Just another indication that Dick Cheney was right
The kerfuffle over former Vice President Cheney’s assertion that enhanced interrogation worked to produce real, actionable information got yet another bit of confirmation, this time from Leon Panetta, the Director of Central Intelligence. Now, Director Panetta didn’t come right out and say, “Yeah, the documents support the former Vice President.” The proof is in what Mr Panetta did not say:
The Secret History
Can Leon Panetta move the C.I.A. forward without confronting its past?
by Jane Mayer
The Central Intelligence Agency typically fights distant enemies, but on May 21st its leaders were preoccupied with a local opponent. A few miles from the agency’s headquarters, which are in Langley, Virginia, former Vice-President Dick Cheney delivered an extraordinary attack on the Obama Administration’s emerging national-security policies. Cheney, speaking at the American Enterprise Institute, accused the new Administration of making “the American people less safe” by banning brutal C.I.A. interrogations of terrorism suspects that had been sanctioned by the Bush Administration. Ruling out such interrogations “is unwise in the extreme,” Cheney charged. “It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness.”
Leon Panetta, the C.I.A.’s new director—and the man who bears much of the responsibility for keeping the country safe—learned the details of Cheney’s speech when he arrived in his office, on the seventh floor of the agency’s headquarters. An hour earlier, he had been standing at the side of President Barack Obama, who was giving a speech at the National Archives, in which he argued that America could “fight terrorism while abiding by the rule of law.” In January, the Obama Administration banned the “enhanced” techniques that the Bush Administration had approved for the agency, including waterboarding and depriving prisoners of sleep for up to eleven days. Panetta, pouring a cup of coffee, responded to Cheney’s speech with surprising candor. “I think he smells some blood in the water on the national-security issue,” he told me. “It’s almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it’s almost as if he’s wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that’s dangerous politics.”
The real news is what Director Panetta didn’t say. After Mr Cheney’s comments, and after the less-paid-attention-to disclosure by Senate Republicans that CIA briefings indicated that enhanced interrogation produced good information, if the CIA really didn’t believe that, if the documents really didn’t support that, why didn’t Mr Panetta say so?
The New Yorker article is a long list of what that liberal journal sees as the problems for the CIA of President Bush’s “torture” program, and the author is certainly not hesitant to use the word torture. The wortd jumps out at you from every page. But nowhere in the eight pages will you find anything that refutes former Vice President Cheney’s claim that the enhanced interrogation techniques worked, that they provided useful, actionable information, and that lives were saved due to it.
In the end, President Obama is going to have to decide what to do. His liberal allies want him to prosecute, prosecute, prosecute, anyone who was involved in the program, including former President Bush and former Vice President Cheney. As a candidate, Barack Obama led many to believe he would do just that. But now that he is the President, now that he has the responsibility for keeping Americans safe, now that he has to weigh things in the balance and ask, how many American lives is it worth to forego an effective means of intelligence gathering, he seems more reluctant.
But one fact he cannot ignore is that the Bush policies worked. To do as his liberal supporters want is to prosecute CIA agents who kept America safer.
Sharon:
The fact that Obama has argued to investigate the lawyers who provided legal analysis, as opposed to the actual interrogators, means that he’s not serious about prosecuting anyone. We can assume that once Obama was involved in the daily national security briefings, his zeal for investigating those executing the
15 June 2009, 7:44 amWar on TerrorOverseas Contingency Operations waned considerably. That doesn’t mean he won’t continue blaming George Bush for every problem he faces, but they are “just words, just speeches.”Perry:
Dana stretches: “The real news is what Director Panetta didn’t say.”
Panetta didn’t say a word about how to prepare beef wellington, did he?
Even if he has now concluded that waterboarding or other “enhanced interrogation techniques” worked, he could not reveal this classified information. Remember, Cheney’s two memos that “prove” waterboarding works, have yet to be declassified, correct?
And then there is the common sense argument that any technique that has to be used 183 times to produce results, or even 83 times, can hardly be called an effective technique, correct?
Even assuming, for a second, that waterboarding is effective, simple logic suggests that alternative non-torture techniques used by the FBI and described in the Army Field Manual may work as well or better, correct?
Cheney has proven himself untrustworthy, as he has been consistently wrong about the Iraq War situation from the build up on to the end of his term of office. He has not earned credibility, continuing to this day to demonstrate that fact by his unprincipled attacks on the current administration.
Finally, Dana, beware of the ends justifying the means rationalization, a common moral deficiency which I observe is common among the neocon mentality on the Right. You folks need to work on that, otherwise your ability to convince the rest of us will continue to remain in a weak state!
