Dick Cheney Zombies the American Public

On Thursday, former Vice President Cheney gave a speech at the American Enterprise Institute making a global case for the Bush administration's use of torture and indefinite detainment of suspected terrorists as core parts of its War on Terror.

Here's AEI's description of the event ...

In April 2009, almost eight years after the deadliest terrorist attack in American history, the Obama administration released four memos from the Bush administration's Office of Legal Counsel. These memos, which justified the use of harsh interrogation techniques against high-level al Qaeda detainees such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, have reignited a fierce debate about the United States' counterterrorism strategy.

Amid claims that the interrogation methods amount to torture and that those who approved them should be prosecuted or censured, it is clear that we know surprisingly little about the scope and efficacy of the Bush administration's national security policy. Many questions linger: What type of information did enhanced interrogation methods yield? Were lives saved as a result? Could that intelligence have been effectively collected by other means? How effective was the terrorist surveillance program in detecting the threat of al Qaeda and its operatives in the post-9/11 period? Will inhibiting these procedures cost more American lives?

Send Him Back to the Bunker!

Dick Cheney's dishonest speech about torture, terror, and Obama.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, May 21, 2009, at 6:36 PM ET

Why does anyone still listen to what Dick Cheney has to say?
This morning's back-to-back speeches on torture and terrorism—first by President Barack Obama, then by the former vice president—could have been an opportunity to weigh competing arguments, examine their premises, and chart an agenda for a serious debate.

Obama's speech did exactly that. He spelled out his logic, backed up his talking points with facts, and put forth a policy grounded—at least in his view—not just in lofty ideals but also in hardheaded assessments of national security. Those who disagree with his conclusions could come away at least knowing where their paths diverged—what claims they'd need to challenge in mounting their opposition.

Cheney, on the other hand, built a case on straw men, red herrings, and lies. In short, his speech was classic Dick Cheney, with all the familiar scowls and scorn intact. The Manichean worldview, which Cheney advanced and enforced while in office, was on full display. After justifying "enhanced interrogation methods," as part of the Bush administration's "comprehensive strategy" in the wake of 9/11—and noting that the next seven and a half years saw no follow-on attack—he said this:

Timothy Noah discovered why Cheney and other Republicans make such sore losers. Bruce Ackerman argued that Congress should impeach former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee for authorizing torture. Frank Bowman rebutted that Bybee shouldn't be impeached. David J. Morris advocated closing the military's torture school, from which he graduated while in the Marine Corps.

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 … and not sufficient to justify a sustained wartime effort.
This is a blatant evasion. The debate—or one of the debates—is, in fact, over whether or not the war on terror required "tough interrogations," as Cheney called them. Does he believe—should anyone else believe—that removing one chunk of this strategy would cause the whole edifice to topple? If these interrogations are so essential, why did President Bush stop them in 2004? And why haven't we been attacked since?

Cheney's evasiveness is more basic than this. He still refuses to acknowledge what nearly everyone else has: that these interrogations did amount to torture. "Torture was never permitted," he said, even while conceding the occasional water-boarding. These methods, he noted, "were given careful legal review before they were approved"—ignoring that these legal reviews were conducted by his own aides and have since been discredited almost uniformly.

Still, he persists. To call this program "torture," he went on, "is to libel the dedicated professionals"—the "carefully chosen" CIA personnel who conducted the interrogations—"and to cast terrorists and murderers as innocent victims." Of course, it does no such thing. Most of the criticisms, including President Obama's, have been directed at the Bush administration's top policymakers, not at those who carried out their orders. And nobody is claiming that the subjects of interrogation were "victims," much less "innocent." To decry torture does not imply the slightest sympathy for the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Cheney then dismissed the idea—hardly Obama's alone—that the interrogation policies and the detention operations at Guantanamo have served as a "recruitment tool" for al-Qaida and other terrorists. This claim, he said, "excuses the violent and blames America for the evil that others do. It's another version of that same old refrain from the Left: We brought it on ourselves."

This is nonsense on a few levels. Nobody is claiming that Osama Bin Laden and his crew would go away if we treated prisoners more nicely. However, it is indisputable that the reports of torture, the photos from Abu Ghraib, and the legal limbo at Guantanamo have galvanized al-Qaida's recruitment campaigns. Everyone acknowledges this, hardly just "the Left." It's why many Republicans lamented the news stories and the photographs—because they might help the enemy.

Cheney's next volley against Obama—for releasing the Bush administration's legal documents that justified water-boarding and other harsh practices—was where the outright lying began. "President Obama has reserved unto himself the right to order the use of enhanced interrogation, should he deem it appropriate," Cheney said. Yet, this authority would have little use because, thanks to the release of the documents, "the enemy now knows exactly what interrogation methods to train against."

This argument might make sense, except that Obama has not reserved the right to use enhanced interrogation. In fact, he has explicitly, repeatedly, and unconditionally banned the practice. In his speech this morning, Obama said there was no security risk in releasing the Bush documents precisely because they no longer reflect U.S. policy.