Dick Cheney gave a speech last Thursday in which he assured us that "enhanced interrogation techniques" (i.e.: torture) is not only justified, but essential to keep us safe from terrorists. A bigger line of crap, I have never heard - but I have to admit it was very carefully crafted crap. His ommission of obvious facts was hardly noticable, and he used just enough "truthiness" to come off as a statesman, instead of what he really is - a war criminal.
Cheney argued first of all that he and ex-President Bush had the right and authority because -
"that authority. It is drawn from Article Two of the Constitution. And it was given specificity by the Congress after 9/11"
To clarify: Article II of the Constitution designates the President Commander in Chief of all our armed forces
"when called into the actual Service of the United States," and a joint resolution by Congress after 9/11 authorized the President to use "all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks on Sept 11, 2001, or harbored such persons or organizations..."
The key word here, which Cheney conveniently ignored, is "appropriate."
Cheney insisted that extreme measures were absolutely necessary because –
"our government also understood that the safety of the country required collecting information known only to the worst of the terrorists... and "The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed."
Documents recently made public tell us one suspect was water boarded 183 times in a month. 183 times! If this form of torture was effective, a few times should have been all that were necessary. The truth is, almost all experts in interrogation agree that torture is not effective. Ask Col. Steven Kleinman, former director of the Air Force Combat Interrogation Course, who testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee in 2007 and again in 2008. Ask ex-FBI agent Jack Coogan or the Sheriffs and Police Chiefs Associations.
Cheney insisted that torture was successful, despite the fact that –
"The released memos [concerning the use of torture] were carefully redacted to leave out references to what our government learned through the methods in question. Other memos, laying out specific terrorist plots that were averted, apparently were not even considered for release."
Translation: You’ll just have to trust me on this one.
Cheny told us,
"We sought, and we in fact obtained, specific information on terrorist plans...Every senior official who has been briefed on these classified matters knows of specific attacks that were in the planning stages and were stopped by the programs we put in place."
"Planning stages" is a euphemism that can mean anything from an idea in someone’s head to gathering supplies and training participants. Curiously, we have not been told precisely what "stage" any of these plots were in. But I have no doubt that if any of these threats revealed through torture were indeed imminent, the Bush administration would have made all they could of their great "save" and repeated the story over and over to reinforce the notion that what they were doing was working – and that never happened.
Also no senior officials have come forward to back Cheney’s claims. Obama's Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair, whom Cheney quoted in his speech, actually said only that interrogation enabled us to gain knowledge about al-Qaeda – not that it prevented any attacks. Not surprisingly, Cheney did not reference Blair’s additional comment,
"The bottom line is these techniques have hurt our image around the world, the damage they have done to our interests far outweighed whatever benefit they gave us and they are not essential to our national security."
The net-net is that at no time has Cheney ever said that torturing prisoners revealed any actual and imminent danger, posed by terrorists.
Cheney’s speech leaned heavily on the tired Republican meme, "you should be very afraid," by obstinately insisting that by stopping the use of torture, Obama has effectively doomed us to another attack. If an attack were to happen in the next several months, obviously Obama would bear all the blame. However, Cheney would like us to forget that the only major attack on US soil actually came eight full months after George Bush took office. But have Bush and Cheney ever been blamed for allowing it to happen? No. In fact Cheney frequently boasts they should be lauded as heroes for keeping America safe for the past seven years.
It should be obvious to everyone capable of more independent thought than Limbaugh’s "ditto-heads" that Cheney and company are desperately trying to avoid prosecution for criminal acts, by convincing us that morally repugnant means absolutely justify the ends which result from them. "Ends" about which Cheney says he cannot be specific, but assures us were achieved, and asks us to accept on blind faith. He insists that an "ends justify the means" code of conduct is not only moral, it’s required – as long as the circumstances are dire.
He is adamant that -
"For all that we've lost in this conflict, the United States has never lost its moral bearings."
But, and it’s a big "but" – if ends justify means and are morally responsible, then how do we know what means are "enough"? Torturing a suspect is ok. But, then it should also be ok to torture a suspect’s spouse or children to get him to talk - as long as the end result was the prevention of some potential calamity perpetrated on US citizens. If it would convince a suspect to give up information that would save American lives, it should be ok to burn out the village that harbored him.
And herein lies the biggest fallacy in Cheney’s twisted logic – once you start down that slippery slope, there’s nothing to stop you.