Uncheneyed, Unhinged

As I wrote on facebook last night:
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It wouldn’t surprise me to learn that there are plenty of people WITHIN the Agency who wish that Dick Cheney would shut his yap!
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The more people say defending the torture, the more people who want prosecutions are going to motivated to push for them and beleive in the justice of their position.
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Transparent lies do nothing to help the cause.

Good to see Maureen Down coming in from the cold. Must say I am surprised. I have often wondered at the Three Cheneys act: Mum, Dad and the Kid from State.

There is a destructive nexus between those like Limbaugh and Hannity, etc., who say absurd, reactionary things because that is their market niche, and those like Cheney who say absurd and reactionary things because they have convinced themselves they are correct.

It’s been quite a while since MoDo delivered a great column but she did today.

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In all of his career as a public servant, has any anything Dick Cheney has been responsible for not ended in failure or disaster?
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Answering that question could be an interesting exploration of the concept of ‘failing upward’.

Dowd has done more to hurt journalism in this country than anyone I can think of.

PNNTO: I agree; which is why I am surprised. I read her today after having stopped reading her column some 18 months ago. And I read her because Joe provided the link: was curious.

Joe,please ask MoDo and yourself were was the outrage in 2002 thru 2007 when these things were happening.

This debate is getting prety silly.
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President Bush said “we don’t torture.” President Bush made sure that military personnel caught on film practicing torture had their day in court.
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There were investigations of these military personnel and their leaders (civilian and military) were called to account before congress. None of this was perfect and it was a pretty thing to watch, of course some people got away who should have paid more of a price. But that’s the way our system works in a way. The country was able to move on a little bit under the belief that we were not going to allow our people to do this sort of thing.
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Now that the water boarding has taken center stage we all of a sudden don’t know if water boarding is torture. However, if you notice Cheney is now saying it does not really matter if water boarding is torture because it worked.
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We are allowing one man and his daughter to focus on water boarding as if that were the only crime that occurred here. This man and his daughter have a platform to pretty sell the entire country on a daily basis the idea that there is some justification for not only our highest government officials engaging in, condoning and covering up criminal behavior, but that we should not investigate their conduct and no one should be held accountable for it. And this is to our benefit and not Cheney’s. He only cares about keeping us safe. That’s his one and only motive.

Journalism has been hurt by it’s own actions. Jim Lehrer and David Gregory do not believe that it is a reporter’s responsibility to point out errors in statements made by an interviewee.
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Meanwhile, those loathsome news aggregation websites provide links to articles that provide confirmation that a lie has been told. The websites are much less polite, but far more truthful than MSM. The press was amazed that a child was able to ask Condoleeza Rice follow-up questions. The press was truly unaware of how foolish the child made MSM appear.
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No one who is going to get a Cheney interview will ask the piercing questions that even a child would pose. Cheney realizes that he is safe to rant.

Joe-Do you still think after this daily assault on our intelligence by Cheney that there should be no investigating? That an investigation is too much for Obama and the country to handle? I would asked with Cheney out there every day telling one single lopsided story is this going to make the story go away, put the country at ease and allow the President and Congress to get to work?
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Cheney is telling us with a few memos he can demostrate how the country was saved from horrific attacks. Why not have an investigate and allow him to do just that?

Maddow had a terrific segment on this topic last night, with Col. Wilkerson as guest:
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Well, that embed didn’t work. Here’s the link to the Maddow segment: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#30711836

Americans hate dick Cheney. That he has become the new face of the GOP is solidifying the Dem stranglehold on Washington for years to come.

http://www.political-buzz.com/

Cheney is not going to shut up Joe. You can’t make him and as long as he has a platform within the media he is going to keep this festering.
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How long is this supposed to go on? Where does it all end? Is the goal to have Obama say America supports torture and we recommend it to all our friends because it just works? Maybe the goal is to have torture 2.0. Beyond water boarding. Super inhanced interrogation. How to kill your detained under the colour of law and justify it to the world because other countries are so stupid.

