Commenting yesterday on how the United States discovered Bin Laden’s whereabouts:
“I would assume that the enhanced interrogation program that we put in place produced some of the results that led to bin Laden’s ultimate capture,” said former Vice President Dick Cheney on Fox News.
That’s right! He would assume it. He wouldn’t try to check it out. He wouldn’t hold his tongue if he didn’t know the details. He wouldn’t speak to those who might actually know the facts. He would assume it. And then he would go on torturing people, over and over again.
And if this policy was ineffective, or worse, had catastrophic effects in terms of intelligence gathering and US diplomacy? He would assume that it didn’t.
Gotta hand it to the guy: he’s certainly self-aware.
Criminals come and go, and do not necessarily have a lasting impact, except on their victims. If Obama prosecuted Bush and Cheney, that would be the case with them. By not prosecuting them, however, he has effectively legalized their crimes and has established that the President is above the law. Because Obama is a Democrat, there is now a bipartisan consensus that Presidents may torture. Obama has tortured Bradley Manning and apparently is continuing to use extraordinary rendition to torture others. Obama says that he wants to look forward and not backward, but he refuses to look forward to deterring future crime, and future Presidents will feel free to torture. By making the President above the law, he has changed the very nature of our government and has done far more harm to this nation than Bush and Cheney did. Jonathan is right about Cheney, but Cheney doesn’t matter anymore. Obama does.
Support for my reference to Obama’s use of extraordinary rendition (both articles admittedly from 2009):
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/11/target-of-obama-era-rendi_n_256499.html
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/01/nation/na-rendition1
(Zasloff): “Gotta hand it to the guy: he’s certainly self-aware.”
Are you? “Assume” approximates “conjecture” in normal usage, and people often recognize degrees of informed conjecture. Your incessant partisan “gotcha” just makes you look silly.
Malcolm: It’s called a joke.
I don’t think it’s a joke. I think that Malcolm has a bit of a point, but not much because “assume” is stronger than “conjecture.” If Cheney meant “conjecture,” he might have said, “It is possible that … .”
But, even if Malcolm were entirely right that Jonathan reads too much into Cheney’s “assume,” Jonathan’s conclusions about Cheney’s attitude would nevertheless be correct, based on everything we know about Cheney. Yet, I repeat, Cheney doesn’t matter anymore. Besides, criticizing Cheney is shooting fish in a barrel.
And Malcolm, the wh*reson has a record; it’s not like he’s new on the public stage.
Henry, those are disturbing cases for sure. Yet one obvious difference is in the explicit nature of the Obama administration (as well as Democratic) opposition to torture. Aside from the actual acts, what was so frightening about torture in the Bush years was the open advocacy for it in government as well as on the right, and it continues today (see Cheney). What this meant (means) is an ongoing thirst for it in the body politic.
I think that is definitely not true of the left. Now, that it is apparently still going on is very worrisome. Is the administration in actual agreement with the policy, or is it a matter of political/administrative inertia? Honestly, I’m quite baffled. “The devil you know”…
Eli, I was not implying that the torture that Obama has authorized is as widespread or as serious as that authorized by Bush, who, after all, tortured more than 100 men to death. My complaint is that Obama has effectively legalized Bush’s torture, and we can be virtually certain that the next Republican President will reinstitute torture at Bush’s level. Of course, Congress shares the blame, because, if Obama will not enforce the law, it could create a special prosecutor.
As for whether the administration (aka Obama) is in actual agreement with the policy, we can assume that he supported the torture of Manning, because, when asked about it, he gave a Bush-like response, saying that the military (which was doing the torturing) had assured him that Manning was being treated properly. Obama is too smart to believe that that was an adequate answer; it was more like giving the finger to the people who were concerned about his treatment of Manning. Subsequently, Obama allowed Manning to be moved to Leavenworth and out of solitary confinement. We don’t know whether he changed his mind or was embarrassed by the fact that 250 law professors, including his own former law professor Laurence Tribe, published a petition decrying his violations of the Constitution.
Eli, I didn’t really address your point contrasting “the explicit nature of the Obama administration (as well as Democratic) opposition to torture” with Republicans’ open advocacy of it. I think that that point is valid to some extent. But, since the abuse of Manning at Quantico began, I haven’t heard of opposition to torture being expressed by the Obama administration or by any Democrats other than Kucinich. And I’m not aware of any Republicans acknowledging that Bush engaged in torture and murder, except for waterboarding, which, as far as I know, they still deny to be torture. I realize, however, that Republicans are in effect openly advocating it. But, again, if Obama will not enforce the law, then his words make little difference.
I agree, Henry. It is interesting I think, that this would largely be in keeping with Obama’s almost pathological desire for “mean average” political compromise - which usually ends up being somewhere on the center right.
Assumption or otherwise, it turns out that Cheney was right! And that matters to a lot of us.
I wonder how Professor Kleiman and other Obama shills reconcile their celebration of success in the death of Osama bin Laden with their condemnation of waterboarding and their silence on the matter of drone strikes
, which, I have read, have increased since Jan 2009. Is a bullet to the brain or a Hellfire missile up the ass somehow to be preferred to waterboarding?
P.S. What’s the justification/mission in Libya, again?