With his ABC interview Vice President Dick Cheney put a smoking gun on the table. He admitted that he, along with other top administration officials, personally approved the CIA's waterboarding of prisoners. That he said it unapologetically is merely his low-keyed way of declaring open war.
President Bush has been working on his legacy by circulating an upbeat, 2-page talking point memo with a description of his successes in office. Bush likes to white-wash and obfuscate. Cheney prefers a more aggressive approach.
Always blunt, two-fisted, and condescending, the question is, why admit that he approved waterboarding? And why now? Maybe it was egotism, pure and simple, his own version of a legacy campaign where he takes credit for a policy that he asserts made America safe. But to his detractors it is an admission of guilt that is prosecutable, as damning as Jack Kervorkian's 60 Minutes interview that landed him in prison.
What he is responding to is the accusation in the just released Senate Armed Services Committee Report on the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody that condemns the Bush administration in no uncertain terms:
A major focus of the Committee's investigation was the influence of Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape (SERE) training techniques on the interrogation of detainees in U.S. custody. SERE training is designed to teach our soldiers how to resist interrogation by enemies that refuse to follow the Geneva Conventions and international law. During SERE training, U.S. troops --- in a controlled environment with great protections and caution --- are exposed to harsh techniques such as stress positions, forced nudity, use of fear, sleep deprivation, and until recently, the waterboard. The SERE techniques were never intended to be used against detainees in U.S. custody. The Committee's investigation found, however, that senior officials in the U.S. government decided to use some of these harsh techniques against detainees based on deeply flawed interpretations of U.S. and international law.
The Committee concluded that the authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques by senior officials was both a direct cause of detainee abuse and conveyed the message that it was okay to mistreat and degrade detainees in U.S. custody.
There are those who argue that the Bush administration committed war crimes during their prosecution of the War on Terror. Nothing could be done during their tenure, but as January 20th rapidly approaches, some are already making the case, asking how these abuses of power could not be prosecuted. In his book "How to Break a Terrorist," in interviews and articles, a former interrogator, Matthew Alexander, has argued that the abusive interrogation techniques the administration approved didn't make us safer, they actually cost American lives.
Scott Horton in Harper's Magazine takes the argument one step further by characterizing the Bush administration as "The Torture Presidency". Glenn Greenwald in Salon examines the number of detainees who died of "heart attacks" and concludes that,
There are countless...episodes...of human beings in American custody dying because of the mistreatment -- authorized by Bush, Rumsfeld and others -- to which we subjected them. These are murders and war crimes in every sense of the word. That the highest level Bush officials and the President himself are responsible for the policies that spawned these crimes against humanity
There are those who see the vice president's admission as part of a strategy to force the president to pardon him and all those named in the Senate Report: Rumsfeld, Meyers, and Rice. If Bush doesn't pardon them, they will certainly be pursued by those in the new administration who will not let-bygones-be-bygone.
Since Bush has been famously reticent to grant pardons both as governor and president, then Cheney's ABC interview with Jonathan Karl is a way of provoking Bush to act while he still can. If Cheney is pardoned then he'll have it both ways: maintaining that what was done was legal and being protected from prosecution.
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Don't look to Government. The key is the Civil Case. A Presidential pardon does not affect civil cases. If you can show that Cheney colluded with the Justice department to get opinions that justified his case for torture, then his actions are outside his duties as Vice President and he can be sued for damages by every detainee at Guantanamo. Then, when the lawyers see blood in the water… the Bush administration will be in court forever. So the key is to get Obama to declassify the government records that can prove collusion. Because you know they’re there.
It looks to me as if he's provoking congress and the Obama team, trying to get indicted for as many things as possible so the language of his pardon can be all the more specific. Perhaps he's not convinced that a preemptively vague pardon will pass muster. You gotta hand it to this guy, he's got balls of steel that would be admired in the torture chambers of the Kremlin.
Justice for all is an oximoron for our country.
Had it been someone else, he'd have finished him off and disposed of the body. That's damage control, Dick Cheney style...
What about Bush himself? If the VP and a good portion of this cabinet require pardons to escape prosecution, does that leave Bush vuneralbe, with no Gerald Ford to pardon him?
Universal justice may only be served by the charging of international war crimes against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice et al. Although they may never be convicted, the charges themselves would be a fitting punctuation for Bush's presidency.
That would require an amendment.
No, Cheney will still be a citizen, sad to say.
Trouble is, even after Obama takes office, few if any Bush people will have charges brought against them by any legal body that has any real impact, and certainly nobody as high as Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc., since Obama and Pelosi, etc. have already agreed that they think it would be "divisive". If some court does file charges once Obama takes office, Obama will probably pardon everyone for whom charges are filed, in the spirit of "unity" (and he doesn't have to wait until his term is up--a president can issue pardons any time during their administration).
This isn't rocket science it's basic gang warfare level politics, it;s not conservative or liberal.
It's like being stung by some hornets--you don't retaliate by punching the nest in anger--it's just going to make things worse. No, the right thing is to figure out better solutions, even though it takes more time. One of the marks of maturity is the ability to delay satisfaction if the reward you can get in the future, through extra work, is bigger than the reward you get through grabbing for something in the present.
Where is it? Just one of many examples of congressional miss management; I think the government executives should be fired or put in jail for all the miss management. All they do is talk about how the American people need to spend less and be responsible. What about them? Republican and Democrat they are the same; working for the Federal Reserve once people understand that we can get through the B.S. The banks got a bailout to put money back in the pockets of the ones who planed the fall of the U.S economy.
They need to cause a panic to get permission to take some right away. (Follow the money trail).
Congress is talking down to the big 3 auto makers for providing a good wage, Pension and health benefits to its workers. They should be thanking them for supporting a way of life for the country and setting a standard of good paying jobs. They can't compete because the transplant auto makers aren't paying a good wage. The transplants have support from their government and large tax incentives to build in the states they reside