NBC Video
On today's Meet the Press former Vice President Dick Cheney proclaimed the Senate Intelligence report to be "A Crock", and we all know he knows about
Crock filled Reports after he feed congress the Iraq NIE and also failed to detect the 9-11 plot even after
52 Warnings by the FAA and the
FBI Pheonix letter and the
August 6th PDB.
Via TPM.
Host Chuck Todd asked Cheney to respond to the Senate Intelligence Committee report's account that one detainee was "chained to the wall of a cell, doused with water, froze to death in CIA custody."
"And it turned out it was a case of mistaken identity," Todd said.
"Right," Cheney responded. "But the problem I have was with all of the folks that we did release that end up back on the battlefield."
"I’m more concerned with bad guys who got out and released than I am with a few that in fact were innocent," he continued.
Todd pressed Cheney, asking if he was okay with the fact that about 25 percent of the detainees interrogated were actually innocent.
"I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective. And our objective is to get the guys who did 9/11 and it is to avoid another attack against the United States," Cheney responded.
Let's recount this shall we? 25% of those held as part of the EIT/Torture Program were in fact
completely totally innocent of any involvement with al Qaeda or terrorism including Khalid al Masri
whose life was destroyed in the process and Gul Rahman who
died of hypothermia due to the stress position and sleep deprivation techniques used on him.
Cheney essentially claims here that those who were innocent and brought into "The Program" - even those who died in custody - don't matter to him, only those who his Administration decided weren't a danger and released and ultimately turned out to be a threat by creating ISIL. [It doesn't occur to him that these people might have by radicallized by their treatment in US custody!] So not only did they screw up on who to capture and interrogate, they screwed up on who to release and after all this they still think they deserve any credibility on the question of whether these torture techniques even worked?
Besides the entire point of Human Rights and the Geneva Convention being that There is Never a Valid Excuse to Use Torture here we have a former Vice President of the United States continuing to argue the exact opposite, that the Ends Justifies All Types of Inhumane Means even when he's been proven chapter and verse that they didn't even achieve those Ends the way he claims.
Please Continue Reading Over the Flip.
Even though a Former Chicago Police Officer who previously been convicted of Murder was sentenced this week to Life In Prison for simply plotting to commit torture we have a Vice President who continues to claim that methods that killed people somehow, in someway, weren't actually torturing them.
Even when that person wasn't a terrorist and had no worthwhile information to give us. It's a fascinating exchange, particularly this portion.
Todd: Twenty Five percent though - twenty five percent turned out not to have - turned out to be innocent.
Cheney: Where are you going to draw the line Chuck?
Todd:I'm asking you...
Cheney: I'm saying..
Todd: You're ok with that margin for error?
Cheney: I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective, and our objective is to get the guys who did 9-11 and it is to avoid another attack against the United States.
We now know that the claim that they only did this because of the OLC's approval is false. The CIA cooked this up and first tried to get immunity from prosecution from the Criminal Section of the DOJ
which shot them down.
Michael Chertoff, who as Criminal Division head in 2002 refused to give Bush’s torturers an advance declination on prosecution. That refusal ultimately led to the contorted form of the original Yoo memos authorizing torture.
Additionally Bush's own memos which began to take us down this road didn't make the argument that it wasn't torture, his then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales made the argument that he should make the
Presidential Determination to exempt al Qaeda and the Taliban from Geneva so that they
couldn't be prosecuted for War Crimes.
The determination, Mr. Gonzales said, also reduced the threat of domestic prosecution under the War Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. 2441). His expressed concern was that certain GPW [Geneva] language such as "outrages upon personal dignity" and "inhuman treatment" are "undefined' and that it is difficult to predict with confidence what action might constitute violations, and that it would be "...difficult to predict the needs and circumstances that could arise in the course of the war on terrorism." He believed that a determination of inapplicability of the GPW would insulate against prosecution by future "prosecutors and independent counsels.
So he wasn't saying that it was legal, only that if the President
said it was ok they couldn't be prosecuted for it. In their memos John Yoo and Jay Baybee - once the Bush Administration finished Lawyer Shopping for them because writing this opinion was
outside Yoo's position in the OLC - tried to create the "definition" that Gonzales stated was missing. They ignored all of the existing legal jurisprudence, including the fact that
the U.S. has executed Japanese Soldiers for Waterboarding and essentially said that if it doesn't kill you, or generate organ failure - it's not "Torture". Yeah, that's great except
some of them DID Die such a Gul Rahman via hypothermia, also stress positions can lead to
kidney and renal failure - where I do believe the kidney is an "organ" - and also according to the Senate Report Abu Zubaydah
drowned during one of his waterboarding sessions and had to be revived.
