I am regularly amazed that public officials can say things in public without experiencing what should be obvious repercussions. The latest example? This doozy from former Vice President Dick Cheney regarding his sanctioning of torture (we have prosecuted waterboarding as torture in the past, so Cheney was defending torture), reported on the front page of yesterday's New York Times:
"The fact of the matter is the Justice Department reviewed all those allegations several years ago."
Okay, on its face, it seems like the most innocuous of statements, but there are two aspects to Cheney's latest outburst of lunacy that I find particularly outrageous.
First, and more obvious, is his blase acceptance that the United States of America could endorse torture. As I have argued many times, if the U.S. accepts the use of torture, it is spitting in the face of the very values of justice and due process that have made the country a beacon of democracy. If we torture, how can we oppose the behavior of oppressive regimes that do not respect the basic rights of human beings? If we maintain facilities like Guantanamo Bay and subject suspects to rendition, knowing full well they will be tortured in other countries, how are we any better than, say, North Korea seizing two journalists for committing no real crime?
As I noted when discussing the case of Lakhdar Boumediene, who was held and tortured in Guantanamo Bay even though courts in both Bosnia and the U.S. (one before his detention, one during) found he had committed no crime, Boumediene's experience with the U.S. government was substantively no better than than what Laura Ling and Euna Lee faced in North Korea. (Actually, based on accounts of how Ling and Lee were treated, and on their early release, their interaction with North Korea was most likely better than what Boumediene lived through with the U.S.) Is that the country in which we want to live? Do we want to live in a country whose values are closer to North Korea than, well, the United States in the pre-George W. Bush era?
It is even more infuriating when the overwhelming evidence is that the torture committed by the Bush administration didn't even help much, creating more terrorists than securing important data. And when a guy like retired general (and current National Security Adviser) Jim Jones says that the Obama administration has been more effective in fighting terrorism than the Bush crowd had been, it really should give people pause as to why it's even a debate that the country made a grave mistake in sanctioning torture.
But the thing that really bugs me about Cheney's quote (again, he said, regarding torture, that: "The fact of the matter is the Justice Department reviewed all those allegations several years ago.") is that in using the Justice Department as justification, he brings to mind the old story used to define the Yiddish word chutzpah: Someone who kills his parents and then throws himself on the mercy of the court as an orphan.
Let us review. The Bush administration, breaking with long-held policy and practice, politicized the Justice Department, moving it from an independent, apolitical defender of the laws of the country to a politicized arm of the Bush campaign. Candidates for positions that were supposed to be nonpolitical were judged to ensure they were conservative and Republican. Choosing ideology over merit, the administration hired 150 graduates of Regent University, Pat Robertson's school, which ranked in the lowest tier in the annual survey by U.S. News and World Report. Among the Regent alums in the Bush administration was Monica Goodling, the 33-year-old lawyer with no prosecutorial experience who was installed in the number-three position in the Justice Department, overseeing more than 90 U.S. Attorneys, who, in turn, managed thousands of lawyers under them.
And, of course, the Bush administration, in an unprecedented move, fired eight U.S. Attorneys, in the middle of Bush's second term, for wholly political reasons (namely, failure to go after Democrats and voter fraud issues that the administration wanted pursued). (Three articles on the topic are here, here and here.)
By the time the dust had settled, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Justice Department Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson, and Goodling were among the group of top Justice officials who resigned in light of the scandal.
The reason Bush's politicization of the Justice Department angered so many observers was that our democratic system relies on the dispassionate execution of our laws by the government, which is carried out by the Justice Department. To corrupt Justice is to corrupt the nation, putting the members of the executive branch above the law. The idea that U.S. Attorneys would be fired for not carrying out politically expedient prosecutions, or that candidates for Justice positions would be tested for their party loyalty, impugns the role of Justice as an impartial guardian of the law.
And a politicized Justice Department meant that Bush was able to secure opinions from the department that justified the use of torture. (A good survey of the issue is available here.)
So let's circle back to Cheney. Essentially, Cheney was drawing on the decades-old idea of the Justice Department as an independent body enforcing the law when he said the department had approved the use of torture, thus making it okay. But the gall of Cheney's statement is that he was a key part of an administration that deconstructed the very objectivity on which he now relies. Like the parent-murderer who now wants sympathy for being an orphan, Cheney wants us to trust the objectivity of a Justice Department he helped politicize.
How is it that Cheney was allowed to make such a baldly hypocritical and self-serving statement without being challenged? It's outrageous.
I don't know why I'm surprised. We have a gubernatorial candidate in Virginia who argued in a thesis that women shouldn't work, the U.S. Supreme Court shouldn't have legalized contraception for unmarried people, and religion should be more prominent in schools, while decrying homosexuality and "fornicators." If Robert McDonnell was in the running for a position at Fox News, he would be an excellent candidate, but someone who espoused these extreme views shouldn't be aspiring to any office in a purple state like Virginia. And yet, according to the Washington Post, he is ahead in the polls.
