Cheney Publicly Admits Torture "Process": So Our Answer is "So?"

Valtin brings this insightful post referencing Dick Cheney's latest interview with ABC, where the Angler practically admits to allowing torture in violation of international law, and points out Andrew Sullivan's post putting the timeline for these violations way back in 2001:

The decision to torture individuals was made by Bush and Cheney before the CIA ever asked for legal cover for the torture they had been ordered to commit. The torture and abuse was planned before even the January 2002 presidential memo that authorized torture:

In December 2001, more than a month before the President signed his memorandum, the Department of Defense (DoD) General Counsel’s Office had already solicited information on detainee “exploitation” from the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA), an agency whose expertise was in training American personnel to withstand interrogation techniques considered illegal under the Geneva Conventions.

As the "Angler" himself put it:

"I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared," Cheney said...

Valtin gives some ideas of how this promoting, aiding & abetting of torture could be prosecuted, suggesting the possibility of a conspiracy charge and an independent prosecutor. When some suggested this interview was a "hook" to get a pardon from Bush (which would require an admission of guilt! and that would put Bush himself on the table! so I don't think they'd go that route), Valtin pointed out that a pardon would not absolve Cheney or any of his co-conspirators from international prosecution. But not so fast... would an international prosecution really be likely?

US prosecution might be easier to pull off, if the public would only demonstrate en masse their disgust at this horrific behavior, at this resurrecting of torture without public discourse, consent, or even, as they wished, knowledge.

Where is the outrage? Where is the courage? Where is the accountability? Where are the prosecutors?

Free Speech Down One: PBS Sleeps Torture Documentary Till Bushco Walks

It's simply obvious. And predictable. This report says

Scott Horton reports today that PBS may have refused to nationally air a controversial documentary on the use of torture by the U.S. government in order to protect its funding.

You can view the documentary called "Torturing Democracy" here.

What stinks about it is that PBS is supposed to be "viewer supported" and hence above the level of government censorship and influence. But apparently not:

According to producer Sherry Jones, PBS told her that “no time slot could be found for the documentary before January 21, 2009″ — the day after George W. Bush and Dick Cheney leave office.

So what made PBS stoop so low? Did Bush-Cheney threaten them in some way? It can't be that Bushco suddenly became a huge contributor. And what does this mean for freedom of speech?

As for motives, maybe prior experience contributed to PBS's backtrack:

This spring, PBS’s distinguished Frontline series aired a mildly critical account of the lead-up to the Iraq War entitled “Bush’s War.” As the airing of the program was announced, the Bush Administration proposed to slash public funding for PBS by roughly half for 2009, by 56% for 2010 and eliminating funding entirely for 2011. Did PBS get the message? Perhaps.

So it's all about funding, eh? Well, there's some explosive material in this new documentary, more explosive, absolutely, than "Bush's War".

The show delivers impressively on a promise to “connect the dots in an investigation of interrogations of prisoners in U.S. custody that became ‘at a minimum, cruel and inhuman treatment and, at worst, torture’” (quoting Alberto Mora, who served as general counsel of the Navy under Donald Rumsfeld, and features in an interview). In one dramatic scene, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage describes being waterboarded as part of a training program he went through before being sent to Vietnam. Did he consider waterboarding to be torture, Armitage was asked? “Absolutely. No question.” And he continued, “There is no question in my mind—there's no question in any reasonable human being, that this is torture. I'm ashamed that we're even having this discussion.”

And of course, that wouldn't help the GOP in an election year, would it? I think "wouldn't help" is, of course, a gross understatement.

No one who has seen this dramatic documentary is likely to buy into the “rotten apples” narrative any longer.

Which may help explain why PBS appears to be suffering from acute corporate indigestion over the work. The project was first offered to PBS in September 2007, with the representation that it would be available to air after May 2008. It was completed and circulated to PBS decision makers on schedule in May of this year.

And from May to December? Well, the time slot just wasn't there. Burp! Or maybe it was... that indigestion again. Why can't we have brave journalists in corporations anymore? Should corporations' stomach ailments block the truth from coming out when it should come out - when the culprits it's exposing are still in power????

Freedom of speech isn't won by the soldiers in the war on terror - sorry, Sarah. It's won by the journalists in the battle for truth.

Israel Invades Lebanon 2006: Was It Cheney's Practice Drill for Iran?

