Dick Cheney has been on a tear lately, trying to convince the American people that he's not a torturer. Ever since the Bush administration memos were released showing Cheney ordered "enhanced interrogation techniques" (torture), it seems like he's been on every radio and TV show that will have him. He's been trying to rehabilitate his image in hopes of warding off charges for ordering the torture. His three main points have been:1. Waterboarding is not torture.
2. The purpose of the waterboarding was to save American lives.
3. Unreleased CIA memos show the waterboarding did save American lives.
Number one is ridiculous on it's face. Waterboarding has been recognized as torture since the end of World War II, when the Japanese were condemned for using it. After condemning it then, America cannot now claim it's not torture just because an American vice-president (and probably a president too) ordered it's use.
Everyone outside of America's right-wing clique knows waterboarding is torture, including a sizeable majority of the people in the United States. And anyone who has experienced it will quickly verify it is torture (just ask Jesse Ventura or radio commentator Mancow). Waterboarding is clearly torture, and Dick Cheney ordered it's use.
The only things up for discussion are whether it was used to save American lives, and whether it was successful in doing that. Sadly, it now looks like Dick Cheney was lying about both of those points also.
Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff for Colin Powell when he was Secretary of State, has been investigating the use of torture by America since he was asked to look into it by Powell in 2004. After a relentless search into the matter, Wilkerson says, "Its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at preempting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al Qaeda."
Cheney was never trying to protect Americans. Instead, he was trying to justify the Bush administrations illegal and unnecessary invasion of Iraq. And he was willing to torture prisoners until they said what he wanted to hear. The truth didn't matter as long as he could claim Iraq and al-Queda were connected.
He was able to fool some in this country for a while, but the rest of the world knew it was a lie. Muslims all over the world knew that Saddam and Obama were bitter enemies who couldn't agree on anything, let alone work together in a conspiracy.
Cheney's last claim is that the waterboarding produced information that uncovered conspiracies and saved American lives. He has been demanding the release of two CIA memos that he says would prove this. Another lie. Senator Carl Levin's Senate Armed Services Committee has read the memos in question. Senator Levin says the memos do not back up Cheney's ludicrous claims.
Levin says the documents "say nothing about numbers of lives saved, nor do the documents connect acquisition of valuable intelligence to the use of abusive techniques. I hope that the documents are declassified, so that people can judge for themselves what is fact, and what is fiction".
All three of Cheney's claims are nothing but bald-faced lies. Lies designed to justify his own actions and protect his own ass.
Bill Moyers did a good presentation on this, and it was run last night. The use of torture produces whatever information you want put forth, as the presenters showed. The truth is quite another thing. The public is beginning to see that the maladministration just past wanted the truth least of anything. Their war against the public interest was the real war, terrorism was merely an accessory.
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