Waterboarding sessions resulted in "immediate fluid intake, involuntary spasms of the leg, chest and arms". In at least one session Zubaydah become completely unresponsive with bubbles rising up through his one mouth. He remained unresponsive until medical intervention at while point he regained consciousness and expelled "copious amounts of liquid".
And then there's the other big problem, of course, which is that they didn't accomplish either of the things Cheney claims. Long before the Torture Program was instituted the Bush Administration had a chance to capture Bin Laden at Tora Bora.
They Blew that Chance.
When they question Khallid Sheik Muhammad after 183 Waterboading Sessions - he still Lied to Us about the identity of Bin Laden's Courier and Facilitator al-Kuwaiti. as Senator John McCain wrote in a WaPo Op-ed.
In fact, the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on Khalid Sheik Mohammed produced false and misleading information. He specifically told his interrogators that Abu Ahmed had moved to Peshawar, got married and ceased his role as an al-Qaeda facilitator — none of which was true.
If you have to do something 183 times - that's a strong indication that it's not that effective and it's
Not Working.
That Lie cost us years in finding Bin Laden. We eventually received the correct information about UBL's facilitator al-Kuwaiti from Hussan Ghul, before he was tortured, not after. And this is according to Newsmax in 2011.
"Hassan Ghul was the linchpin" in finding and killing Osama bin Laden, a U.S. official told The Associated Press on Monday. Ghul told the United States that the Kuwaiti-born Pakistani now known to have been Sheikh Abu Ahmed, who was killed along with the terrorist chieftain he served on Monday by U.S. Navy SEALs, was a crucial figure within al-Qaida
As I
summarized on Tuesday when the Senate Report was released it goes on to document case by case where the CIA claims of "success" via the EIT/Torture program - were each fabrications and lies. Just like the claims that Saddam still had WMD's and had actively trained and supported al Qaeda prior to 9-11, neither of those things were true.
- Abu Zubayduh gave up crucial information on Jose Padilla and identified KSM as "Muktar" the 9-11 planner to FBI Agent Ali Soufan before he was tortured, not after.
- The Karachi Plot, the Heathrow Airport and Canary Wharf Plane Plots were foiled by Pakistan Intelligence with their own independent arrests of Ammar al-Baluchi and Khallad bin Attash in April 2003, not the Torture program. KSM lied to us about these plans and about the "Second Wave" plots to have planes attack targets on the west coast such as the Library Tower in L.A.
- KSM did not provide key information to capturing and charging "Issa" (aka Dhiren Barot) in the UK, British authorities found that on their own on Barot's computer hard drives.
- lyman Faris was not first identified as a potential terrorist by KSM and the torture program, he was first linked by the FBI through phone calls made between him and the Millenium Bomber Ahmad Ressam.
- Sajid Badat - the 2nd "Shoe Bomber" - was captured because he had used pre-paid phone cards found on Richard Reid to contact known terrorist Nizar Trabelsi.
- Majid Khan, who was held be a foreign country, provided the first information along with Signals Intelligence, Thai investigators and a CIA source that ultimately led to the capture of Riduan Isamuddin (Hambali).
If this is the track record that Cheney is relying on to justify and excuse the capture, torture and death of innocent people - he's in deep, deep totalitarian waters without a snorkel.
And here's another take away from Cheney's "Definition of Torture".
Cheney: We worked very hard to stop short of the definition of torture.
...
Todd: "Majid Khan was subjected to involuntary rectal feeding and rectal hydration, which included two bottles of Ensure. Later that same day, Majid Khan's "lunch tray", consisting of hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts and raisins were "pureed" and rectally infused". Doesn't that meet the definition of torture?
Cheney: That was... that was not part of the definition of what was used in the program.
Todd: I understand, but does that meet the definition of torture in your mind?
Cheney: In my mind I told what meets the definition of torture, it's 19 guys armed with airline tickets and box cutters did to 3000 Americans on 911. [Ed. That would be generally called "Murder", not a method of extracting information from someone.] What was done here, apparently, certainly, was not one of the techniques that was approved. I believe it was done for medical reasons.
Todd: The medical community, I mean, the medical community has said there is no medical reason to do this. [It's an Pureed Food Enema, not a "Feeding". Also Rape.]