Remember 2006, when Israeli bombers decimated the Beirut airport, along with a significant number of innocent civilians - men, women, children, the elderly - while Condi Rice played Head Cheerleader? Remember the news coverage that wept at an Israeli woman's shattered nerves and dented car, but barely managed a quick pan of the human debacle, the decimated infrastructure, the wailing mothers, the dead children, that was on the ground in Lebanon? Remember how Hezbollah brought the Mighty Israeli Military Machine of Legends Past to its knees? Remember how the Middle East saw Nasrallah as a hero conquering the oppressors who kill thousands because of two?

No wonder the U.S. was whistling Dixie and looking in the other direction... it was their idea! With friends like that.... what was Israel thinking??? And guess who was the sinister mastermind behind the carnage? Who else? The ominous Dick Cheney...well, sort of, as an enabler.

Adding to the growing list of war crimes committed by Dick Cheney is a report by Sy Hersh that Cheney actually planned the 2006 Israeli war on Lebanon. He also considers it "a prelude to a potential American preemptive attack" on Iran. Ominous times, these...

In the days after Hezbollah crossed from Lebanon into Israel, on July 12th, to kidnap two soldiers, triggering an Israeli air attack on Lebanon and a full-scale war, the Bush Administration seemed strangely passive.

Glad to hear someone of Sy Hersh's stature noticed!

The Bush Administration ... was closely involved in the planning of Israel’s retaliatory attacks.President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel’s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground.

According to Hersh, a middle east expert stated:

“The White House was more focussed on stripping Hezbollah of its missiles, because, if there was to be a military option against Iran’s nuclear facilities, it had to get rid of the weapons that Hezbollah could use in a potential retaliation at Israel. Bush wanted both. Bush was going after Iran, as part of the Axis of Evil, and its nuclear sites, and he was interested in going after Hezbollah as part of his interest in democratization, with Lebanon as one of the crown jewels of Middle East democracy.”

Note the pattern: YOU WILL BE A DEMOCRACY. But not until we demolish you first! It's crush and convert, the new Holy War, a right-wing "love-fest", sort of like their own Woodstock, except instead of rapes and orgies with women, they assault whole nations, especially middle eastern nations, whom they learned they can call "terrorist" and get away with murder... literally! Instead of drugs, they have Rovespeak, always the perfect way to disconnect reality and "turn on, tune out, drop the opposition off", preferably at the morgue.

A Pentagon consultant said that the Bush White House “has been agitating for some time to find a reason for a preëmptive blow against Hezbollah.” He added, “It was our intent to have Hezbollah diminished, and now we have someone else doing it.”

And who else but Israel could do it? Not that Israel minded being the "workhorse" for Bushco's military designs, of course. Now, to be fair to ol' Cheney, the idea to bomb Lebanon was Israel's brainchild, and they actively pursued U.S. involvement. And they were also pretty cool with the idea of bombing Iran, an idea both parties cling to (along with their guns, presumably) to this very day. In spite of all evidence that both ideas are really bad news:

According to Richard Armitage, who served as Deputy Secretary of State in Bush’s first term—and who, in 2002, said that Hezbollah “may be the A team of terrorists”...If the most dominant military force in the region—the Israel Defense Forces—can’t pacify a country like Lebanon, with a population of four million, you should think carefully about taking that template to Iran, with strategic depth and a population of seventy million,” Armitage said. “The only thing that the bombing has achieved so far is to unite the population against the Israelis.”

Yes, it succeeded to unite the population - Shi'a, of course, but also Sunni, Christian, Druze, and others - against Israel, and in a sense, also the United States, whose pretend non-chalant "Infrastructure? What infrastructure? Civilians? What civilians? Invasion? what invasion?" didn't exactly win friends. Except among the Saudi royals and their ilk, and apparently among Sunni anti-Shia extremists in - who else? - Al-Qaeda. Both of them were remarkably friendly and sympathetic with the U.S.-Israeli invasion of Lebanon, as were their websites and spokespersons. Guess it's times like these that let you know who your real friends are.

Cheney’s point, the former senior intelligence official said, was “What if the Israelis execute their part of this first, and it’s really successful? It’d be great. We can learn what to do in Iran by watching what the Israelis do in Lebanon.”

Yes, Cheney may not have come up with the idea of invading Lebanon, but he was one of its most passionate cheerleaders. Same is true of the always almost-impending invasion - and an air war against Iran IS an invasion - of Iran. Let's hope he's far, far away from the Oval Office before that debacle and its horrendous consequences could ever get off the ground.

Isn't it time to bury Cheney's crazy, security-bashing ideas and elect someone who won't "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran"???

