and all of thse involved with torture deserve prosecution. Otherwise, we're not the America we claim to be.
You're right. I'm afraid, though, that the sliding scale of justice for the rich and powerful will come into play and they will escape without even a slap on the wrist. Of course, the topic will be endlessly politicized so that the facts will be all but ignored, but Bush and Cheney implemented and authorized torture (and other illegal tactics); they and those in their administration should face the music for the laws they shattered. I hope they will, but I'm too cynical to think it will actually happen, especially with the right wingnuts screaming about how it was "necessary."
why are people still afraid of the fat dude ? he is nothing, just a guy walking around on this place thinking he is still running the CIA. I would tell him to go home.
good reference to REAL results of disinformation resulting from torture are John McCain and Bud Day. See book "American Patriot" by Robert Coram.
Cheney's self-serving is patently obvious (and later today I heard this on Rachel Maddow from a REAL US interrogator)
Cheney desperately needed to show link between al Qaeda and Saddam, especially after invasion of Iraq proved absence of WMD. Cheney's only hope was to torture prisoners into making false claims to justify his assertions. Professional interrogators know you can't work this way.
Most of the MSM, not just Fox News, is way off course on the torture investigations.
CNN last night had Anderson Cooper asking if torture was justified because Blair said they got "high value info" from a detainee.
Nevermind the fact that torture is ILLEGAL and ADHORENT and that Bush/Cheney lied and said categorically that the US DOES NOT TORTURE.
The MSM are definitely pushing the ends justifying the means as justification just as the GOP talking points tell them to.
I believe the entire story should be told. If torturing did provide high value information then let that part come out also. It doesn't justify it but it does refute the claim that torture doesn't ever work.
Tell the whole story, not the one that fits one sides agenda.
"High value info" coming out of torture doe NOT prove that it works. In fact, Blair said that there is no proof that they could not have gotten the same info by other means.
If Congress feels that Americans approve of torture and want it to become legal, then Congress can pass laws to make it legal.
They weren't getting the information until they upped the ante. I agree that they should have kept it legal but that doesn't change the facts of the timeline.
Brilliant - beat them all until somebody confesses. Sure, I wish it was legal, but still, our conviction rate is 100%...
I read agree that there needs to be a full accounting.
At least in the case of Abu Zubaida, you're wrong about not getting information until "upping the ante" (nice euphemism).
bruce1ace: There is no proof that what you state is true. Dick Cheney has made a number of self-serving claims to that end - but they remain statements and not facts.
More to the point, it doesn't make any difference. Torture is wrong, it is illegal, and Americans are much better than that. I have faith in our ethics and values. The right wing nutz, obviously, do not.
Yes, exactly. It's not that the torturing of terrorists is wrong beccause they're terrorists.
It's because America doesn't torture, or shouldn't!
Professional interrogators don't torture because you don't get reliable intelligence following torture. John McCain and Bud Day should be well-known examples.
The reason Americans don't torture goes back to George Washington's treatment of British POWs.
What Adm. Blair actually said is that
" The information gained from these techniques was valuable in some instances, but there is no way of knowing whether the same information could have been obtained through other means"
"No way of knowing" and "there is no proof" are two different things.
At the end of the day these enemy combatants had three hots and a cot and slept at night with all their fingers, toes, and teeth. If the techniques used saved one (probably thousands) then I can agree with its use.
How can you even think of insinuating that any lives were saved, when there isn't one piece of evidence to support that?
Also, if you think torture is okay under any circumstance, then you are as "unAmerican" as the terrorists and you should move to a country that does not have laws and rules and ideals.
I think ol' slick had better read this:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090422/ap_on_go_co/us_interrogation_memos_senate
Here's how the professionals view torture (from above memo)
"n July 2002, responding to a follow-up from the Pentagon general counsel's office, JPRA officials detailed their methods, but warned that harsh physical techniques could backfire by making prisoners more resistant. They also cautioned about the reliability of information gleaned from the severe methods and warned that the public and political backlash could be "intolerable."
"A subject in extreme pain may provide an answer, any answer or many answers in order to get the pain to stop," the training officials said in their memo."
Because to many on the right if it is necessary for propaganda purposes it becomes true for that reason alone
So then would it be ok to bring their wives and children in front of them and rape and torture THEM to death to get such information? Are you saying ANYTHING is ok as long as it gets information that saves lives? How about we will NUKE Mecca unless you tell us what you know would THAT be ok? If you are leaving decency behind in order to save your shaky scared butt is there ANY line that you wouldnt cross to accomplish that?
The military and FBI have said it draws a major backlash. If it inspires more attacks does it really work?
On-the-spot executions prevent all sorts of recidivism. Very effective. Dick Cheney is only talking to the straggler nincompoops, the frightened Coward-Americans who want their government to abandon whatever American values they need to in order to make those cowards feel safe.
"They did not originate every idea to rewrite or reinterpret the law, but fresh accounts from participants show that they translated muscular theories, from [Justice Department lawyer John C.] Yoo and others, into the operational language of government."