15 June 2009, 8:55 amPerry:
Sharon: “That doesn’t mean he won’t continue blaming George Bush for every problem he faces, but they are “just words, just speeches.””
Well indeed, Sharon, Cheney/Bush were primarily responsible for most of the problems we now face. No honest, intelligent observer would deny that fact!
The one exception I would note is Obama’s accelerated military actions in Afghanistan/Pakistan with no exit strategy. It is fair to now call this Obama’s War, in my view. I oppose this!
“The fact that Obama has argued to investigate the lawyers who provided legal analysis, as opposed to the actual interrogators, means that he’s not serious about prosecuting anyone.”
First things first, Sharon. If the interpretation of the law in the torture memo (10 May 2005 by Steven Bradbury) written for Bush is found to be legally questionable, then a wider investigation is in order. Whether Obama pursues this remains in question, as he has said that he does not want to dwell on the past, but would rather move on, a political decision. I believe Obama fears further polarization, which would hamper his initiatives. I’m not sure how much more polarized we can get than we already are, you being a prime example of it, Sharon.
However, Obama does not speak for the Dem controlled Congress, some of whom have committed to further investigate the alleged Cheney/Bush lawlessness.
Personally, I think we must investigate, at least in order to understand what happened and prevent this from ever happening again. Regarding prosecution, that depends on what the investigation demonstrates.
15 June 2009, 9:20 amJeff:
Wait, haven’t interrogators said that traditional non-torture interrogation techniques worked? So even if waterboarding worked, does that say anything about its necessity?
15 June 2009, 10:21 amJeff:
Also - if we’re looking to prevent recidivism and make the streets safer, giving the death penalty to everyone convicted of a crime will work. That doesn’t make it right. Same goes for waterboarding.
15 June 2009, 10:23 amPhoenician in a time of Romans:
Dana stretches: “The real news is what Director Panetta didn’t say.”
Panetta didn’t say a word about how to prepare beef wellington, did he?
Indeed, Perry, It takes a… special… kind of understanding to cite a story in which someone is negative about a practice, and then use an absence of comment on a particular aspect as negative evidence supporting such a practice.
Then again, Dana’s logic has always been a little… special…
Let’s see what Perrino said about Chaney’s speech again:
Panetta, pouring a cup of coffee, responded to Cheney’s speech with surprising candor. “I think he smells some blood in the water on the national-security issue,” he told me. “It’s almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it’s almost as if he’s wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that’s dangerous politics.”
and this:
It was partly Panetta’s rectitude that got him the C.I.A. job. During the Bush years, he decried the country’s loss of moral authority; in a blunt essay for Washington Monthly last year, he declared that Americans had been transformed “from champions of human dignity and individual rights into a nation of armchair torturers.” He concluded, “We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we don’t. There is no middle ground.”
At this point we have to conclude that Dana cannot even be trusted to report honestly on what his cites actually say about this topic. Whenever he makes a statement, he needs to supply his sources. and they need to be examined to show how he is distorting them.
15 June 2009, 11:21 amDana Pico:
One wouldn’t be terribly surprised that the Director failed to present a recipe for beef wellington; such wasn’t the subject. But when the subject turned to Vice President Cheney and his statement, then yes, the omission by Mr Panetta really does mean something.
The Obama Administration has had several opportunities to say that no, waterboarding never worked, opportunities presented by challenges from people who said that it has worked, and no once has the Administration availed itself of the opportunity.
15 June 2009, 9:31 pmDana Pico:
The Phoenician wrote:
Given that I included your first quoted paragraph in the main article, it’s rather difficult to claim that I was somehow hiding it. As for your point that I need to “supply my sources,” please note that the New Yorker article included the hyperlink embedded in the title. I just checked the link again, and it still works. Kind of difficult to claim that I need to supply my sources when I did just that.
But, go right ahead: feel free to cite any dishonesty in my article, with specific examples.
15 June 2009, 9:37 pmSharon:
Well indeed, Sharon, Cheney/Bush were primarily responsible for most of the problems we now face. No honest, intelligent observer would deny that fact!
I suppose Democrats did not control Congress since 2006. Nor were they in charge of the Senate at any point during President Bush’s administration.
And then there is the common sense argument that any technique that has to be used 183 times to produce results, or even 83 times, can hardly be called an effective technique, correct?
We better tell police officers to stop interrogating suspects, since the fact that they have to do it so often and repeatedly is proof that it doesn’t work, according to Perry.
16 June 2009, 12:02 amPerry:
Right, Sharon, Dems controlled Congress then, but the filabustering Senate Repubs obstructed every Dem initiative, every one, so that the Repubs, in effect, continued to control Congress.