Top 10 Cloak-n-Dagger Capers in '007

For a year numbered 007, it had more than its fair share of the clandestine, the Republicans having the sleightest and most illusory of hands, especially Bush-Cheney-World, which operates in unprecedented secrecy. Some of the following were only discovered in '007, although the legerdemain itself occurred earlier. Some became scandals of a sort, but overall, the American public has remained steadfastly teflonized, preferring to be disinformed, cortisol-driven, and inflammatory.

10. Operation Disinformation.

The mainstream corporate media collaborated with the administration to provide us bait-n-switch news on unimportant events, while disastrous activities passed by under our very noses unnoticed. How many Americans were aware that Bush just signed Martial Law into legal possibility - up to his own sole discretion - while the Paris Hilton frenzy was hitting the airwaves a month ahead of her much-heralded future jail stint?

And media manipulation by Bush-leaning corporate heads is the greatest protection against crimes committed by those in high office.

As Sen. Conyers said on Democracy Now:

“There is a very stark reality that with the corporatization of the media, we could end up with turning people, who should be documented in history as making many profound errors and violating the Constitution, from villains into victims,” the Michigan Democrat said.

Or, according to Consortiumnews,

He’s probably right that the Washington press corps would hoot any serious
impeachment drive against Bush and Cheney off the political stage.

In my view, the above 2 opinions show marked cynicism and lack of hope in the power of dissidence and truth. Perhaps that's part of the success of corporate media:

"One of the intentions of corporate-controlled media is to instill in people a sense of disempowerment, of immobilization and paralysis. Its outcome is to turn you into good consumers. It is to keep people isolated, to feel that there is no possibility for social change."
(David Barsamian, journalist and publisher)

9. The Missing Torture Tapes.

What torture tapes? Did anybody have torture tapes? Do you mean Dick Cheney's stash? Don't tell me Nancy Pelosi saw it??? And said nothing? I guess everyone is getting blase about torture...

I suspect this will be #1 in '008...

8. Big Bro's Backdoor Break-In

Although this has been going on since 9-11 and the manic "Patriot" Act, spying on Americans involves not just the Bush administration, but telecom giants as well, in complicity with the neocon so-called "war on terror". Warrantless spying on Americans was introduced through the back door, so no one would know for sure.

When pressed about it, then-Justice Gonzales claimed it was authorized by the President, but

"I did not and could not address . . . any other classified intelligence activities." Which implied there was more than meets the press.

"It seems to me he is conceding that there are other NSA surveillance
programs ongoing that the president hasn't told anyone about," said Bruce Fein,
a government lawyer in the Nixon, Carter and Reagan administrations

This was just the tip of the iceberg - or shall we say, the spy network?

According to the WaPo, the very next day after this ambiguous testimony,
"the Senate voted 69 to 30 to end a filibuster of the proposed four-year extension of the USA Patriot Act, the sweeping anti-terrorism law enacted in 2001. The Senate plans today to approve the measure, which contains hotly debated modifications."

So much for government by the people.

7. The Petraeus Maneuver

We're hemhorraging from the solar plexus, Iraq is a hopeless quagmire, 90% of the Iraqi people want us out and consider this an unwanted invasion, a brazen oil grab, and a total disaster, and yet the Bushco folks trot out this "ass-licking little chickenshit" to convince the American people - or protoplasm, your choice - that the Surge Is Working, and We've Turned a Corner! Meanwhile, all military dissidents are slipped out the backdoor - presumably the same one the surveillance guys snuck in through - and silenced. Shhhhhhhh....


6. The Emperor's New Coronation (And the People's New "Clothes" - ignorance and powerlessness)

Little known to the American public as a whole, George Bush has consolidated power in the Presidency through a series of signing statements, pocket vetoes, and Presidential Declarations. One such Directive (with a twisted, convoluted name) I call his coronation - It gives him, among other things, the right to retain sole executive unchecked power over the United States of America - sans Congress, sans Supreme Court oversight - simply based on his own determination that a "national emergency" exists. A sort of self-proclaimed martial law clause. Are we an empire yet? He was workin' on it - even crowned himself emperor - while the public was in a drunken media-soaked stupor over ... the earthshaking jail sentence of Paris ... the humanity-threatening meltdown of Lindsay...etc...

5. The Ashcroft Caper

When they needed to override dissent, there's always the old deathbed signover thing, especially when it comes to Cheney's pet project, "Robust Interrogations", otherwise known as torture. And so it was reported in May 2007 - when the "stunning" all-absorbing announcement of Paris Hilton's possible jail term was revealed with much media attention - that back in 2004,

On the night of March 10, 2004, as Attorney General John D. Ashcroft lay ill in an intensive-care unit, his deputy, James B. Comey, received an urgent call.
White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and President Bush's chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., were on their way to the hospital to persuade Ashcroft to reauthorize Bush's domestic surveillance program, which the Justice Department had just determined was illegal.