Gunny, Rachel echos your point. Cheney’s omnipresence will likely insure hearings and more, like the one going on this morning in the Senate: “What Went Wrong: Torture and the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush Administration.”
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I will be thrilled when the media buzz shifts from “did torture work and keep us safe” to the correct one “OMG, they tortured people to get false confessions to support their case for war in Iraq.”

Via Josh:
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Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz Cheney asked if she could stay on longer on MSNBC this morning to ambush Eugene Robinson about torture.
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One thing I can’t help mentioning. I know others have ridiculed this nonsense. But I truly cannot believe that Liz Cheney keeps going on the air to say that waterboarding cannot, by definition, be torture since we do it to our own people to prepare them for the experience of being tortured. Setting aside the elementary point that we’re doing it to prepare for them for the experience of being tortured (which suggests it is torture) is it not the most obvious thing in the world that being waterboarded by your fellow soldiers, knowing that you won’t be injured and that the whole experience will be very short, is nothing at all like being waterboarded by captors dozens of times with no reason to believe it will ever end?
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How does this fool even get put on television?
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http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/

gunny: Maybe the goal is to have torture 2.0. Beyond water boarding. Super inhanced interrogation. Good point. Somebody (Sully? Yglesias? ??) blogged on that issue in the last several days. The logical extension of “these techniques worked so they are good” is for them to proliferate and expand for use wherever a threat is perceived, even in a fevered wingnutty brain. We need more of Jesse Ventura telling it like it is, torture is about false confessions with a predetermined outcome: “I’ll put it to you this way: You give me a waterboard, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I’ll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.”
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“Well, then you’d have to say that, in effect, we’re prepared to sacrifice American lives rather than run an intelligent interrogation program that would provide us the information we need to protect America,” Doomsday Dick said.
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If Cheney is going to put it in terms of American lives, then I’d like to rebut by reminding him of Jessica Lynde, the soldier who was captured by the Iraqi Army at the beginning of the Iraq war and rescued by our troops from…a hospital, where her captors had taken her for medical attention.
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Dear Mr Cheney: Will the next captured American soldier – male or female – stand a better or worse chance of receiving humane treatment by his captors as a result of our behavior at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib?
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What Cheney has done is sacrifice *future* American lives.

By the way Mornin Joe is torture to watch with Joe Scar’s belief that if we can’t torture then that means we can asked any questions of detainees at all and Mika’s constant “I don’t see how this is good for the democrats and the folks against torture?”

How does this fool even get put on television? – Because the talking heads don’t puncture the bubble of their stupidity. We all know that the man who was tortured in Lybia to give Cheney the “proof” of a Iraq/Al Qaeda connection then disappeared and committed committed suicide a few days ago. There is no reason why every interviewer/pundit out there does not also know this, and use it to push back against the lies. But I always feel that the community represented by the Swampland commenter community is far more informed than most in the msm.
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The news of the death by possible suicide of former CIA "ghost prisoner", Ali Mohamed al-Fakheri, also known as Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, has caused only a small murmur in the U.S. press. The Washington Post’s Peter Finn wrote a story on it Monday, noting the key fact that it was the tortured confession of al-Libi in an Egyptian prison, where he had been rendered by the U.S. and subjected to beatings and mock burial, that was used by then-Secretary of State Colin Powell in his February 2003 presentation to the UN as evidence that Iraq was in league with the Al Qaeda terrorists and/or interested in using WMD.
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This “What Went Wrong: Torture and the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush Administration” is now live at the link.

Here is what Dowd was writing at the time of Gore’s speech (Sept. 2002). I lack the time and expertise to read and evaluate these, but from the descriptions, she was making good points.
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Of course, she apppears to have dolled them up as if this were court gossip, not life and death. Sometimes, it’s best to drop the pith and make your point as if it’s about something serious.