Which reminds me of one of my favorite expressions: Democracy works, just not always like you want it to. If the people of Virginia elect this guy, they will get what they deserve. And if Americans take Dick Cheney seriously (or elect him president, as a bats*!%-crazy Wall Street Journal editorial called for), we, too, will have to live with the results.
We are currently dealing with the devastation that eight years of Bush rule did to the economy and our international standing. I can't imagine why anyone would take anything Cheney has to say seriously, especially when he engages in such hypocritical practice as relying on a Justice Department he tainted for justification of his actions. That is, simply put, chutzpah.
Jon Soltz: The Weakness of Liz Cheney
In the end, Liz Cheney and Keep America Safe are just a re-run of what was already tried and failed in 2008. Namely, using the veil of fear to mask an un-informed, false, and weak position.
Der Spiegel wrote several articles on that there count was:
330,000
Most were gypsies and street people
The rest were Jews
I am not defending genocide but get your figures correct..
I am guessing you also think that we did not land on the moon, that 9/11 was an inside job, and that Dick Cheney is a good American.
Someomne needs to tell Cheney he is not Vice President any more or better yet president any more so he should shut his pie hole. His 8 years are up for all the damage him and Bush did we would like to never hear from either of them again !
It reminds me of the people in Germany during WW 2 that let their jewish friends get taken away because..well, "I'm not jewish, so why do I care." So our european friends get attacked by al qeda but that doesnt count. Give me a break.
The germans persecuted for history and now america took the role of plaing Josef Mengele
Cheney and his agents are busted .. face facts liars
http://www.tortureteam.org
I always found it hilarious each time the Shrub Administration called facts they didn't like "revisionism," as if they knew what the word meant or what the revisionists are doing to history. But the hypocrisy of Cheney and his defenders as they revise the record of their merciless attack on core national values is breathtakingly thoroughgoing.
Of course, it won't be hilarious if they get away with it. Closer to tragic, actually, and all who love democracy, the rule of law, and the great ideals of America would then be weeping.
SEND HIM TO JAIL!
Other than the innocents tortured on his orders he will keep his rights and his health. But the same rules that give him those rights make every single important decision he made the last 20 years a crime.
They are calles the constitution.
He tried to destroy it and did a good job doing it. And that again is a crime.
It's not torture when the Attorney General, Congressional Leadership (Dems I might add) and the Fed. Courts say it's not... that Waterboarding is ok. Also, several Fed. Prosecutors looked at all of this and essentially said; "Move on..."
"You're amazed that Public figures can say things, etc..." So am I:
“They’re carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care.” -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in an August 5 interview
"What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?” -- Rep. John Conyers (Mich.) at the National Press Club, July 24
“What we’re seeing right now is close to Brown Shirt tactics.“ -- Rep. Brian Baird, (Wash.) told a local newspaper
“I hope people will take a jaundiced eye to what is clearly the Astroturf nature of so-called grassroots lobbying ... The Astroturf nature of grassroots lobbying, which is largely the term for, you know, this is manufactured anger.” -- White House spokesman Robert Gibbs
“These are nothing more than destructive efforts to interrupt a debate that we should have, and are having. They are doing this because they don’t have any better ideas … It’s really simple: They‘re taking their cues from talk-show hosts, Internet rumor-mongerers and insurance rackets.” -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.)
The Justice Department should not be politicized and their pursuit against improper CIA interrogations is appropriate.
Why is Dick Cheney so vocal against these investigations? Does he have anything to hide?
The Justice Dept. has been and always will be political. Law is political.
There is no current leader of the GOP and times like this (new Pres.) the last Admin. typically assumes that role. Does he have something to hide? Maybe, but could it not also be that he cares having seen first hand what's at stake here?
If something's wrong, it's wrong. I'm assuming that since you don't believe that water-boarding and such are torture, then it's OK with you if those tactics are used against our servicemen and women - after all, they're not torture, right?
Why do you hate our troops?
Yes, I would agree with you regarding water boarding AS LONG as the same process was followed - known terrorists, known to have info that could save lives, AG and courts involved all the way with Congressional leadership and the Pres. makes the call, absolutely, it saves lives of innocent people!!! That's the morally correct thing to do...
In a broader sense, Americans don't seem to be fulfilled unless they have something on a very low order of probability to be worried about.
Instead of worrying about putting crappy food inside of them everyday (high probability of debiliatating illness) in the future, they worry about child abductions and lightning strikes(very low probability).
Instead of worrying about the sorry state of our current private healthcare system they'd rather be worried about make-believe 'death panels'!