In vivid testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, Comey said he alerted FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and raced, sirens blaring, to join Ashcroft in his hospital room, arriving minutes before Gonzales and Card. Ashcroft,
summoning the strength to lift his head and speak, refused to sign the papers
they had brought. Gonzales and Card, who had never acknowledged Comey's presence in the room, turned and left. ...

The next day, as terrorist bombs killed more than 200 commuters on rail lines in Madrid, the White House approved the executive order without any signature from the Justice Department certifying its legality. Comey responded by drafting his letter of resignation, effective the next day, March 12.

The domestic spying by the National Security Agency continued for several weeks without Justice approval, he said...
It also marks the first public acknowledgment that the Justice Department found the original surveillance program illegal, more than two years after it began.

4. The Gonzales Eight

When it came out that Gonzales fired 8 Prosecutors for political reasons, the cloaks were out in full regalia, lying like hell - which finally sunk in as the clandestine operation it was:

The only way to redress that insult -- and to uphold the constitutional balance of powers -- is to demand the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the crimes that may have been committed in the firing of the eight U.S. attorneys and the coverup that followed.

There is little doubt that Gonzales and his aides have sought to mislead Congress about the origins of the scandal.


3. Project Libby - The Switch

A spy is compromised, laws are broken, and the perps get what? They get lost, of course! And when the dust settles, all that's left is a dedicated front man/guy Friday for some unnamed Vice Presidential figure who goes by the name of Dick. Who in turn, wrote a little note implicating Bush W himself about which was said:

So Cheney was reflecting a presidential decision as to who was expendable and
who wasn’t? Bush wanted to save Rove by designating Libby the fall-guy. He asked
Libby to be the fall guy for Rove. (Cheney may not have been thrilled that he
had to lose his right-hand man to save the president’s.) Pure speculation, of
course. But it makes sense. And if true, it’s a fascinating glimpse into the
mafia-like code of loyalty that exists in Bush world.

And here: "The Post's Dana Milbank writes that Martin also discussed Dick Cheney's PR strategy, which included putting him on Meet the Press where he could "control [the] message" about the White House's handling of Iraqi nuclear plan evidence. Tactics also included burying bad news on the weekends and keeping Bush spokespeople in the dark about important matters."

Matters such as committing the treasonous, impeachable crime of blowing the cover of an American spy. Such as Valerie Plame. So to protect the impeachable, someone's gotta stand in the line of fire, obstructing justice. Thanks, Scooter, said Dick.

2. Blackwatergate

Suddenly, the news woke up one morning, perhaps after some Britney meltdown, and there in the margins, was this:

U.S. security contractor Blackwater has been involved in at least 195 shooting
incidents in Iraq since 2005 and, in eight of 10 cases, their forces fired
first, a leading U.S. lawmaker said on Monday, reported Reuters.
State Department contractor Blackwater is under investigation for the shooting deaths of 11 Iraqis on September 16, they will answer questions about that incident and its performance in Iraq at a Congressional hearing on Tuesday.

Now it appears that not only is the United States military overextended, it's hiring mercenaries who are above the law and killing Iraqi civilians.

And the US government is covering it up:

"It appears that the State Department's primary response was to ask Blackwater to make monetary payments to put the 'matter behind us' rather than to insist upon accountability or to investigate Blackwater personnel for potential criminal liability," said the (Waxman)memorandum.

Aside from being a scandal, Blackwatergate may be used by Bushco to further obfiscate the war scene in Iraq as suggested here:

Condemnation of Blackwater, however justified, can easily be siphoned into a
political whirlpool that demands a cleanup of the U.S. war effort -- as though a
relentless war of occupation based on lies could be redeemed by better
management -- as if the occupying troops in Army and Marine uniforms are
incarnations of restraint and accountability.

1. The Shadow Presidency


WaPo's expose on Dick Cheney revealed the ultimate caper: that the man in charge was not really the President after all: the previously ceremonial office of Vice President had been transformed, in a move of unprecedented wholesale legerdemain, to the status of uncrowned king.

"Angler," as the Secret Service code-named him, has approached the levers of
power obliquely, ... has found a ready patron in George W. Bush for
edge-of-the-envelope views on executive supremacy that previous presidents did
not assert.

In roles that have gone largely undetected, Cheney has served as gatekeeper for
Supreme Court nominees, referee of Cabinet turf disputes, arbiter of budget
appeals, editor of tax proposals and regulator in chief of water flows in his
native West.

Now who really pulls the strings of power? The Angler? Or just ... 007?...