At the hearing, Lindsey Graham is proving himself to be a pathetic tool.
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No surprise.

I believe Graham is the only repuglican in attendance.

I think Cheney has several reasons for suddenly turning into a Chatty Cathy doll. He’s publicly laying the groundwork for a defense for himself and his cohorts who relied upon faulty interpretations of the law to justify torture in case it does go to trial. He’s trying to garner public support from a public that is increasingly sceptical about whether their actions were legal. Mostly though, I think it’s about him worrying about his legacy and the legacy of an administration that is viewed as a rogue abberation in American politics. Even before Bush 43 left office he admitted that he was counting on future historians to judge him and his administration less harshly. Their hopes for vindication would suffer greatly if they were to be judged as an out of control bunch of zealots that trampled on American ideals and violated the constitution. They know they’re treading on thin ice as it is and convictions after a trial would seal the deal for them. It’s possible that history would revile them, not vindicate them. Cheney knows this and it scares him. I think having his family name being put into a category with traitors and outlaws is weighing heavily on him.

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@gysgt213: Cheney is telling us with a few memos he can demostrate how the country was saved from horrific attacks.
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Cheney is establishing his defense in the court of public opinion…small wonder why there’s such pushback on the idea that the illegality Cheney helped promote – torture – was ineffective. “We had good intentions when we attempted to legitimize torture as an information-gathering tool” doesn’t play as well as “Yes, we broke the law, but it was for the greater good.”
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Why not have an investigat[ion] and allow him to do just that?
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The memos Cheney and his operatives left behind will vindicate him. Anything that might have proven otherwise has been figuratively shotgunned in the face. There may be traces, but not enough to show Cheney in anything but a humble, heroic light.

As the only repuglican in attendance at the Whitehouse hearing, Graham sees his role as leaning back in his chair and rolling his eyes while looking uncomfortable as one Dem after another makes substantive and reasonable points.
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Good times.

That Maureen Dowd column is just, wow. The Bushes are using Dowd to paint Cheney himself as a rogue operator. So now it’s the the Democrats and the Bushes against Dick and Liz Cheney and Rush Limbaugh. In the long run, I think Dick Cheney is probably running into a buzz saw. He must be furious.

To say that this is an unusually good Dowd column (which is true) is rather like saying that a clear, coherent speech by GW Bush was unusually good. ‘Exceptional’ for either of them only approaches what for most of us would be merely acceptable. Miss Dowd, like some few in the major media outlets, has suddenly discovered that Mr. Cheney is not what he describes himself as, and much of what he says is simply lies. This little, late realization is not likely to last very long, at least for Miss Dowd, as there will undoubtedly be some new sex scandal or fashion mistake to draw her attention. And her confident assertion about the consequences of, say, a terrorist attack is simply laughable. Few of the punditocracy have (even now!) bothered to actually skeptically address Mr. Cheney’s claims, in favor of simply repeating them. Accordingly, if and when a new terror attack occurs on US soil, the odds are extremely high that the natural inclination of most of us to blame the man in charge at the time will be unrestrained. The odds that Mr. Obama will get a ‘GOP pass’ from the press are slim to none, and since most of us get our information from the talking heads, it, like the bailout, the economic collapse and the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, will be generally regarded as Obama’s fault.

While I consider Cheney a despicable character who should be tried for his criminal actions, I will not waste my brain cells reading anything written by Maureen Dowd. She is the poster child of everything that is broken with our political discourse.

