Dick Cheney

Levin: Cheney "Bore False Witness" On Torture

Zachary Roth | May 29, 2009, 4:07PM

Over at TPMDC, we posted video of a speech given Wednesday night by Sen. Carl Levin, in which he pushed back against Dick Cheney's no-middle-ground approach to torture.

But one specific rebuttal of Levin's that particularly stood out, in part because not enough people have challenged Cheney's claim, comes at the 3:53 mark.

Says Levin:

When former Vice President Cheney said last week that what happened at Abu Ghraib was the work of a quote few sadistic prison guards acting on their own, he bore false witness.

And when he said last week there was no link between the techniques at Abu Ghraib and those approved for use in the CIA's secret prisons, he again strayed from the truth.

The seeds of Abu Ghraib's rotten fruit were sown by civilians at the highest levels of our government.

Hard to put it better than that.

Watch:

CIA

How Cheney Turned A Right-Wing Meme Mainstream

Zachary Roth | May 21, 2009, 2:21PM

It looks like we've figured out what Dick Cheney meant when he said President Obama has "reserved unto himself" the right to order enhanced interrogation techniques.

In February the Wall Street Journal reported (sub. req.) :

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Dick Cheney

Cheney Still Pushing Bogus Saddam-Al Qaeda Link

Zachary Roth | May 21, 2009, 1:10PM

Here's something else that's noteworthy from Cheney's speech. He again falsely implied that Saddam was working with al Qaeda:

We had the anthrax attack from an unknown source. We had the training camps of Afghanistan, and dictators like Saddam Hussein with known ties to Mideast terrorists.

It's unclear which "Mideast terrorists" those were. After all, Saddam had for over 30 years been the leader of a major Mideast country. It would be surprising if you couldn't find that he had "ties" to terrorists of some kind. But Cheney's purpose in bringing it up is clearly to suggest that Saddam had meaningful connections to the terrorists who hit us on 9/11. That's long been known to be a lie.

Dick Cheney

Was Cheney Talking About Obama's Executive Order?

Zachary Roth | May 21, 2009, 12:52PM

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?

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Torture

What Did Cheney Mean That Obama Has Reserved Right To Torture?

Zachary Roth | May 21, 2009, 12:11PM

We were struck by one excerpt from Cheney's speech:

This might explain why President Obama has reserved unto himself the right to order the use of enhanced interrogation should he deem it appropriate. What value remains to that authority is debatable, given that the enemy now knows exactly what interrogation methods to train against, and which ones not to worry about. Yet having reserved for himself the authority to order enhanced interrogation after an emergency, you would think that President Obama would be less disdainful of what his predecessor authorized after 9/11. It's almost gone unnoticed that the president has retained the power to order the same methods in the same circumstances. When they talk about interrogations, he and his administration speak as if they have resolved some great moral dilemma in how to extract critical information from terrorists. Instead they have put the decision off, while assigning a presumption of moral superiority to any decision they make in the future.

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Dick Cheney

Cheney: Even Arguing About Torture is Helping Terrorists

Zachary Roth | May 21, 2009, 11:54AM

Here's maybe the most radical argument of an extremely radical speech:

And when they see the American government caught up in arguments about interrogations, or whether foreign terrorists have constitutional rights, they don't stand back in awe of our legal system and wonder whether they had misjudged us all along. Instead the terrorists see just what they were hoping for - our unity gone, our resolve shaken, our leaders distracted. In short, they see weakness and opportunity.

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Dick Cheney

Cheney On Torture: Misinformation And Straw Men

Zachary Roth | May 21, 2009, 11:42AM

Here are some of the key excerpts from the part of Cheney's speech where he addresses torture. There are some obvious problems with all of them.

Over on the left wing of the president's party, there appears to be little curiosity in finding out what was learned from the terrorists. The kind of answers they're after would be heard before a so-called "Truth Commission."

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Dick Cheney

Cheney: If You Disagree With Me, You Don't Take 9/11 Seriously

Zachary Roth | May 21, 2009, 11:21AM

Here's what might you might call the nut graf of Dick Cheney's forthcoming speech, which was released a little earlier:

So we're left to draw one of two conclusions - and here is the great dividing line in our current debate over national security. You can look at the facts and conclude that the comprehensive strategy has worked, and therefore needs to be continued as vigilantly as ever. Or you can look at the same set of facts and conclude that 9/11 was a one-off event - coordinated, devastating, but also unique and not sufficient to justify a sustained wartime effort. Whichever conclusion you arrive at, it will shape your entire view of the last seven years, and of the policies necessary to protect America for years to come.

In other words, if you oppose Dick Cheney's approach to the war on terror, you're not taking 9/11 seriously.

You can see why Cheney would want to frame the debate this way.

Dick Cheney

Gitmo Investigator: Interrogators Were Tasked To Find Qaeda-Iraq Link

Zachary Roth | May 18, 2009, 11:03AM

On Friday, McClatchy provided a big new addition -- which hasn't got the attention it deserves -- to the growing pile of evidence suggesting the Bush administration used torture to build a political case for the Iraq war.