Cheney: If you go and look for example as Jose Rodriguez's [the CIA Officer who ordered the illegal destruction of the interrogation tapes] book, and he was the guy running the program, he's got a very clear description of how the program operated. [One which doesn't reflect the reality since unapproved techniques such a "rectal feeding" were still used and at least 19 detainees were subject to EIT/Torture without approval of CIA Headquarters] I think the agency has answered the initial response to the committee report. [With more Lies]...
Todd: This was over and above....
Cheney: That was not something that was done as part of the interrogation program. [Yeah, it kinda was, since there's no other valid reason for it!]
Todd: But you won't call it torture?
Cheney: It wasn't torture in terms of, it wasn't part of the program.
This is probably just a momentary slip, and it's only natural for him to start to have a hard time
keeping his lies and bullshit straight now that people can review the facts via the CIA's own records, but Cheney is basically claiming that rectal feeding isn't torture because "it wasn't part of the program" - which either means he thinks that Jose Rodriguez who defied a Federal Court order and destroyed evidence of War Crimes is more credible than every doctor in the country who clearly stated there's no "medical" reason for this, and/or that the program itself
Was Torture because it's purpose was to create discomfort, and as I said in some cases death, in order to gain information. So it's only torture if it's part of the program and you're trying to get information, but not when it's for "medical reasons" that don't actually exist.
Information that they ultimately didn't gain because when you do this kind of thing to people, rather than building upon rapport and trust, they lie to you just to get you to stop and out of spite. And even if it had worked, which it didn't, it still wouldn't be worth it because the irreparable damage it's done to our moral standing which now makes it nearly impossible for us to criticize the human rights violations of anyone else, particularly China who is laughing at us, and also - it's an International Crime.
Vyan
8:44 PM PT: Some other items that blow Cheney away that I wrote about 3 years ago and had actually forgotten. He himself had claimed for many years that there were internal DOJ memos the proved the program was effective, but in fact they proved the opposite.
The OPR report confirms what legal ethics scholars have long suspected: as a general practice, senior White House officials improperly pressured Yoo, Bybee, and Bradbury to "come up with an answer" in the "torture memos" that would justify the ongoing interrogation regime, conclude it was legal, and allow it to continue. The OPR report contains irrefutable proof that White House attorneys played a central role in shaping the content of the memos. White House counsel Alberto Gonzales told OPR that he would typically review drafts from lawyer John Yoo and "pass them along to other lawyers, such as [Cheney's lawyer David] Addington or [Gonzales' deputy Tim] Flanigan, who would forward them to Yoo along with their own comments." In a statement to OPR about Yoo's most notorious August 2002 memo, Gonzales is quoted as saying, "I'd be very surprised in [sic] David did not participate in the drafting of this document.'"
The final OPR report establishes that Yoo added the most flawed and egregious portions of his August 2002 memo after the criminal division of DOJ refused to give the CIA the legal authority it was seeking - and after an auspiciously timed meeting at the White House. It seems the CIA requested a DOJ criminal declination letter providing advance blanket immunity from criminal prosecution before beginning interrogations in order to ensure that no CIA interrogator would be prosecuted for torture. Michael Chertoff, then Assistant AG in charge of DOJ's criminal division, found the request unreasonable, and refused to provide a blanket protection against criminal prosecution. The next day, Yoo went to a meeting at the White House with Gonzales (and possibly Addington and Flanigan) - and the day after that, Yoo added the two most biased and flawed sections to his most notorious memo.
Further the 2004 CIA Inspector General's report on the program found that it was both
illegal and ineffective.
The real trouble began on May 7, 2004, the day the C.I.A. inspector general, John L. Helgerson, completed a devastating report. In thousands of pages, it challenged the legality of some interrogation methods, found that interrogators were exceeding the rules imposed by the Justice Department and questioned the effectiveness of the entire program
...
The report landed on the desks of some White House officials who were already having their doubts about the wisdom of the C.I.A.’s harsh methods. John B. Bellinger III, who, as the National Security Council’s top lawyer, played a role in discussions when the program was approved in 2002, by the next year had begun to research past ill-fated British and Israeli use of torture and grew doubtful about the wisdom of the techniques.
Mr. Bellinger shared his doubts with his boss, Ms. Rice, then the national security adviser, who began to reconsider her strong support for the program.
If the inspector general’s report was a body blow to the C.I.A. program, the bill passed by Congress the next year was a knockout punch. Provoked by the abuse scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and pushed by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who had been tortured by the North Vietnamese, the 2005 bill banned cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.
So what we have today is Cheney standing in full throated support of a program the DOJ OPR and CIA own inspector General essentially
Shut Down and Flushed a Decade ago - long before the Senate Report was even contemplated, let alone written and delivered.