Cheney 'indicts' himself as the torturer-in-chief

No one has mounted a more vigorous defense of the CIA's torture program than the former VEEP, Dick Cheney.    And that includes CIA Director John Brennan, some former CIA directors, and President Bush himself -- all of whom have shown at least some reservations and contextual explanations.   

Even John Yoo, the Justice Department official who authored the Office of Legal Council opinion that water-boarding was not torture, has said some methods revealed in the Senate Intelligence Committee report probably went too far.

But not Dick Cheney, who was in full growl on Sunday's "Meet the Press" interview with Chuck Todd.

No second thoughts.   No doubts.   Not a whiff of remorse. 

"It worked. It absolutely did work. . . . I'd do it again in a minute" said Cheney justifying use of any means necessary "to get the bastards" behind the 9/11 attacks. 

Cheney's statement, "I have no problem as long as we achieve our objective," was in response to a question about some detainees who were extensively tortured and who turned out to be totally innocent of any involvement.   But Cheney has no remorse for what was done to them -- in the name of "achieving our objective."

That answer begs for the follow-up questions:   "Is there any limit to what you would do to another human being if you thought it would achieve your objective?"    "Are you saying that nothing is off limits?"   What about boiling in oil?   The rack? 

He refused to be drawn into such questions.   For Cheney, the Office of Legal Council had the final word;   no need to think about it further.   Never mind that this decision was obviously demanded and enabled by Cheney himself and the people he installed in positions to do his bidding.    He forced the decision that gave him cover, then hid behind the decision as the authority he needed to proceed.

[Parenthetically, this is a typical Cheney tactic.   In his retaliation against Joseph Wilson and the outing of Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a CIA operative, Cheney "leaked" false info to the New York Times and then quoted the Times to show that this information was widely known.]

Cheney's unwavering attitude here in 2014, following the proof from internal CIA documents that it really did not give us any important actionable intelligence that we didn't also get another way, and following all the discussions of how the program hurt us in world opinion as well as in our national soul -- all adds up, for me, as proof that Cheney must have been the driving force behind all the CIA excess.

We know that the Office of Legal Council and the CIA were responding to demands from higher up for the answers they wanted;  and, when useful answers were not forthcoming, the pressure just got stronger to double down on the efforts.   We know that Cheney made repeated visits to CIA headquarters, always hounding them about intelligence -- and wanting the raw data without their analysis, so he could cherry-pick what suited him.

Thus, torture.    And Cheney is the dark force behind that betrayal of our values and wisdom.   As Rachel Maddow's research showed in a program aired last week, even the CIA itself had concluded back in the 1970's, from it's own bad experiences, that torture did not work and they ruled it out for future use.    But when the powerful VEEP insists . . .  it's hard to resist, although some CIA operatives did resign in protest or asked to be transferred out of the sites where it was taking place.

Cheney's convictions are unshakable by facts;   he simply denies or ignores inconvenient facts.  It's rare -- outside the insanely obsessed -- to see such absolute certitude of the correctness of one's beliefs in the face of conflicting facts.   But, in this same interview, Cheney also insisted that he still believes that invading Iraq and overthrowing Sadaam Hussein was the right thing to do;  he has no doubts and would do that again too.    That certitude survived even when Todd played a clip from the 1990's of Cheney himself predicting what would happen if Iraq's government were toppled.   Todd pointed out that everything Cheney predicted then as a disaster is exactly where the country is today.

Cheney had an answer for that.   Oh, but look at all that has happened in the meantime.   We had 9/11 [which had nothing to do with Iraq] and WMD [which didn't exist] and the connection with Al Queda [again no connection with Iraq and Sadaam].    His answer is to connect things that have no connection.

Cheney can no longer be taken seriously.    The problem is that people still do.  This was not Fox News but NBC giving him a 20 minute interview in prime Sunday morning time on "Meet the Press."  Cheney's persuasive certitude has always been a dangerous problem because, even when he is talking nonsense, he sounds like he knows, and he sways people into believing him.     Fortunately, he is not in an official position of power now.   But for 8 years, he was -- and we do not yet know all the damage this one man caused.   Torture is one, manufacturing false claims about WMD is another.

Ralph