The news service dug up comments made in 2004 by Dick Cheney to the-now defunct Rocky Mountain News. Said the then-veep:

The (al Qaida-Iraq) links go back. We know for example from interrogating detainees in Guantanamo that al Qaida sent individuals to Baghdad to be trained in C.W. and B.W. technology, chemical and biological weapons technology. These are all matters that are there for anybody who wants to look at it."

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Dick Cheney

Liz Cheney Won't Deny Her Father Suggested Questions On Iraq-Qaeda Ties

Justin Elliott | May 17, 2009, 4:59PM

In an appearance on ABC's This Week today, Liz Cheney employed a classic non-denial denial when asked about a report her father's office pressured interrogators to use torture to find evidence of Iraq-Qaeda links.

George Stephanopolous asked Liz Cheney about a Daily Beast piece reporting that the vice president's office in 2003 suggested interrogators waterboard an Iraqi detainee who was suspected of having knowledge of a link between Iraq and al Qaeda.

Asked specifically by Stephanopolous if she would deny "that the vice president's office did ask specifically to have information about Iraq-al Qaeda connections presented to this detainee," Cheney offered this muddled response:

I think that it's important for us to have all the facts out. And and, the first and most important fact is that the vice president has been absolutely clear that he supported this program, this was an important program, it saved American lives. Now, the way this policy worked internally was once the policy was determined and decided, the CIA, you know, made the judgments about how each individual detainee would be treated. And the Vice President would not substitute his own judgment for the professional judgment of the CIA.

Here's the video of the exchange, (h/t ThinkProgress):

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Barack Obama

If Torture Stopped In 2004, How Is Obama Endangering Americans By Banning It?

Zachary Roth | May 15, 2009, 12:00PM

There's another part of Lawrence Wilkerson's widely circulated blog post from yesterday that hasn't been given the attention it deserves.

Wilkerson, the former US Army colonel who was Colin Powell's chief of staff at the State Department, wrote:

My investigations have revealed to me--vividly and clearly--that once the Abu Ghraib photographs were made public in the Spring of 2004, the CIA, its contractors, and everyone else involved in administering "the Cheney methods of interrogation", simply shut down. Nada. Nothing. No torture or harsh techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator. Period. People were too frightened by what might happen to them if they continued.

What I am saying is that no torture or harsh interrogation techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator for the entire second term of Cheney-Bush, 2005-2009. So, if we are to believe the protestations of Dick Cheney, that Obama's having shut down the "Cheney interrogation methods" will endanger the nation, what are we to say to Dick Cheney for having endangered the nation for the last four years of his vice presidency?

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Torture

Focus Shifting To Evidence Bushies Ordered Torture To Boost Case For Iraq War

Zachary Roth | May 14, 2009, 6:21PM

At last, the torture debate looks to be heading toward what's been the big question lurking in the background all along: was the Bush administration using torture in large part to make a political case for the invasion of Iraq?

Writing on The Daily Beast, former NBC producer Robert Windrem reports that in April 2003, Dick Cheney's office suggested that interrogators waterboard an Iraqi detainee who was suspected of having knowledge of a link between Saddam and al Qaeda.

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CIA

CIA Denies Cheney's Request To Declassify Torture Docs

Zachary Roth | May 14, 2009, 2:38PM

Dick Cheney's request to have declassified two CIA documents that he says will prove torture is effective has been denied.

In a letter obtained by both Steven Hayes of The Weekly Standard and Greg Sargent of the Plumline, the CIA wrote to the National Archives that saying that the documents are the subject of the a Freedom of Information Act request, and therefore can't be released.

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Dick Cheney

Liz Cheney Asked To Stay On MSNBC Set To Take On Robinson

Zachary Roth | May 12, 2009, 4:58PM

Earlier today, we posted some video of a combative exchange on MSNBC's Morning Joe between Liz Cheney and Eugene Robinson on the subject of Dick Cheney's vocal support for torture.

Here it is again:

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Dick Cheney

Is The Most Forceful Advocate For Probing Torture ... Dick Cheney?

Zachary Roth | May 11, 2009, 12:22PM

This goes way beyond strange bedfellows. But it looks like Dick Cheney has emerged as the single most forceful proponent of a full investigation of the Bush administration's torture policies.

In an interview on CBS's Face The Nation yesterday, the ex-veep claimed, as he has before, that the Obama administration's rejection of torture has made us less safe. But he also went further ever in repeatedly arguing -- contra congressional Republicans -- that we need to look back at the details of the torture program before moving forward.

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Philip Zelikow

Zelikow: I Think Cheney Tried To Destroy My Torture Memo

Zachary Roth | May 6, 2009, 12:01PM

Mother Jones has advanced the story of an alleged bid by the Bushies to destroy a memo, written by a top state department lawyer, that offered an alternative view on the legality of torture.

Last month, as we noted, Philip Zelikow, a top lawyer for Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, wrote that the Bush White House "attempted to collect and destroy all copies" of the memo. But he hadn't said who at the White House he suspected of being behind that effort.

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