Muscular theories? This is the kind of bull crap that the press writes all the time about the Bushies, using words like "muscular", "bold", "brash", or "fresh", as if somehow their psychopathic lying and sadistic behavior was something to be admired.
Frank Lutz at work - muscle brained branding for deception
There is no entire story to tell. If torture produced high value information, you know the Bush Administration would have exploited that angle for political gain in a heartbeat.
And nice strawman, btw, nobody has said torture doesn't ever work. We're saying it shouldn't ever be used because it violates every basic standard of human decency, which one would think, would chafe the values and tender mercies of the religious right. Rationalizing torture is just another example of the right taking no responsibility for selling out on their family values claptrap. Again we see that the only reason the right ever mentions personal responsibility is to use it a bludgeon when it serves their radical conservative agenda.
Why isn't Cheney in Leavenworth?
The inmates felt it would denegrate their reputations.
I wonder if they'll ignore his war crimes trial at the Hague? (j/k - I know that will never happen.)
Listen, this is what the Justice Department should do... First, detain Cheney. Then to get the true and complete story of what happened in the Bush administration with regards to the authorization and effective use of torture, Dick "Detainee" Cheney could be subjected to harsh interrogation techniques...you know, just to loosen him up a little bit and make him talk. I'm sure Cheney would agree that it's all perfectly legal. And, besides, our national security could be riding on this. ;>)
How many times does this simple aphorism need to be said?
The ends do not justify the means!!!!
And how "high value" was that info if they felt they had to waterboard one guy 183 times and another guy 83 times?
Also, lest we forget, this treatment took place before these people were charged with anything. Why don't we just torture anyone we like, then, on suspicion alone?
Hey, they already tried that during the Witch Trials... look how much valuable information they got out of those "witches".
Cheney is not in Levenworth because he hasn't been charged, tried or convicted of any crime.
That torture does not work to reveal useful information is a theory based on a hypothesis. It takes skill and additional information to sort truth from fiction but torture works. Not using it is a values-based decision. Cheney, et al, believe:
(a) Their Constitutional Mandate to defend the nation authorizes them to take what means they view as necessary. Under a Declaration of War there would have been no question about the legality of much harsher tactics including summary executions. War was not declared but, that is because Congress used its power, (after the Viet Nam, undeclared war), to establish a Constitutionally acceptable alternative called the War Powers Act. Congress did authorize war under the War Powers Act, therefore it granted the Administration the authority to act as a wartime administration while reserving the authority to end or limit Administrative authority.
(b) As a values based decision, Cheney believes that the American people will learn that attacks were prevented by the use of these methods and that the American people will judge that this end did justify this means. If members of the Bush administration are prosecuted for what the people agree was a justified defense of their safety the careers of those that pursued them will be over. Obama understands not only this, but that the Republicans will come back and that he does not want to have established this precedent. Call it cowardice or wisdom, Barak knows that a subsequent Administration will be under intense pressure to bring him to trial.
Under the legal coverage of wartime authority A. Johnson was not prosecuted for being Vice-President during Lincoln's suspension of habeus corpus and inhumane treatment of Southern prisoners, Truman was not prosecuted for being Roosevelt's Vice-President though as both Vice-President and President he was the administrative authority while hundreds, (maybe thousands), of German and Japanese prisoners were executed by American forces without trial. L. Johnson was not prosecuted after escalating the war based on a contrived incident in the Bay of Tonkin or after U.S. Forces routinely waterboarded prisoners in the field in order to get information. Carter has not yet been prosecuted for sending an American commando team on a strike against the peaceful nation of Iran. Clinton has not yet been prosecuted for using deceptively presented data to convince Congress to support his bombing campaign against Serbia. Finally, Obama has not yet been prosecuted for authorizing the illegal assassinations of Pakistani and Afghani citizens, but rest assured ... that time may well come.
Also, the techniques used by the Bush Admin. may not meet the legal definition of torture and any case brought against them will have to show that they knowingly broke the law in a marginal circumstance while federal attorneys were telling them it was legal.
that's a very well-organized pile of crap, ewl.
Colonel, soewl thinks we should not prosecute criminals? It took a few paragraghs but he made his point. I think ewl forgot about the lies getting us into Iraq. As a matter of facthe forgot Reagan and Arms for Hostages, thank you Ollie North, with Bush 1's permission/knowledge. And our little incursion into IRAQ for WMDs' is not mentioned. It must be that Republicon presidents are pure as the driven snow. I think ewl is one-sided.
EWL let us go backwards and start the criminal investigations. I'll bet Bush and Cheney won't like it.
I'll bet Bush and Cheney won't like it.
I also bet they don't like the fact that Fujimori is going to jail for the same things these criminals did.
It takes skill and additional information to sort truth from fiction but torture works.
