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Was Cheney Talking About Obama's Executive Order?
We asked earlier about what Dick Cheney might have been referring to when he said President Obama had reserved the right to order enhanced interrogation when he deems it appropriate.
Could Cheney have been referring to this passage from Obama's executive order on interrogations?
The mission of the Special Task Force shall be:(i) to study and evaluate whether the interrogation practices and techniques in Army Field Manual 2 22.3, when employed by departments or agencies outside the military, provide an appropriate means of acquiring the intelligence necessary to protect the Nation, and, if warranted, to recommend any additional or different guidance for other departments or agencies...
Of course, studying whether there's a need for other means if a different thing from "reserv[ing] unto himself the right to order the use of enhanced interrogation should he deem it appropriate," as Cheney put it. But the former veep isn't known to let those kind of nuances get in the way of a good political hit.
It's also worth noting that Leon Panetta appears to have banned CIA interrogations beyond the field manual.
We've got a call in to Cheney's "transition" office, and will let you know what we hear.
Josh
Zachary
Again, NPR called this "a possible loophole."
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=99790782
At the very least, it leaves President Obama wiggle room should he deem enhanced interrogation techniques to be prudent at some point in the future.
May 21, 2009 1:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
When we saw how Bush/Cheney reacted to the events of 9/11, it became possible to say, "The terrorists won." Now that we see how the Obama administration is dealing with the Bush/Cheney reaction to 9/11, it is possible to say that, on election day last November, Bush/Cheney won. As long as Obama supports the Bush argument that invocation of the state secrets defense precludes the judiciary from allowing torture victims their day in court; as long as he threatens that Britain will get no intelligence from the US if one of its own citizens whom we tortured is allowed his day in court; as long as detainees at Bagram are refused habeas corpus rights; as long as Obama politicizes the Justice Department by flatly stating that CIA torturers will not be prosecuted (and claiming that the crimes at Abu Ghraib were the result of a few bad apples who have been properly punished); as long as he keeps claiming that even investigating the architects of the torture program is just mean-spirited "retribution"; as long as he maintains the fantasy that "preventive detention" is an option in this country and that military tribunals can work; as long as he hides photographs of torture on the grounds that publicizing them is more dangerous than the torture itself; until Obama changes all of this, I think it is not unreasonable of Cheney to assert that Obama has reserved for himself the right to torture. That right will be abolished only when the truth comes out, and Obama is fighting tooth and nail against the truth.
May 21, 2009 2:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Cheney is working on a theory which justifies his own conduct -- that the Executive Branch can by fiat go extra-legal. By that theory, any President can do what Bush&Co did, so of course the "right" is reserved. Even if Obama specifically rejects that right, that only applies to Obama.
An alternative theory says that there is no such right in the first place.
Since the EO is nominally aimed at ensuring Lawful Interrogations, either the title is a lie or Cheney is talking fiction.
However, let's not pretend that all harsh interrogation is torture. It's not. According to the EO, 'torture' means what GC and CAT define it to mean. So there is an invisible line between harsh interrogation and torture. All Presidents, under both Cheney and the alternative, are allowed to order harsh interrogations short of torture (and with other constraints not specifically about torture).
Cheney doesn't recognize that the techniques "authorized" by OLC memos (which did not truly authorize anything) constituted torture. Whether he's right or wrong could be a matter for a court of law.
May 21, 2009 3:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Zachary's and Alligator Head's suggestions are probably both correct.
Rhetorically, I think the former Veep was trying to turn a positive into a negative--trying to reframe the president's decision to ban certain "enhanced interrogation techniques" as a decision to take away the CIA's/military's discretion to use those techniques.
May 21, 2009 4:01 PM | Reply | Permalink