That Cheney would accuse the Justice Department of playing politics with an investigation into something that actually was, you know, illegal is rich. Even richer? The AP reports on Cheney's claims as if they were a) valid, and b) news.
WASHINGTON – Besieged during the Bush administration for bending to the White House's will, the Justice Department is again accused of playing politics with cases — this time in investigating whether CIA interrogators illegally abused terror suspects.
The new charges were led Sunday by former Vice President Dick Cheney, who called the preliminary probe ordered last week by Attorney General Eric Holder an "outrageous political act that will do great damage, long term."
"I just think it's an outrageous precedent to set, to have this kind of, I think, intensely partisan, politicized look back at the prior administration," Cheney said in an interview aired on "Fox News Sunday."
Lovely.
Meanwhile, Greg Sargent picks up the fact that Cheney implied that unapproved techniques were used to "interrogate" prisoners.
Specifically: Cheney suggested he didn’t know about the most abusive techniques — the threatening of a detainee with a drill and handgun — which raises at least the possibility that he believes these actions are legally questionable. Here’s the key exchange, with Fox’s Chris Wallace:
WALLACE: Let me ask you — you say you’re proud of what we did. The inspector general’s report which was just released from 2004 details some specific interrogations — mock executions, one of the detainees threatened with a handgun and with an electric drill, waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times. First of all, did you know that was going on?
CHENEY: I knew about the waterboarding. Not specifically in any one particular case, but as a general policy that we had approved.
So Cheney is suggesting implicitly that the drill and the handgun were not approved. That’s interesting, because it suggests he may be aware that this conduct has created legal jeopardy. Separately, if it is true that Cheney didn’t know, it may put the interrogators themselves in even worse legal hot water.
And finally on the Cheney front, Steve Benen has this on the torture worked because it kept American safe canard:
I seem to recall the Bush/Cheney era a little differently. Cheney thinks it was a sterling success when it came to national security and counter-terrorism. Perhaps there's something to this. After all, except for the catastrophic events of 9/11, and the anthrax attacks against Americans, and terrorist attacks against U.S. allies, and the terrorist attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Bush's inability to capture those responsible for 9/11, and waging an unnecessary war that inspired more terrorists, and the success terrorists had in exploiting Bush's international unpopularity, the Bush/Cheney record on counter-terrorism was awesome.
After the previous administration established a record like that, President Obama didn't ask Cheney for tips? The nerve.
To round up, when the Bush administration Justice Department fired prosecutors who wouldn't instigate bogus cases against Democrats, that was business as usual. When the Justice Department investigates illegal activity, it's politics. And it was illegal activity because it went beyond what the torturer-in-chief "authorized" but it still shouldn't be investigated because "it kept us safe." Except it didn't. The world according to Cheney.