Torture & the Vampire Veep

Bridgethought of the Day: Even the greatest political power, at some point putters out. And then all the deep, dark rubbish rises to the surface. It helps if you don't snear.


In commemoration of Torture Awareness Week, Mr. Torture himself, the Vampire Veep, was rotisseried all week by the Washington Post in their
fantastic series on Cheney . His cloak-and-dagger sophisticated but underhanded power playing affected and apparently shaped everything we hate about the Administration, from the promotion and use of torture, the attempts to eliminate due process in the War on Terror, to the ransacking of the environment on behalf of anything big and elite - oil conglomerates, huge corporations - and more. This is the biggest thing since Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein broke open the Watergate scandal. In fact, this is bigger than Watergate. At stake is not only elections and the political process, but just about everything there is in government, and in fact, the Constitution itself and the democratic ideals it was written to safeguard.



Oon this week, I especially commemorate Dick, the Vampire Veep, for his promotion of "robust interrogation" and the "redefinition" of torture. The purpose of redefining torture is to make it "legal" and so be able to lie and say "we do not torture", while we most certainly do. Yes, the Vampire Veep redefined torture to mean the inflicting of pain so severe it causes (or is comparable to) organ failure or death. Anything less is not torture. Don't let this pass sleeping.

Not everything the Nazis did to the Jews in the Holocaust caused organ failure or death - so that part did not constitute "torture", and is therefore OK, according to Cheney and his ilk. It counts out the horrors of numbers being tattooed on victims' arms, for example, since that did not cause death. The herding of men, women and children like animals, to the slaughter, was in and of itself not Cheney's idea of torture, even though they were naked - not until organ death or death occurred. None of those who survived the Holocaust could have been tortured, since according to Cheney's definition, they lived. It was not torture to witness the torturing of others, and there is not such thing as "psychological torture" since one is technically still alive.

Of course, Cheney wasn't thinking of the Holocaust. He was thinking of terrorists. But you can't change definitions like suits. You cannot take a stand against torture for one group, such as one's buddies, and then OK it for another group, such as one's enemies. It must be condemned unequivocably for all human beings for all time. What comes after death is God's business. What comes before death is our responsibility, and label-changing does not change the truth. Ask Sister Dianna Ortiz, and consider the horrors she endured. In 1989, she was abducted by security forces while working as a missionary among indigenous people in Guatemala. She was taken to a secret prison in the capital center and brutally tortured. She was burned with cigarettes, raped, beaten and forced to torture a woman who was already near death. She survived. So, according to Cheney, it wasn't torture.

To say that, to re-define torture is a high crime. To deny Sister Ortiz's or countless other victims' torture, to redefine torture in order to implement it for one's own agenda are high crimes far outstripping "bribery", the only clear-cut "impeachable" offense. Dick Cheney must be impeached.

The Republicans are going to try to get rid of him. We should impeach him, and he should stand trial for his treachery - against the Constitution, the American people, and their government - not to mention all those souls his policies have violated beyond the scope of this. He should not be allowed to just retire into quiet oblivion on the pretext of a pacemaker battery-change.

The Vampire Veep sucked the blood out of free enterprise with his pro-bigpower policies, sucked the blood out of democratic process by his circumvention of all checks and balances and his systematic concentration of power in the executive branch, sucked the power out of human rights and social welfare programs and environmental safeguards by favoring giant Corporate Interests, sucked the blood out of our national defense by foreign adventurism and creating terror hotspots instead of diplomacy, and more...

Are these not impeachable offenses? Then what, pray tell, is? It was not bribery or burglary, but something far more sinister, and beyond the scope of law, being somehow, so we are told, perfectly "legal". Promoting torture is not even a misdemeanor?

Some torture awareness related news hits the White House, per Democracy Now's recap:

Students Criticize Torture in White House Meeting With Bush

Meanwhile protests are continuing over the Bush administration's support for torture. On Monday the president was personally presented a letter signed by 50 high school seniors in the Presidential Scholars program. The letter said: "We do not want America to represent torture. We urge you to do all in your power to stop violations of the human rights of detainees, to cease illegal renditions, and to apply the Geneva Convention to all detainees, including those designated enemy combatants." White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said the president was not expecting the students' letter but read it and then told the students that that United States does not torture and that the country values human rights. Meanwhile protests are taking place today across the country to mark the UN's International Day to Remember the Victims of Torture. In Washington the American Civil Liberties Union is organizing a Day of Action to Restore Law and Justice.

Sister Dianna Ortiz and Torture Survivors Hold 24-Hour Vigil Outside White House

Transcript here