Really? In what way? By making prisoners confess to things they didn't do? In the materials I've read, including a very informative article about a year or so ago in The Atlantic, past and present interrogators tend to agree that torture generally produces unreliable intelligence.
A LESSON FROM THE DARK AGES
Actually that is not accurate to say its a theory that torture doesn't work. Since its impossible to prove a negative, no self-respecting social scientist or psychologist would advance such a premise. Secondly, there is ample evidence going back to the inquisition that torture is not a reliable way to extract the truth. If you read the accounts of confessions of "witches" who were tortured by inquisitors, certain patterns emerge: 1) they had sex with the devil; 2) his penis was cold. Why would so many women make these strange claims under torture? If you haven't guessed, its because this is precisly what their torturers wanted them to say. Proof in point: people can be made to say anything under extreme duress, but the validity of their statements is highly questionable.
Excellent point. People who defend torture should be required to read historical accounts of the witch trials. It clearly proves that people can be forced to say anything if you torture them enough.
We know that these people could not fly, and did not have sex with the devil, but they confessed to it nonetheless, and implicated their own family members to stop the torture.
I know that, you idiot.
It's more of a rhetorical question than anything...
ewl94232: "A value based decision?" What a load of horse puckey. The President and the Vice President of the United States swear an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States. By Treaty the US law is that we do not torture. That also happens to be the moral (ethic, value-based) high ground.
The President and the Vice President do not have the right to abrogate the Constitution on a whim. We fight wars to defend our values, not to tailor them to suit the breezes blowing at the moment. That's for the summer soldier and sunshine patriot...
Pure sophistry.
Do you know any professional interrogators? Have you read any of the books by recent US interrogators, Matthew Alexander, or past (such as WWII)?
We don't torture because it doesn't provide reliable intelligence.
If you want to justify Cheney and BUsh's fantasies, fears and beliefs, have at it, but don't deceive yourself you're getting reliable information.
Pathetic excuses.
Cheney needs to shut up and move into a retirement home. If he can find one in Guantanomo Bay, or one in Fallujah, even better.
I'd recommend a country without extradition laws. ;>)
The Media is ignoring the murders of 28 innocent detainees tortured to death, and over 100 innocent detainees who died in gulangs while in US custody. These 28 deaths have been confirmed by US military autopsies. That is what is missing here, and we should be outraged at this inhumane treatment administered in the name of WE THE PEOPLE.
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/18/ex-state-dept-official-hundreds-of-detainees-died-in-us-custody-at-least-25-murdered/
Would a great man be proud of his works? Had he focused pro rosa, can anyone deny benefits? Does secrecy favor crime or state? A man is not a state. He is a servant, thereof. We the people, ask with free speech, and demand. We are the citizens, you are elected and actions have consiquences. Is it proud, or pride?
Wait a minute here. Didn't Cheney say he served at the pleasure of the president ? So why is this presented as Cheney's self-acknowledged role in authorizing the use of those techniques and not adding Bush himself had to have authorised it ( at the behest of Cheney ? )
Personally, I think Cheney's bluffing. I seriously doubt that they got any "valuable" information that could be confirmed.
I think they should call his bluff and declassify the memos, but only if they also release all the memos and "classified" papers dealing with the propaganda campaign to sell the Iraq War. That's what we really need to see... that is Cheney's biggest crime.
Cheney IS bluffing.
He is literally deluded into thinking the torture revealed that there was a link between Saddam and al Qaeda, thereby justifying the invation of iraq. This line of desperation was after the disproval of the WMD theory.
It's Cheney's only hope. Unfortunately, Cheney is such a sociopathic personality he won't take responsibility for his own actions.
The truly sad aspect of this entire torture episode is that FauxNews will promoted the torture transcriptions (without video of course) where al Qaeda subjects admit their involvement with Saddam But of course, these same subjects made no such claims of relationship with Saddam pre-torture sessions, despite revealing myraid details as a result of traditional professional interrogation methods. What we know as a result of cross-referencing after the Iraq invasion is that.....there were no relationships between Saddam and al Qaeda that were greater than relationships between the CIA and al Qaeda.
What all of you experts on torture fail to recall is that the information thus extracted does not exist in a vacuum. A prisoner can utter a thousand lies. Intelligence relies on finding coroborating information from other sources, in looking at the alleged information to see if it makes sense. Specifically, Al Qaida is alleged to have hatched a plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge during rush hour. Intercepted phone traffic revealed the potential target. What Lefties claim to be "illegal wire-tapping." Security was increased and subsequent intercepts indicated that the operation had been put on hold. Waterboarding of the Shiek revealed the name of the operative that was tasked to carry out this attack. He was located and the equipment and specific plans on how to accomplish the destruction of the bridge were found in his apartment. The assessment of the FBI was that this plot would have worked.
You should try to look at both sides of an issue before you assume you understand it.
I did leave prosecutions and attempted prosecutions of Republicans out. Speaking to a primarily Liberal audience, my intent was to indicate that this was a two-edged sword, it was not because I am unaware of those accusations.