And on interrogating, Sharon, you know we are talking about enhanced techniques, specifically waterboarding. Are you aware of any law enforcement agency in the entire country that routinely uses enhanced interrogation techniques. When the police use terror, such as beatings with nightsticks or tasering, there is usually an investigation. So no, our police are not permitted to use torture, but of course they are permitted to interrogate. I guess I don’t really get your point, Sharon.
In passing, I note that your “pro-life” state of TX carries out more death sentences than any other state in the union, a hypocrisy when considering that consistently pro-life means more than just eliminating fetal abortions. You folks are quite selective in deciding who dies and who lives as you play god.
16 June 2009, 8:02 amPerry:
Dana: “The Obama Administration has had several opportunities to say that no, waterboarding never worked, opportunities presented by challenges from people who said that it has worked, and no once has the Administration availed itself of the opportunity.”
Dana, you are so stubborn on this issue! Given a choice between using torture and non-torture interrogation approaches, where both work, assuming that waterboarding does work, why would any sane person choose to use torture? Moreover, it remains a question in my mind whether waterboarding really does work. We still do not have the two Cheney memos released for us to review.
16 June 2009, 8:07 amPerry:
I would also add, Dana, that were any of my children in the Marines, I would be campaigning against our use of torture. Even though none of mine are in the military, I am still campaigning against our using torture, purely on moral grounds — it’s wrong, in my view!
16 June 2009, 8:27 amSharon:
Right, Sharon, Dems controlled Congress then, but the filabustering Senate Repubs obstructed every Dem initiative, every one, so that the Repubs, in effect, continued to control Congress.
Then you must agree that Democrats continued to control Congress for the last 50 or so years, since Republicans never had a filibuster-proof majority and Democrats did, in fact, filibuster extensively.
And on interrogating, Sharon, you know we are talking about enhanced techniques, specifically waterboarding.
You are talking about the effectiveness of techniques based on the number of times used. I simply showed the absurdity of that argument.
In passing, I note that your “pro-life” state of TX carries out more death sentences than any other state in the union, a hypocrisy when considering that consistently pro-life means more than just eliminating fetal abortions.
Never saw a baby in utero kill a police officer.
Given a choice between using torture and non-torture interrogation approaches, where both work, assuming that waterboarding does work, why would any sane person choose to use torture?
Given that we only waterboarded 3 people, I would say we don’t use enhanced techniques until they are necessary.
I would also add, Dana, that were any of my children in the Marines, I would be campaigning against our use of torture.
I don’t think our enemies care much about our sensibilities on the issue. Whether we waterboard terrorists doesn’t prevent them from torturing our POWs.
16 June 2009, 8:44 amDana Pico:
Perry wrote:
Every one? According to this source, Senate Republicans filibustered four bills in 2007. One the first, the Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act, a compromise was reached, the filibuster ended and the bill passed 96-2. Republicans filibustered a minimum wage increase for a few days, and then it was passed. Republicans filibustered a measure in opposition to the surge in Iraq, and that held.
16 June 2009, 8:58 amDana Pico:
Perry wrote:
Exactly, why indeed? We know that the waterboarding worked. If it was used, perhaps it was because the prisoners were being wholly uncooperative otherwise.
Your statement assumes that other methods will work, in every situation. That assumption is almost certainly wrong.
16 June 2009, 9:01 amDana Pico:
Perry wrote:
Army, not Marine Corps for the Pico family.
Wrong compared to what? Certainly wrong compared to nothing, wrong in the abstract. But waterboarding was used to get information to prevent terrorist attacks, and succeeded in doing so. There are people who are alive today, who would have been killed had those terrorist plots not been foiled.
I’ve asked this question before, and never gotten a straight answer: how many innocent lives is it worth to not use harsh interrogation methods?
16 June 2009, 9:25 amPerry:
Dana: “Wrong compared to what? Certainly wrong compared to nothing, wrong in the abstract. But waterboarding was used to get information to prevent terrorist attacks, and succeeded in doing so. There are people who are alive today, who would have been killed had those terrorist plots not been foiled.”
Dana, your claim here is your speculation. You have not substantiated it. Moreso, you refuse to acknowledge that there are workable non-torture alternatives; this is substantiated by the FBI and the Army Field Manuel.
We are going around in circles on this issue. For now, I will back off, because I have nothing else to say. So you can have the last word.
16 June 2009, 10:15 amblubonnet:
Hey, Dana, you know I collect and drop in appropriate quotations, and I recently came across this one…:
Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God.
21 June 2009, 4:05 am– Susan B. Anthony
blubonnet:
Here are some more that apply. I apologize for being a thorn in your side, sort of.
JAMES MADISON: “If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will come in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.”
ALEX DE TOCQUEVILLE: “All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest way to accomplish it.”