Huckelberry at his best:
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Graham: Nobility of the law or political stunt. I guess if we’re going to talk about evil, we’re going to have to talk about more than just the last Administrations efforts to fight evil. Would we have this hearing if we were attacked this afternoon? Or would we focus on repairing damage and staying ahead of enemy. We need to find out who was told and when. I’m calling for any memos that show information gathered from EIT be made available to the Committee so we can see what worked. Many years after 9/11. The people we’re judging woke up one morning and said, “oh my god, what’s coming next.” I’ve been a prosecutor most of my life, I know the difference between political disagreement and a crime. The idea that you’d consult your political opponents with a crime. As to Army Field Manual, to say that is the only way to interrogate is just not right. Let’s bring CIA director into this hearing, he has already testify he would ask for techniques not in army field manual. I think this Administration’s policy, at least through CIA Director’s sworn testimony, include techniques not included in AFM. Members of Congress allegedly were briefed about these interrogation techniques. If you’re trying to commit a crime, it’d be the last thing in your mind to go around telling people on the other side of the aisle about it. Levin report a good one, it’s there to be read. Graham says that military will be prosecuted. As to others, Geneva Convention did not apply until 2006. We have today the best war crimes statute, would outlaw a “grave breach” of the Geneva Convention. McCain Amendment [which only codifies the 8th Amendment and so is not new] gives clear direction. Graham, Obama Administration very responsible view. I believe will ask for another continuance. I do appreciate what President is trying to do to repair our image. As we harshly judge those who had to make decisions we don’t have to make, what we do in looking back may determine how we move forward.
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http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/05/13/senate-judiciary-hearing-on-torture/#more-4110

dalybean: I liked your post. There’s a possible outcome to all this that almost makes me drool. Cheney might be running into a buzzsaw because it now looks like the Bush clan are ganging up on him, not to mention distancing themselves from Cheney’s actions, but if there’s one guy who knows where all the skeletons are buried, it’s Cheney. I don’t doubt for a minute that Cheney will take down George big time if he thinks he’s getting set up to be the sacrifical lamb.

Dowd has done more to hurt journalism in this country than anyone I can think of.
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P-NNTO, I 100% agree. The thing that is so toxic about her is that she makes something up in a novelistic style – say imagining that Bill Clinton was orchestrating Caroline Kennedy’s downfall – and then holds on to real anger about these imaginary offenses. Honestly, it’s reminiscent of psychiatric patients.
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The last column I read of her’s was the one about Michelle’s arms, which proved that even her praise of people I also admire is inane. I’m still debating about whether to click on the link to this column. Should I not reward her by clicking, or should I encourage this sudden outbreak of sanity?

rose83: Do youself a favor and click on the link. Dowd has been possessed by some reasonable spirit. Either that or she got lucky last night and is in a good mood for a change.

When will I ever learn that spellcheck is my friend?

I’m not going to read MoDo. But Joe, if Cheney was involved in approving or ordering the commission of war crimes, there are mechanisms that could be used to investigate and, if appropriate, pursue justice. Maybe the media could pursue this angle.

Okay, I’m going to read it later today.

While Dowd did write a good column about Cheney, it doesn’t negate the astonishing drivel that she has written in the past.
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But, we don’t need to turn to Dowd to defend Cheney, here’s Mara Liasson on NPR this morning.
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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104079567
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She mentions that Gore opposed Bush’s war in a way to try to show that Cheney is ok, but of course at the time she trashed Gore. Good times.
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Speaking of good times, I note from a tweet of his that Mike Murphy is coming back to TIME and TIME.com.

Former Powell deputy points out the error of Cheney’s ways.
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http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/5/12/730778/-Fmr.-Powell-deputy-unloads-on-Cheney

For those who haven’t read Bart Gellman’s excellent Angler–I’m reading it now–you should pick it up
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It’s interesting to look back at how official Washington treated Gellman’s work when it first came out:

A careful reading of the story of Cheney’s coup against a feeble executive reveals that paragraphs 7 through 10 were written and inserted in haste by a powerful editorial hand. The banging of colliding metaphors in an otherwise carefully written piece is evidence of last-minute interpolations by a bad editor whom no one has the power to rewrite…
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Why? My guess is that this series ready to go during the debate over the supplemental funding of the Iraq war and that Downie or someone at the top held it back until Gellman and others started carrying snub-nose .38s to work under their seersuckers…
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This series is a landscape of an internal war. Parts of it are still smoking and some reputations are visibly dying–anonymously, for the moment. The journalistic graves registration people will go in later and tag the corpses.