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER: “The problem in defense, is how far can you go without destroying from within, what you are trying to defend from without.”
21 June 2009, 4:56 amDana Pico:
Blu, you should note that most of the writers on this site are obeying God in resisting that Obama tyranny!
21 June 2009, 8:20 amblubonnet:
Dana, what category does torture fall under?
How about spying on citizens without court approval?
How about starting a war, without provocation?
How about lying to one’s countrymen causing hundreds of thousands of deaths?
What about suspending habeous corpus?
What about actual treason, with the commander in chief actually outing a (proven) covert CIA agent, and lying about it?
Then there’s using depleted uranium, causing cancer to increase horrendously, not to mention birth defects, to not only innocent Iraqis, but our soldiers as well.
Also using cluster bombs, which usually end up blowing up children, because they stumble upon un-exploded segments in play.
Also using white phosphorous, which is the equivilent of napalm, having melted the bodies of men, women and children in Fallujah?
Then, there’s controlling the presses in Iraq.
And rounding up numerous innocent Iraqis with no evidence of involvement in terrorism, but was just a result of soldiers needing a quota of “suspects” to bring in.
Tell me what honor is in all of these things? How are these things NOT tyranical?
Incidentally, the tyrany Obama brings is the continuation of Bush’s policies.
Here’s another quotation from ADOLF HITLER: “The main plank in the National Socialistic party is to abolish the liberalistic concept of the individual to substitute for them, the folk community, rooted in the soil, and bound together by the bond of its common blood.”
Here’s GEORGE ORWELL from his book, 1984: “And in the general hardening of outlook that set in…practices which had long been abandoned-imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public execution, torture to extract confessions…and the deportation of whole populations, not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive.”
NUREMBER WAR CRIMES TRIBUNAL 1950: “Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience…therefore individual citizens have the duty ot violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.”
JAMES MADISON: “If our nation is ever taken over, it will be taken over from within.”
So, Dana, you still think Cheney and Bush were protecting us? Here’s what PLATO said: “This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears to be a protector.”
JAMES MADISON: “The means of defense against a foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.”
Remember that Iraq never attacked us. There was ample evidence of there NOT being WMDs there.
22 June 2009, 2:23 amblubonnet:
ABRAHAM LINCOLN: “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourslves.”
HERMAN GOERING: “I know of two types of law because I know two types of men, those who are with us and those who are against us.” (Gee, who else said that?)
I know I don’t have enough credibility to make you think, but don’t these individuals hold some sway for you, Dana? Oh, I know “911 changed everything.”
J.EDGAR HOOVER said”The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous, he cannot believe it exists.”
22 June 2009, 2:39 amblubonnet:
WILLIAM O. DOUGLAS said: “Those in power are blind devotees to private enterprise. They accept that degree of socialsim implicit in the vast subsidies to the military industrial complex, but not that type of socialsim which maintains public projects for the disemployed and the unemployed alike.”
HERMAN GOERING: “Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for ‘lack of patriotism’ and ‘exposing the country to danger’.”
But, you don’t care what I think or historical icons of history have warned of. Incidentally, there’s more proof of torture causing bloodshed of innocents than preventing it. The confessions happened before the torture. More “confessions” that were proven to be mere words to stop the torture, also occurred. It mostly just increased the whole war, but that is a good thing if you are Cheney and Bush who are actual war profiteers. What was it Eisenhower, and Lincoln, and Smedley Butler, and Thomas Paine had to say about war profiteers? Oh yeah, they are dishonest, corrupt, and capable of anything. It is just too unfathomable to believe for you, Dana, which is almost an attribute that you are so naive, because it just shows that you have a lovely perspective of the world, but too bad those rose colored lenses obscure ugly truths. You’d be more of a patriot if you could see with some better spectacles, to join in against the corruption, instead of unknowingly supporting it. I wish all was as altruistic as you see things. Incidentally, as has been said before, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” BEN FRANKLIN, and the United States is the most powerful country on this earth, and we have not been so honorable, and much less so, since Bush came along and stunk all he touched.
22 June 2009, 3:01 amPerry:
Dana: “Blu, you should note that most of the writers on this site are obeying God in resisting that Obama tyranny!”
Dana, you talk as if we have an American theocracy operating here. Perhaps that is what Bush wanted. You too?
I find Blu’s recitation of selected and pertinent quotes much more convincing about the tyranny and destruction that can occur from within, juxtaposed by those of ’successful’ tyrants, because they address events that have occurred within our lifetimes. With all due respect, I suggest that you pay attention. Good job, Blu!
22 June 2009, 8:42 amblubonnet:
Thank you, Perry.
22 June 2009, 9:00 pm