I guess recently Downie followed Stephen Colbert’s advice and after he was pushed out of the newspaper biz went on to write fiction.

Anyone know what happened to Cheney’s man-sized safe?

What mrtoads said.

After throwing a huge bone to his anti-military, fringe, freak show base, Obama has now caved to his sworn enemies (i.e., the pro-America community) and will not release photos from an Iraqi prison, which had been requested by al Qaeda’s legal team at the anti-American, anti-civil rights, self-described ACLU. ROTFLMAO!

If Cheney was “odd man out” in the Bigbush admin, it’s not mentioned that Littlebush was active then too. Did he miss the consensus? If Cheney only “thought he was president”, he sure fooled a lot of people who thought he was the man to deal with. Fact is, he was President, W was a facade, a face up front, the emperor with no clothes, not noticed by the media. Cheney is and was grossly incompetent with a psychosocial streak. He got where he got only by the gross incompetence of W. May we never experience such a scary scenario again.

I know the America hating Republican Fascist party will be praising Obama for being yet another spineless Democrat, by not releasing the torture pictures, but the reality is, it isn’t pictures that caused the world to hate America, it is the actual torturing that did it, that and invading a country that did nothing to it.

formerlyjames: Amen. Has anyone even suggested that Biden is the real President? Bush/Cheney truly was an abberation. We had a man who was in far over his head with his inability to comprehend let alone make wise decisions regarding world politics and with Cheney we had a shadow President who lacked even basic human dignity or morals. If Cheney wasn’t such an egomaniac he’d keep his mouth shut and at least try to live out his remaining years in relative obscurity. It’s just not in his nature to admit he was wrong and that he screwed the pooch.

sacredh: Now we know why George Bush Senior was crying all the time and finally succeeded in replacing Rumsfield with Gates. He is crying bigtime to Maureen Dowd now and she is writing down what he says. If it’s the Bushes and the Democrats against Cheney, my money is on the Bushes and the Democrats, no matter that Cheney may know where the skeletons are buried.

Cheney is, after all is said and done, still only the “help.” Thus, the desperation of he and his daughter, Liz, who let’s remember was the product of questionably nepotistic employment. And it must be said that a man who is forced to lay out his daughter like this is surely a man without many friends who might take up this slack. No doubt the Cheney family is furious as they face this cold and humiliating reality.

Bush senior’s legacy is on the line too. He was a one term President but his Iraq War was his defining moment. His son’s Presidency has overshadowed and tainted his major accomplishment. At some point what looked like a Bush dynasty in the making has turned into a Bush curse. Jeb was making a name for himself but Dubya has killed any chance that another Bush is going to make it into the White House. When you have a President in office and the talk goes from the possibilty of a permanent majority to the possibility of a permanent minority (at least in Washington dog years) within the SAME Presidency, the term “squandered” comes to mind. This whole Bush/Cheney feud has the potential to widen geometrically. More people are going to get drawn in and take sides. We could be looking at years of books, speeches and television appearances where each side tries to blame the other. One of the big items that has to worry each side of the dispute is the prospect of immunity. Who makes a deal first and how much they know and who they’re willing to give up could send the whole house of cards tumbling. If some democrat’s names come up, that’s just going to be how it is. Our country’s reputation versus some individual’s reputations is a no-brainer.

Liz and Dick Cheney were up in New York yesterday arguing that the US must leave the military option on the table when dealing with Iran and that the whole world has formed a conspiracy against the US on the subject of Iran’s so-called push for a nuclear weapon.

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0509/Cheney_in_Manhattan_A_giant_conspiracy_on_Iran.html

Funny how the defense of torture seems to go hand in hand with the push for war on Iran. I wonder why that is?